Susanna Petitpierre Blogs | Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

December 28, 2020 by BHP Leave a Comment

Nietzsche and the body

Here I reflect, a little, on a few of Nietzsche’s words on and as the body. These reflections are not conclusive or comprehensive. The only agenda is inspired by Nietzsche, to perhaps stimulate the reader’s curiosity and desire to experiment and explore. Please do read my previous article – ‘Why read Nietzsche?‘

“The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.” (1)

Nietzsche felt many philosophers, including Plato and Descartes, failed to grasp the significance of the corporeal nature of human beings and the pivotal role of affect.

In much of his writing he explored the impossibility of pure thinking, reminding us that we are embodied thinkers, and our senses and emotions are as much a part of this reasoning as thought, if not more so.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

Nietzsche treasured being and walking in nature. In fact, Nietzsche (1967) seemingly suggests physical movement was necessary for a thought to be accepted as plausible when he said –

“Give no credence to a thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely”. (2)

He depicted how the air we breathe, the food we eat, the place we live and what we ingest through reading, writing and talking all have an impact on our physiology and philosophy and vice versa. Nietzsche (1974) even advised:

“Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?” (3)

Nietzsche wrote a poem called ‘Writing with one’s feet’. It emphasised the principle of embodiment through metaphor and description of the anatomy of his writing.

“Not with my hand alone I write:

My foot wants to participate.

Firm and free and bold,

my feet Run across the field – and sheet”(4)

I understand Nietzsche as a passionate defender of the embodied lived experience. His philosophy is one that elevates both known and unknown instincts and drives that interplay with our bodily lived experiences. In fact, Nietzsche seems to suggest the self is the body.

“Behind your thoughts and feelings… there stands a mighty rule, an unknown sage – whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body”(5)

Nietzsche was not defining the body in a conventional way, such as a physical body or a single unit. He viewed it more metaphorically as a collection of corporeal and psychic forces, including emotions and instincts which are in a continual and often conflictual interplay. He saw the self as a plurality of forces, or more precisely a plurality of (relational) affects. These relational affects each express a viewpoint and seek domination. Affects, for Nietzsche, are dynamically and continually interpreting and creating perspective. (6)

This multiplicity can sometimes create confusion and conflict, especially if one gets stuck in thinking there is a such a thing as supremacy, or the right way, or the truth. Perhaps the key is to recognise that they all say many things at once. Rather than seeing this multiplicity of meaning and often unknown elements as something to fear, one could be curious and trust there is something to be listened to in all aspects. This exploration and experimentation is something that therapy can be helpful for. A potential space to sit in the unknown for a while, exploring, experimenting and experiencing, and see what might emerge.

Perhaps as Nietzsche suggests this very experience of conflicting affect can dislodge the notion that there is one way to be and create an opportunity for us to be guided into new, more fluid and creative ways of becoming. It can show us there are no limits to novel forms and there is always potential for transformation even within the limitations, obstacles and challenges that we may face. It also tells me that the idea of a rational pure thought that can somehow ignore or overcome the influence of emotions, physical sensations and those forces that reside in the unknown or unreflected, is unlikely. For Nietzsche it seems, nothing is, or needs to be, left behind in this often enigmatic embodied endeavour we might call lived experience.

As I conclude I feel a pressure to tie this short piece up into a nice and neat bow, so that it feels complete and reassuring somehow. However, I also feel the desire to swim. Perhaps the former would be missing the entire point of Nietzsche and the latter highlights his case in point.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna Petitpierre, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Susanna Petitpierre, BACP Registered, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals. Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre

Why read Nietzsche?

Magnificent Monsters

Death Anxiety

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

References –

1) Nietzsche, F. (1883/2010) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Ed. B Chapko),Ebook.

2) Nietzsche, F. (1967) Ecce Homo, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967

3) Nietzsche, F. (1882/1974), The Gay science. With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. W Kaufmann, New York: Random House

4) Nietzsche, F. (1882/1974), The Gay science. With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. W Kaufmann, New York: Random House

5) Nietzsche, F. (1883/2010) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Ed. B Chapko), Ebook.

6) Bazzano, M., (2019) Niezsche and Psychotherapy. London: Routeledge.

September 21, 2020 by BHP Leave a Comment

Why read Nietzsche?

Nietzsche reflected on and wrote much about the lived experience of human beings. He discussed many things that were seemingly in conflict with the last thing he wrote. I have sometimes heard this used as a reason not to read Nietzsche. This apparent paradoxical nature might sometimes leave you confused and resistant to look again. However, I feel he is always worth returning to, especially if we are curious about life.

According to Kaufman (2004) Nietzsche depicted himself in Ecce Homo as “a psychologist without equal and many consider his philosophical work to have a deeply psychological understanding of the human experience.” [1]

Freud apparently discussed the level of introspection Nietzsche reached as being greater than anyone else past or potentially in the future. [2]

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

When I began to read Nietzsche, I was actually surprised at how engaged I became, despite how little I seemed to understand. He inspired me then and continues to each time I return to his texts, often seeing it from a different perspective each time. I feel his rhythmical and metaphorical offerings were made to stimulate exploration and awaken emotional responses rather than offer conclusive truths. He was purposely ambiguous and contradictory. For me, Nietzsche was on the side of experiencing and embracing the significance of creativity, music and dance. He
welcomed understandings about fluidity, multiplicity, becomings and going beyond. I feel he invited us to see that we are so much more than we have dreamed of thus far, and there are many dimensions to be explored.

My understanding of Nietzsche is that he was not one to be dogmatic, and he challenged scientific reductionism. Bazzano (2019) discusses how Nietzsche did not see science as able to explain life, only describe it. He challenged people to see how structures and systems were filled with our attempts to the bring natural dynamic and conflicting forces (both internal and external) into order and control [3] .

Or sometimes, perhaps, as a way to avoid taking responsibility. In fact, Nietzsche was often suspicious of the systematisation of life, “I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” [4] (Part 2, sec 26)

Nietzsche welcomed the dance of life. His writings pointed to the multiple dynamic perspectives and interpretations that direct human experience, and the oscillating movements between chaos and structure that we all seemingly exist within on a macro and micro level. He championed understandings and explorations that focused on active over reactive forces. He centred the ‘need to know’ that can monopolise human thought and perhaps gave consciousness and intellectual knowledge its origins and apparent semblance of supremacy as, in fact, secondary
to the primacy of the body. The latter being a direct experience of active forces experienced through feeling the body’s affects. [5]

Nietzsche has both inspired and disturbed me. He manages to shake the ground beneath you, leaving you adrift at times. Equally he evokes a desire to live this opportunity to exist and experience more fully, within all facets presented. I feel he provokes a desire to feel, listen and move. To take responsibility for this existence we are living in all its uncertainty, intensity and affect and utilise creatively their influence in our transformations. [6]

Sadly, his thinking can be overlooked and dismissed due to his fall into apparent madness. I feel that is a fruitful encounter missed. He is worth reading if only to find out if any gems touch and inspire something within you.

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

Magnificent Monsters

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

Existential Therapy

Being embodied in Therapy: Feeling and listening to your body

References –

1 Kaufman (2004). Nietzsche, Heidegger and Buber- discovering the mind vol 2. New York: transaction publishers.

2 ibid

3 Bazzano, M, (2019) Nietzsche and Psychotherapy. London: Routledge

4 Nietzsche, F. (1888/1969) Twilight of the Idols, trans, R. J. Hollingdale, Harmonsworth: penguin.

5 Bazzano, M, (2019) Nietzsche and Psychotherapy. London: Routledge

6 ibid

May 18, 2020 by Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

Magnificent Monsters

“The passions, these “magnificent monsters” (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 521), can we consider them a gift in which something valuable can be learnt?

Below is a consideration of the multiple, dynamic, creative and sometimes conflicting forces of energy that are often competing for dominance within us – what Fredrick Nietzsche sometimes described as ‘the passions’. Others may describe them as drives, passions and impulses. They are always present and seemingly are what constitutes and influences much of what is our lived experience. Despite their force and significance, they can often go unnoticed and our knowledge of them is always incomplete. They sometimes emerge into our conscious awareness when we are awakened into our existence, for instance when we are confronted by experiences such as uncertainty, grief and love.

Feeling passionate can be both enthralling and scary. Passions are sometimes encountered as other worldly, because they can appear out of nowhere and stir us and shake the ground beneath our feet. Passions can cross the many boundaries of our lived experience. They can symbolise our strong emotional states including joy and suffering. Perhaps many people can relate to the passions felt in the first stages of falling in love, or the sudden earthquake of loss.

At times, we may find ourselves running away from them. This is perhaps born out of a sense of needing to escape from what is being experienced. Perhaps this can be influenced by our conditioned beliefs, rooted in religious and philosophical beliefs, which might espouse that passions are dangerous, uncivilised and something that need to be tamed, and/or eradicated.

Other times we may run towards them, feeling that despite the fear they might cause within us, their intensity and irreducible form feels like an opportunity to live more vitally and come-into-being.

As time passes, human beings seem to be moving into spaces where connection and desire are dampened down by our addiction to technology, self-preservation and control. Even therapy can find itself, unwittingly perhaps, offering ways to master the ever-arising encounter with thoughts, emotions and sensations, so that we might never have to feel perturbed. Other times therapy may be seen as providing an opportunity to self actualise, by integrating all that we apparently are. Perhaps all of this in some way is a strategy to defend against feeling unsafe and uncertain.

But what if moving out of uncertainty is not possible or even necessary? What if these passions are revealing our possibilities, our strengths, our potential to move and become? What if we need them to create, to learn, to feel alive within our uncertain world. What if really feeling them slowly and subtly before acting on them or attempting to eradicate them is important? What if becoming intimate with them and patiently listening to them is what is necessary?

Perhaps this is where therapy can facilitate; by providing a space to feel, to explore, to experiment so that maybe we can change the relationship. What is perhaps significant to consider, for a while at least, are the desires and possibilities they are revealing within us. As Clarice Lispector (2012) wrote: “Life, my love, is a great seduction in which all that exists seduces.” (p 55).

Perhaps some passions must sometimes be tamed in order to live within a collective space. However, within any taming I feel it is equally, if not more significant, to understand what is being felt and moved within us with curiosity and kindness so that we may experience this brief encounter with life more deeply and compassionately.

Maybe letting go of a need to control, just for a while, and trusting our continually changing movements, just for a bit, is all that has to happen?

With gratitude and inspiration from Nietzsche (1967) and Clarice Lispector (2012).

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

Existential Therapy

Being embodied in Therapy: Feeling and listening to your body

References –

Lispector, C (2012) The Passion According to G.H. Trans, Idea Novey. London, Penguin

Nietzsche, F. (1967) The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufman London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson.

November 18, 2019 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

Death Anxiety

This blog follows on from my previous blogs – Existential Therapy and A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies.

In Existential Therapy reflecting on death anxiety would not be the same without a consideration of Heidegger. Heidegger (1927) regarded human beings as always ‘being towards death’. He asserted the significance of anticipating death as a vehicle to address the possibility of being itself. Heidegger (1927) described the earnest recognition of our being towards death and its possibility in the following way:

“Impassioned freedom towards death – a freedom which has been released from the illusions of the ‘they’ and which is tactical, certain of itself, and anxious”

(p. 266) ^[1]

To me it seems Heidegger postulated that by confronting our finitude we can take responsibility for our existence and be released from the illusions surrounding a life of conformity. However, this does not remove anxiety from living but reframes it as something inherent in being.

To a greater and lesser extent ‘death anxiety’ is considered by existential therapists as a central theme. One’s mortality is recognised as a continuing condition of human beings. It is perhaps the only thing that belongs to us, and we can knowingly and unknowingly be living in the anticipation of its possibility and eventuality. This theme holds much uncertainty and reflects back to us the pervading uncertainty of life. It gives birth to the existential angst inherent in the human condition. This angst is generated by the fragility and unreliability of a life lived in this existence.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

This does not have to be a pessimistic view. It is in fact allowing an exploration of the boundaries of life. By confronting our mortality, and in fact any pain and suffering experienced along our path, we have the opportunity to clarify our limits and identify that which is out of our reach rather than evading it. Simultaneously it can support us to become aware of our potential and the elements in our lives that it is possible to do something about. It can make us feel more adventurous and alive.

Existential Therapy frequently espouses the importance of facing up to our life and death and all that is experienced between the two poles of our existence, whether it be inevitable suffering or joy. We must find the capacity to confront our difficulties in living and permit the experience to feel it, without needing to linger for too long.

Equally we must see the good in our existence and recognise these times as they happen. Allow learning to ensue so that we can augment this in our lives, but without getting caught in the pursuit of unending happiness. Ultimately all aspects experienced, wherever they fall on the spectrum of suffering or joy, do not stand alone. They are all parts of the same indivisible perspective that each individual experiences as they travel within their existence.

So whether or not death anxiety is viable to consider, angst or anxiety is seen as an inevitable part of existence by Existential Therapists. Many will emphasise the significance of valuing, understanding and tolerating anxiety. Many recognise anxiety as a sign that something in our life needs our energy and attention rather than it being a threat or something to be eliminated. Perhaps it may be the very thing that unshackles us from conformity and seeking validation or permission from others. Perhaps it is the vehicle within which we may feel our aliveness, engagement, and vital connection.

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

Existential Therapy

Being embodied in Therapy: Feeling and listening to your body

Resources –

^[1] Heidegger, M. (1927) Being and Time (transl. J. Macquarrie and E.s Robinson) Londo: Harper and Row, 1962 edn.

September 30, 2019 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

This blog follows on from my previous blog – Existential Therapy. This is how I have interpreted some vital notions connected to existential therapies.

Existential therapy is a diverse approach which is used to understand and clarify a client’s problems and possibilities for living their existence. Below are some more of the vital principles (as I see them) typically considered by existential therapists. I would like to make clear that what I have written is not exhaustive, conclusive or necessarily a general order of things.

1) A belief in the relational nature of being as a central aspect of existence ^[1].

This suggests two things to me. That we are always in relationship with the world, and how we relate to it is often fundamental in how we are and what we become. It is interesting to note that in therapy the relationship has been continually found to be the key to efficacy whatever the approach.

In contrast to the relational sense of existence some existential philosophers have asserted we are ultimately alone in our existence. For instance, Kierkegaard emphasised the individuality of being human, describing human existence as a solitary affair.

Wherever one falls on this spectrum the discussion of how one is relating to their world can be a fruitful enterprise in existential therapy.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

2) Seeking to understand a client’s subjectively lived experience and how it is taking place within a framework of temporality (past, present and future), tensions and contradictions. ^[2]

For me this means the intention is to understand that human existence is full of paradoxes. The aim is to clarify a client’s life as they have lived it, support them to reflect on what has happened and allow them to determine how they would like to live in the future in line with their values.

For instance, if a client comes to see me I am not going to attempt to fit them into any theory or model. I am also not going to tell them what to do. I do hope to hold an openness to each client’s way of being-in-the-world and support them to get clarity on what is going well and what needs to be changed. I may employ an exploration of philosophy and other wisdoms as well as psychological theory to support a client’s inquiry, but I will always lean towards emphasising a client’s lived experience as key to the investigation rather than any theoretical understanding.

This leads me to another understanding that frames existential therapy.

3) A consideration and discovery of a client’s freedom and responsibility

For me this element is summed up nicely by Nietzsche’s words “Follow not me, but you”. ^[3]

When he said this I think he was responding to people’s attempts to pinpoint his ideas into an all-encompassing approach to life. For me, it feels like a relevant description of every individual’s existential responsibility.

An existential therapeutic perspective typically strives for the clients to take responsibility for their lives and see their very existence, their being-ness, as the source of their potential as well as an opportunity to confront their limitations.^[4] This possibility of being also upholds a fluid sense that we are always becoming and not a static substance. It invites a platform from which clients might begin to take responsibility for their existence and what they value. In this movement we may begin to reveal, understand and clarify their choices and actions. This takes courage though. It takes courage to birth and live out one’s potential, especially in the face of adversity and limitation.

This links into another significant understanding or theme underpinning existential therapy: ‘being towards death’. Please also read my blog on Existential Therapy and Death Anxiety.

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

Existential Therapy

Being embodied in Therapy: Feeling and listening to your body

Resources –

^[1] Spinelli, E. (2007) Practising Existential Psychotherapy. The Relational world. London: Sage

^[2] van Deurzen, E. (1998) Paradox and Passion in Psychotherapy: an Existential Approach to Therapy and Counselling. Chichester: Wiley.

^[3] May, R., (1958) Origins of the existential movement. in Existence. (Eds: Rollo May, Ernest Angel & Henri, F Ellenberg) Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: USA. p. 31

^[4] van Deurzen, E. (1998) Paradox and Passion in Psychotherapy: an Existential Approach to Therapy and Counselling. Chichester: Wiley.

Nietzsche and the body

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Why read Nietzsche?

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Magnificent Monsters

Death Anxiety

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Locations -

Therapy services:

Therapy types: