ask me about Friedrich Nietzsche

[mbillie1]

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Did he really have a nervous breakdown as a result of seeing a horse being beaten?

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Well, he had syphilis which could not be effectively cured in the late 1800s. His eventual mental collapse was inevitable. In most cases of psychiatric distress there is an event (or a series of events) that "triggers" the collapse. Supposedly, it happened to be him witnessing the guy beating the horse. That's really more happenstance than causal though. Like, a schizophrenic won't just always exhibit the full set of symptoms/behavioral attributes, there's usually some event that triggers the full onset. Supposedly this triggered it for Nietzsche.