Lou Andreas-Salomé & her philosophy.

Lou Andreas-Salomé, born on the 12th of February 1861, was a thinker, writer and the first female psychoanalytic. But she is formally remembered because of her friendships with Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and as a student of Sigmund Freud.

A God abandoned universe

Salomé lost her faith in God at a young age. She kept saying that this was a “God abandoned universe”. This loss also came with a positive aspect: “a never-ending, all-controlling fundamental sense of boundless solidarity with all that lives ever since.” She wrote the poem “lebensgebet” (prayer of life) which is were she embraced live, including the pain. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was so excited about this poem, that he ensured that it was set to music.

Through a mutual friend, Salomé met Nietzsche in 1882. They would communicate daily, and this would sometimes be up to 10 hours a day. Nietzsche called Salomé “the only worthy successor” of his philosophy. However, Salomé never wanted to become a student or a successor. In the conversations Salomé had with Nietzsche about religion, Salomé decided to write the roman Im Kampf Um Gott (In the fight for God) in 1885. In her book Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken in 1894, she analysed his philosophy and she would connect it with his live. Salomé showed that with Nietzsche, thinking and being are in unity.

Marriage proposals declined.

In 1882 Salomé and philosophers Paul Ree and Friedrich Nietzsche made plans to live together. This plan never went through, however the three did spend several months together. Both men proposed to Salome, but Salome declined both proposals. Rée and Salomé remained to be friends in the following 5 years. Nietzsche withdrew himself from their friendship, apparently, he was against Rée’s thinking – even though he praised his thinking for being realistic earlier –.

The pursuit of equality as masculine stupidity.

In her dissertation “Nomadic Narcissism”, which is about the life and work of Lou Salome, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Belle van Zuylen, philosopher Joke Hermsen writes that Nietzsche and Salome talked a lot about “gender difference”. They both felt that feminists of their time were trying too hard to “become equal with men.” According to them, if women try to gain masculine qualities, the existing patterns would only be confirmed, writes Hermsen, while those patterns had to be transformed.

It is believed that Nietzsche is said to have characterized the feminist desire for equal rights and duties as a “masculine stupidity”. It is the death blow to a Europe that has become ill with masculinity. By the way, Nietzsche is often characterized by Salome as “feminine” in his thinking and Nietzsche also saw himself as “female genius”.

Instead of equating themselves with men, Nietzsche and Salomé think women should discover their own strength and productivity. Later Salomé developed these ideas further in the essay Der Mensch als Weib (1899). She wanted to get rid of the, then popular, idea of the Ewig Weibliche, in which the woman was mainly presented as a muse. Ironically, a name that has often been assigned to her. She opposed the term because of the muse’s passivity. For her it was precisely about assigning the woman her own inner life and her own creative power.

First female analytic

After she turned 50, she befriended Sigmund Frued and became his student. After 20 years, she was still treating patients at her practice in Göttingen. She publicised multiple articles about psychoanalytical subject, such as the theory of narcissism. Salomé became the first female psychoanalytic.