Irving Yalong is a world-renowned psychological counselor and writer, and has many "supers" in China. His books such as "When Nietzsche Cry" and "Love Executioner" are "introduction" books for many people to understand what psychological counseling is.

2025/08/1307:15:37 psychological 1863

Author Profile: Chen Ding, a national second-level psychological counselor and sponsor of Shanghai Yichuang Coffee Charity Psychological Team,

Preface

Irving Yalong is a world-renowned psychological counselor and writer, and has many "supporters" in China. His books such as " When Nietzsche Crying " and "Love Executioner" are "introduction" books for many people to understand what psychological counseling is. Among his many works, Schopenhauer's Therapy is an existence that cannot be missed.

What kind of book is Schopenhauer's Treatment?

Schopenhauer is a well-known German philosopher. According to research by Irving Yaron, Schopenhauer's thoughts have an inspiring influence on the founding of the " subconscious " theory of Freud . It can be said that Schopenhauer's philosophical thoughts set a precedent for modern psychological treatment. However, Schopenhauer's philosophy did not help him. He was alienated from his family, never married for life, did not interact with the outside world, and had a pessimistic and negative attitude towards life. To outsiders, he was a "weird man" with a weird temper and devoted himself to his study, which aroused the sympathy of Yalong as a psychotherapist. He hopes to use his own brushstrokes to treat Schopenhauer "cross time and space", which is the origin of the writing of Schopenhauer's Therapy.

"Schopenhauer's Treatment" | Machinery Industry Press

In actual creation, considering that Schopenhauer's life had no psychological treatment yet (the first half of the 19th century), it was a bit too "unharmonious" to arrange a psychological counselor for him, so he created a character Philip who lived in the 20th century, whose life experience, personality, words and deeds were exactly the same as Schopenhauer. The person who provided treatment for "Schopenhauer" was a psychological counselor Julias who was very similar to Aaron himself in all aspects, and the main way Julias provided treatment for Philip was " group psychological counseling ". If someone wants to learn group psychological counseling, Schopenhauer's Treatment is also a rare psychological textbook. Of course, the "ambition" of "Schopenhauer's Treatment" is not just a teaching book.

What are the psychological dilemmas similar to the protagonist in contemporary young people?

Schopenhauer, the protagonist Philip, in Yalong's writing, is a kind of person we feel a little familiar with in reality. In him, we can also see the common psychological dilemma of contemporary young people.

encounters systematic troubles from native families. Schopenhauer's father is strict and strongly interferes with his children's future choices, while his mother is accustomed to "transferring" the conflicts in the relationship between husband and wife to his children, resulting in extremely alienated family relationships. Over the years, many young people have always traced their roots to " native family " when talking about psychological problems. Some social platforms even have discussions about "parents are harmed" all year round, believing that family is the source of many of their own pain.

don't know how to deal with interpersonal relationships. Schopenhauer has a famous saying, known as " hedgehog effect ". The book also repeatedly quotes: Hedgehogs stay close to each other for warmth when it is cold, but keep a certain distance to avoid stabbing each other. Nowadays, many young people don’t know what kind of interpersonal distance is suitable. They often use methods such as "blocking" and "staying at home", which is similar to Schopenhauer who does not communicate with the outside world.

Don’t know what the meaning of life is. is very good, but I don’t know what the meaning of living is, so many young people fall into a state of depression. Psychologist Kevin Xu proposed the concept of "hollow disease". In fact, Schopenhauer can be said to be the originator of "hollow disease". He proposed his own "pendulum theory" for the meaning of life: life is to sway in pain and boredom.

Faced with these three psychological difficulties, Schopenhauer adopted the following methods to deal with them.

Faced with pain, enjoy your timely pleasure or respond rationally. Since life has so many troubles, why bother to immerse yourself in it? Either enjoy it in time or improve your cognition and face it with rational "great enlightenment". Schopenhauer was indulging in relationships between men and women in his early years, and later devoted himself to books and used a lot of rational analysis to find the "answer" to deal with psychological confusion.

Reduce interpersonal communication and choose to live independently.Interpersonal relationships are so complicated, and it is difficult to grasp the distance, so why bother so much? Schopenhauer chose to avoid all relationships, and this move seemed to have really reduced a lot of interpersonal troubles. Nowadays, many young people advocate independence and always call it "social terror", trying to reduce interpersonal activities and believe that this is a "way" to solve interpersonal problems.

Facing the sense of meaninglessness, indulging in the "virtual world". Schopenhauer weaved a huge philosophical world for himself and immersed it in it. In modern entertainment society, many young people have unknowingly fallen into one "virtual world" after another. They are either addicted to electronic games or chase the faces of celebrities. However, once they leave this world, they still have to face various bonds of reality.

psychological "prescription" prescribed by Yalong

Through the above three methods, Schopenhauer seemed to have temporarily solved the problem, but he still felt pain. Many young people also have such confusion. They have clearly found some solutions to deal with it, but why they still haven’t become happy and feel real relief. So, how to solve the problem? Yalong prescribes three "prescriptions" in the book.

Interpersonal problems always rely on interpersonal problems to solve. Adler once said that all worries come from interpersonal relationships. After all, humans are social animals. No one can exist independently of others. Pretending to "not need others" may be the manifestation of others' great need.

Yalon believes that since all problems come from interpersonal problems, they still have to go back to interpersonal solutions. This is "group psychological counseling": a group of people who are also confused by interpersonal problems gathered together and under the leadership of the counselor, they communicate their respective problems. Of course, unlike friends gatherings in life, people are chosen by professionals and are based on the basic principles of equality and honesty. No one is the leader, and everyone has the opportunity to speak and give feedback. Through this special human interaction, problems are presented, problems are handled, and ultimately solved.

Pain will always reappear, the key is to gain "repairing experience". Psychology does not believe that pain needs to be avoided, and even avoidance itself will cause more suffering. Avoiding itself means that pain really exists, but avoiding cannot make pain truly disappear. It just hides and will always use hard work in secret.

In Yalong's view, groups can give pain a "repairing experience", that is, things will develop in a healing way, making the parties feel that there are other possibilities in the original situation: they can do things that cannot be done in the past, say things that were not dared to say in the past, and understand ideas that were incomprehensible in the past, and this is the fundamental way to avoid the repetition of pain.

Being recognized, needed, and loved can compensate for the meaningless feeling of life. What is the meaning of life? This is the ultimate philosophical proposition. Yalong gave an inspiring point of view: Since life is short and the pursuit of various philosophical quests are still trapped in nothingness, then we might as well accept that life itself is meaningless, but through relationships, our mutual dependence between people, we create its meaning:

In the sincere interaction cycle between people, we help others, others also help us, we love others, others also love us, we need others, and others also need us - we feel recognized, needed, and loved by others, which is where human beings really rely on for comfort in "pain and boredom". The moment when Philip is healed in the book is a time when an ex-girlfriend who has hated him for 20 years said to him, "I could have loved you" and "You are the best man I have ever met." Before, he had acted in the same way as others, and he had never been loved or recognized from the bottom of his heart.

Isn’t this also a curative moment that many people who are in psychological difficulties are also expected? (The author is the initiator of the Shanghai Yicun Coffee Charity Psychological Team and National Secondary Psychological Counselor )

This article was published in the 2022 issue of "New Reading"

Contributor: Chen Ding

Editor: Wang Zheng

Reviewer: Li Shuanglei