Composing the Soul

This text examines the contours of Nietzsche's psychology in the context of his life and psychological make-up. Beginning with essays from Nietzsche's youth, the author shows the influence on Nietzsche of such figures as Goethe, Byron and Emerson on Nietzsche. Parkes goes on to chart the development of Nietzsche's psychological ideas in terms of the imagery, drawn from the dialogues of Plato as well as from Nietzsche's own quasi-mystical experiences of nature, in which he spoke of the soul. Finally, Parkes analyzes Nietzsche's most revolutionary idea - that the soul is composed of multiple "drives" or "persons" within the psyche. The task for Nietzsche's psychology, then, was to identify and order these multiple persons within the individual - to compose the soul.