Nietzsche viewed himself as the first psychologist amongst the great philosophers.

Given that Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, three giants of 20th-century psychology, were all heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s psychological insights, his grandiose self-assessment seems to have contained at least a kernel of truth. 

Nietzsche’s psychological investigations were not conducted for the sake of disinterested theoretical speculation; as in his eyes, knowledge should always be sought first and foremost for the purpose of energizing life. In his essay On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, he quoted Goethe: “I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activities“.

Nietzsche undertook his psychological ventures for the sake of discovering how to fulfill the maxim which formed the subtitle of his autobiography Ecce Homo – “How One Becomes What One Is”.

Countless philosophers have attempted to understand the human mind, discern its tendencies, biases, potentials, nature, and origin. But Nietzsche claimed that all those before him were blinded in their psychological ventures by an unquestioned acceptance of not only the socially prevailing beliefs and moral standards, but more significantly, by a fear of exploring the depths within themselves. 

Nietzsche conceived the psyche as constituted by multidimensional layers and possessing a complexity which renders total and complete knowledge of it an impossibility.

Most individuals, fearing the complex depths within, remain at the superficial and surface layer of their psyche, “industriously mindful of their common comedy and not at all of themselves.”.

A fear of descending into the depths of one’s psyche is not unfounded, which is why it is “something that not everyone may undertake”. For those who lack sufficient courage and are ungifted in psychological investigations, a voluntary descent into the inner foundations of one’s mind could engender temporary, or in rare cases, permanent, madness. Writing of the dangers which confront the “adventurer and circumnavigator of that inner world called ‘human being’”.

While exploring the depths within maybe a foolish danger for the many, it is a necessary endeavor for the few. The psyche of a small minority of individuals, in comparison with that of the overwhelming mass, is constituted by both greater depths and a higher degree of turmoil. To ensure they are not torn asunder by the contradictions, conflicts, and abysses within, such individuals are driven inward to explore and impose order on their psyche – fashioning and sculpting themselves into a “harmonious totality”.

To create oneself does not mean to form oneself out of nothing. As humans, we cannot, as some falsely claim, be fashioned in any way we please. Each of us, according to Nietzsche, has a deep and abiding nature which places definite set limits on who and what we can become.

Our nature is sculpted not only by early personal life experiences and the traits and dispositions inherited from our ancestors, but also, according to Nietzsche, by historical forces. The traditions and “experiments” of past cultures continue to live on within us, influencing our life and experience from the deeper layers of our psyche.

Given that the “the past of every form and way of life” continues to live on in us, Nietzsche proposed we need to engage in an active exploration of history, if we are to attain self-knowledge.

“Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves.”

Just as the past continues to live on in modern cultures, embodied in myths, traditions, and institutions, so too our psyche has been shaped and sculpted by past ages.

The tendency of the modern individual to feel he has been arbitrarily thrown and abandoned into an absurd world is the direct result of lacking what Nietzsche called a “historical sense” – of having no conscious connection to the past, and therefore failing to dig one’s roots through the strata of history. 

In an early essay titled On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, Nietzsche contrasted “the condition of a people which has lost faith in its ancient history and has fallen into a restless…and a constant search for novelty after novelty”, with the individual who has cultivated a “historical sense”, and attained “the sense of well being of a tree for its roots, the happiness to know oneself in a manner not entirely arbitrary and accidental, but as someone who has grown out of a past, as an heir, flower, and fruit.” But it is not only the cultures of past millennia that continue to live on within us. 

For in the deeper layers of our psyche exist prehistorical drives and impulses. Just as our body contains relics of earlier developmental stages, stretching back even to the reptilian age, so too our psyche contains within its depths primitive drives which stretch back into the prehistory of humanity and animality.

Every human being, no matter how civilized and developed on the surface, is still an animal and archaic man within the depths of his being.

In these uncivilized layers reside what Zarathustra called “the beast within” – potentially destructive inclinations that can overtake and possess the human being, such as the drive to aggression and unbridled sexual lust. 

Instead of advocating for the repression of the beast within, Nietzsche recommended we explore and become familiar with these potentially destructive vestiges of the ancient past. Just as a raging river can be harnessed for its energy, so too the uncivilized layers of the psyche, if channeled and handled properly, can vitalize life.

But it is not only destructive drives and impulses which reside in the prehistoric layers of our psyche; there also exists what Nietzsche called the “divine animal” – ancient instincts, “regulating, unconscious and infallible drives”, which enabled our ancestors to survive and even flourish in harsh and uncertain environments prior to the emergence of the modern form of consciousness. 

The modern individual has all but lost touch with these ancient instincts. Relying solely on his consciousness, his “weakest and most fallible organ”, he stumbles blindly through life, oblivious that in the recesses of his mind are archaic helpers, which, if he knew how to harness them, could assist him in the many situations in life where consciousness fails.

“He has lost and destroyed his instinct, and can no longer trust the “divine animal” and let go the reins when his understanding falters and his way leads through deserts.”

The presence of historical, prehistorical, and animal drives has contributed to the existence of an “abundance of contrary drives and impulses” within us – “we ourselves are a kind of chaos”, as Nietzsche put it. In contrast to other philosophers who have posited the human mind to be above all something unitary, Nietzsche radically proclaimed it to be a multiplicity, an aggregation of intertwined psychological entities.

Conceptualizing the human psyche “as the social structure of the drives and affects” – as a sort of city, in which numerous conflicting sub-personalities simultaneously live – the task Nietzsche set for himself, and his readers were to harmonize the “abundance of contrary drives and impulses”, and provide coordination to the plethora of competing forces within. 

He proposed that such coordination can be attained via the agency of an “organizing idea”, or “ruling passion” – a dominant “master” drive that forms the “living center” of the psyche, and co-opts all the other drives to act in subordination to its end. The organizing idea is not found through an act of will, but, possessing a type of intelligence of its own, reveals itself throughout the course of one’s life. One merely has to remain on the lookout for such a master drive, and not hinder its growth and activity.

The organizing idea, in other words, arranges the plethora of competing forces in one’s psyche in a manner that allows one to strive with single-minded devotion towards a heroic goal which gives meaning to life.

“It is a myth to believe that we will find our authentic self after we have left behind or forgotten one thing or another…To make ourselves, to shape a form from various elements – that is the task! The task of a sculptor! Of a productive human being!”

Nietzsche’s psychological insights are wide, varied, and always penetrating –  a result of his ardent conviction that the psyche of modern man was in dire need of being dissected. 

But despite his piercing observations, there are critics who claim his insights into the nature of the human mind are irrelevant because of the fact that at the young age of 44 he fell victim to a mental illness which remained with him until the end of his relatively short life. Ignoring the fact that his illness may have been of an organic origin, there are some who may ask: Why should anyone pay attention to ideas on how to “become who you are” from a man who went mad? 

To respond to this question, we’ll conclude with an eery passage from Nietzsche’s unpublished notes, in which he seems to foreshadow the fate which would befall him later in life.

“There is a false saying: “How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”