My name is Glenn Nicholls, I live and work in Cambridge, I also see people remotely from around the world. I’ve been a psychotherapist for about twenty-five years.
I first came across Nietzsche as a theology undergraduate and took an instant dislike. His ideas seemed unecessarily provocative and didn’t fit into my world view. Soon after graduating, and in the midst of a personal crisis, I began reading Nietzsche for the first time and got the unnerving sense that he could see inside me, even though I could not understand much of what I read.
Nietzsche famously ‘philosophised with a hammer’, and yet he saw himself as a psychologist; as the first psychologist. Although Nietzsche’s hammer is a delicately balanced tuning fork, when it hits the right spot it is devastating to the reader. And so before I even began my psychotherapy training I’d met my first therapist.
I later trained as an integrative psychotherapist which meant I was introduced to several schools of thought, in practice my training was fundamentally an experiential learning environment which allowed me to explore psychotherapy for myself. Psychotherapy trainings are much like having psychotherapy itself; they’re rigorous, take several years, and are not for the faint-hearted.
Over the years I’ve become more aware of how Nietzsche’s influence has manifest itself in my work and in my life. I had wanted to take this site’s domain name long ago, but I did not feel I could and yet I did not understand why. It is true that there is no such thing as a recognised Nietzschean Psychotherapy, indeed it’s questionable whether such a thing is even possible. Whilst this is an interesting question it doesn’t account for my reticence.
Anyone reading Nietzsche will feel incriminated in some way. It’s not possible to read Nietzsche and not at some point identify yourself as a decadent, a camel, a cabbage-head, a polyp, one of the herd, a sick soul, of being the “last man”, or indeed as suffering from ressentiment.
I’ve always imagined that if Nietzsche were to see me describing myself as a Nietzschean-anything, he’d say, ‘Well you’re clearly mistaken! You take my name in vain: slanderer! charlatan! (and possibly bravo!)’
This has shifted greatly, for many reasons, not least that I now have more generosity toward myself and Nietzsche. I now hear him whispering, ‘Now go, affirm life! Become light, joyful… dance, play, oppose gravity – go forth and become who you are!’ And with that, both he and this thought disappear.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzschean Psychotherapist 