Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke

The Russian-born psychoanalyst Lou Salome (1861-1937) became famous for her exceptional ability to accompany great philosophers, writers, and poets, explore their deepest feelings, and share in their immersion into the meanings of their life tests, especially romantic emotional ones. Among her closest friends were Nietzsche, Freud, the Austrian poet Rilke (1875-1926), and the German physicist philosopher Paul Rée (1849-1901). She was born in the city of Petersburg into a family originally from northern Germany, connected to the French Protestant Huguenots. She was the only daughter after five brothers. Due to her strict Protestant religious upbringing, the liberated daughter rebelled against her austere guardian chosen by her father to provide her with the necessary religious culture, and she left the church’s embrace, although she remained faithful to the inner spiritual test that she began to nurture through active intellectual pursuit in the fields of philosophy, literature, religion, and psychology.