Lost teenage boy - Nietschze?

[tostaky]

I know i probably spelt his name wrong!
DS15, middle child, under camhs for low mood, self harm (just for context so you know he is getting help) was telling me last night how lost he felt, no point in life, no goals, what is this all about?
he is super academic, all about stem subjects (and also on the pathway for ASD assessment, he can be very literal too).

i was wondering if Nietzchse might be a good read for him? I have not read any of his books though.
i was wondering if you wise people had any recommendations (nietzche) or otherwise.

when i was a teen and i went through a very short and not that intense phase of wondering about the purpose of life i read Cioran ( the trouble of being born). After a couple of pages of “nuggets” of “wisdom” i knew i was “that” desperate. I dont want to recommend this book to DS as i didn’t particularly like this form of text. Also DS being quite literral im a bit worried he might interpret some aphorisms wrongly/too literally.

would nietsche be ok and help him see the light, not be desperate about finding a purpose? Would and thus spoke Zarahoustea be a good choice?
Would you recommend another book, another author instead?
This request is in addition to all the help he receives, not instead of. Thank you

I was going to recommend Marcus Aurelius too.

I listen to a great deal of Schopenhauer on you tube. Not sure if suitable for adolescents though!

@Augustus40my main takeaway from Schopenhauer was that it would be better if we had never been born. Not a great mantra for a depressed teenager!

Hello again….
a little update about DS16, he is a bit better and as a result he was discharged from camhs.. He’s just started 6th form doing 4 a levels and he is very lonely….
Thanks to all your suggestions - this spring / summer he has read Camus (the stranger) and Sartre (nausea) and Borges (short stories recommended by his engl tutor). Most of it was read on a sunny rooftop somewhere sunny while we went to the beach with his brothers…
He was not interested by the Meditations from Marcus aurelius
the brother karamazov (wich i love) is too big a book and he didn’t get started.

i was thinking about the ideas of deceiving and surprising. If we think about adolescence as a moment when we work out our identity and perhaps, to gain a sense of agency, we are deceiving our parents, we are offering an alternative to what the family culture is expecting from us. But it has a cost. Here it is social isolation and loneliness. So I am interested in a book about the idea of “surprising” like a change happens and things become surprising, new opportunities, new directions, what was constructed in opposition before becomes obsolete and there is a drive for something new.
is there a book about this??

I do understand that literature will not make him better, but when i was a teenager books were a refuge in which, for a few hours, i could live a different life and if i could make him feel something different for a couple of hours through a story, that would be a great addition to the support he is getting. When i was a teenager, i did not have a phone, i lived next to a library. There is no way he will go to the library… but he reads most books i suggest. Thanks in advance

Ps: im ordering a catcher in the rye and the incident of the dog…
@cluborange666- we will try tbis if things get worse again

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - a new friend enters and changes the dynamic of a young girl set in 1950's Naples; encourages the reader to ask for more from life and delineates lifelong competition, added bonus of a girl crush?

I was wondering about Siddhartha by Herman Hesse?

Would you agree @StarlightRobot ? I loved it as a teenager but can’t quite remember the details.

I agree with you about the nihilistic things.

Another special book is The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula le Guin. (The book not the film which is poor and no reflection.)

Silas Marner by George Elliot.