Werner Herzog on Psychoanalysts: "They are a disease of our time" 

Here's the full documentary that the first clip is from: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Eny16tyOiFc.htmlsi=gw9O2jKAPaq2MO99 More Herzog videos here: ru-vid.com/group/PLizFH7ZFCtglpsC6hoBMd6ZBrUaLrMTB3&si=P7Q8l4Y9FlTwutk0

Now I really want to see a Werner Herzog movie about a bunch of psychoanalysts stuck on a desert island.

Every time I hear Herzog's voice I am reminded of the depressed penguin walking quite deliberately into the vast Antarctic interior and certain death.

"Your own self realisation is the greatest service you can render the world." - George Bernard Shaw

I work with a therapist who specialises in psychoanalysis. It has helped me immensely in healing unhelpful neurotic traits. Having illumination on semi-subconscious mental patterns, dark corners of the soul is essential to process trauma and correct beliefs from formative years in early life. What people get wrong about this is that, this is not a fix, there is no fix. These things are not meant to be fixed, they're meant to be processed, understood, reframed into a new narrative and developing peace and acceptance towards it. Maturity comes from an evolution of our thinking and that could come from psychoanalitic conversations too, and so it could come from many other types of conversation, but the dialogue with ourselves and another person is the key.

I am a psychoanalyst and I do believe its rise is indicative of a broken society. I constantly question its efficacy and sociological ascent. There are a lot of therapists out there and a lot of them are very disturbed. However, like politicians, there are a few good one's too. And yes, I am a big fan of Werner Herzog's work.

You don't want to illuminate your whole house but it's not a bad idea to turn the lights on every now and then in case you're constantly tripping over the crap you've left scattered about.

the point of psychology is not to illuminate every dark corner of the house. It's about living in the house with some degree of freedom and comfort and not to be stuck in the same room. it's not really kind, if you are already living comfortably in your house, to scoff at people trying to live comfortably in theirs.

That psychoanalysts on a plane to a stranded island line sounds like an interesting movie idea, he should have done a ‘Lord Of The Flies’, but with psychoanalysts. Call it ‘Lord Of The Minds’ or smth like that.

Something his analogy is missing is the questioning of whether what is being "illuminated" is actually there. Probably the main problem with psychology and psychoanalysis is that they reveal at least as many falsehoods as facts. So it's not so similar to illuminating a house, but rather projecting images on the wall of a darkened house and expecting those images to match what is there when you turn the lights on.

His analogy seems to imply Psychoanalysis is an attempt to cleanse/remove the darkness of the house/human psyche, but, as far as I know, the aim isn't to abolish the darkness, but to understand and ultimately integrate it into your psyche/house. This understanding helps prevent you from being blind sided by an aspect of your personality you're unfamiliar with.

I started noticing people talking about therapy the same way people would talk about finding Jesus. Recommending it to everyone, etc. Not even saying it's a bad thing, just an observation.

i love WH and as a psychoanalytic therapist i find his POV as always very interesting. while it seems to me that people can benefit from analysis it's also crucial to treat the individual with great respect and some analysts are far too confident about their own capacities for insight. however i'm not sure that WH has understood that people go to analysts for help because they are suffering, not merely to illuminate corners of their psyche, and illumination is only required in as far as it might help to relieve that suffering and make the houses of their psyches more, not less inhabitable. i imagine that WH may have always found his own psychic house a pretty good place to be, sadly not the case for everybody. but in terms of his work, yes, it is absolutely vital that there are psychology-free spaces and he has provided us with many wonderful examples of these. WH, we love you even if you hate us :)

If you talk with 10 psychoanalysts they will tell you 10 different things.

Psychology and psychoanalysis are very different things.

It does not matter how one confronts their own delusions, fear, and chaos (psychoanalysis, etc)... That they choose to do so - regardless of the form they take - is the most important point... Psychoanalysis is one way to confront and challenge these things... It is not wise to discredit a process whereby these things can be dealt with...

One has to ask: what is the story behind that conviction?

Favorite line from THE DEPARTED: "they say the Irish are immune to psychoanalysis"

The man who made me truly fall in love with cinema. A master of indipendent thinking and working.

I had a wonderful pschoannalyst that started my journey to healing my brain from severe damage. But he did not make me think anything except to question everything. Thank you sir from UNCG Student phyciatric support for students. I am sorry but i forget his name. He knows who he is if still alive.

this was 1982. i think it has become much better, backed up with more sience and studies. Psychotherapy helped me a lot.

I've always felt the same way, despite my father being a psychiatrist. 150 years from now people will look back at this practice and feel the same way we now feel about bloodletting and miasma theory. If therapy 'works', it is because people appreciate being heard, feeling understood, and the placebo effect. But it usually doesn't work at all, or it leads to people becoming convinced their innocent parents or spouse are the source of all their troubles

Remember, at the time he's initially speaking, Freudian psychoanalysis was the order of the day. It could be pretty harmful, actually.

Nailed it. Therapy became theologized

Psychotherapy has always been an intrinsic part of every authentic religious tradition. The problem with modern psychology is that it focuses on our darkest parts and cuts off any connection to what is above us. It horizontalizes the human psyche, when the vertical dimension is in fact essential for true psychological health.

The good thing about psychoanalysis is that it's for the people that find ir interesting. If you don't you can just ignore it. I find it fascinating and it helps me think about things in a much more interesting way than the other schools of thought today that wish to just reduce human beings to dopamine or animal behaviouralism.

i could not agree more. struggling as i do with mental health problems (itself a gaslighting term), i have dealt extensively with the psychiatric community. most of them have no talent for it. to begin with, they have never experienced anything even close to the conditions they claim to know about. everything they know is learnt (often lazily) from books. secondly, their whole purpose is to help the afflicted to regain fitness to enter the workforce. this means that they are virtually incapable of acknowledging that modern existence might have something to do with all the sufffering. thirdly, they have a child's understanding of the nature of trauma. i'll prove it to you: "abuse of any kind will not be tollerrated". this is the standard line for all NHS mental health organisations. anyone who knows anything at all about trauma understands only too well that fear creates anger and violence. think of an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life. this is the perpetual state of someone who is traumatised. they either lash out, or they completely give up hope. they may also fawn or freeze, but for the purposes of this argument let's focus on the violence. by failing to recognise anger and violence as a consequence of trauma, the psychiatric community essentially blames the sufferer for their own condition. i have seen this in a number of friends. they end up being diagnosed with conditions that make the anger the focus of attention. it means their trauma goes not only unrecognised, but untreated. needless to say, total idiocy. the only psychiatrists worth a tuppeny fuck are the ones who decry their own industry.

I believe what Werner Herzog rejects it’s the obsession with the self in psychoanalysis and how that alienates the individual into only thinking about itself …

I hate the way other people are armchair psychologists saying this person has trauma,that person is a narcissist etc.

Interesting analogy at the end about the undesirability of living in a fully illuminated house. It does appear that darkness and shadow are just as important in sculpting one’s interior space. Thanks for posting.

I could not agree more with Werner's opinion

I've talked to 4 different psychologists and one online program dealing with behavior mostly dealing with depression. The therapists were largely just someone to talk to with few if any insights or suggestions. The online program dealing with biofeedback, meditation, and behavior was better, but still so so. Reading on my issues and staying busy were far more effective. Therapy is a never ending circle jerk for not all perhaps, but many or most.

Most psychologists or counsellors ive known have the most messed up personal lives

Best case scenario: you're down 50 minutes, $120 and mad at your mother.

To stay on the illuminated house metaphor: your unconscious will always revert back to the chaotic darkness. But for people who have a non functional house you have to illuminate briefly where the house is breaking down, fix it, then leave it to the darkness again

All the "experts" have made things sooo much better

Man is the most thoroughly studied species on the planet, not for the benefit of all mankind but for personal gain of a select few.

I one time saw three therapists at once. Told them the same exact things. All 3 said 3 different things to me to do or cope. I stopped seeing them. Then I found one who believed in Jung and Campbell and The Heroes Journey of rebirth. I stick with him. Changed my life.

The last few lines of this clip clarify the whole meaning. It's not so much that the field of psychology or the practice of psychoanalysis are inadequate in their ability to reveal truth, it's that humans require some amount of mystery and ambiguity to function at all. This is clearly debatable, but seems pretty obvious to me. I don't think anyone actually wants to know the full picture. Which probably isn't on the menu anyway.

I agree 1000% I lost a beautiful wife to this disease 😅 she watched it on youtube all day, then retold it to me when i got home back from work… it all accumulated to the point i went to work to rest from her…

Tom Cruise was basically called a madman for saying the same thing on Oprah 20 years ago

Psychoanalysis does not necessarily equate therapy. Psychoanalysis is just a form of therapy, and agreed with some of Herzog’s points. I like giving clients more of space to forge their path while learning things about the brain, behaviors, etc.

I find it quite shocking that a man as old and experienced as him just dismisses an entire field of theory and study which has been a foundation and immensely helpful for almost all mental health and trauma healing treatments we have available today. He acts like psychologists are predators who prey on clueless victims, but to many people they are the light at the end of the tunnel which directs them towards a new and healthy way of life. In a time where there are so many distractions and people barely find time to reflect on themselves, advocating against self-illumination seems the more dangerous thing to do. Maybe he's just scared to face his own demons.

Me after my therapist diagnosed me with 10 disorders :

The man in the rocket said I should come 🤷🏼‍♂️

He contradicts himself. Argument one against psychoanalysis is that it's ignorant and overestimates its abilities. Argument two is that it's abilities are too potent and threaten to make the human soul uninhabitable through over-illumnation. These are mutually contradictory arguments.

I agree with what Tony Sopranos mother said about psychiatrists

His rejection of psychoanalysis is clearly based on a difficult relationship with his father.

He's wrong about one thing. It's not that psychoanalysts or psychologists want to analyse people, it's that people desperately want a solution for problems that can't be remedied with a pill or surgery.

Everynow and then I see those obscure artists and their takes on society and their alienation from its dogma, I feel these are the only ones that could really say it as it is!

There is a movie called "12 monkeys" wherein a time traveler gets institutionalized by psychiatrists. One of the Drs therein admits that they are the equivalent of a new priest class.

Based af. I just disagree with being dangerous, its not, its just useless.

I love the metaphor about the house. I might steal that

One important thing I learned from therapy (something I will never do again) is that people can only handle so much negative emotion at once. When you start to dig up every traumatic thing that’s ever happened to you, it’s impossible to handle and it sends you down the path of a mental breakdown. I would never recommend therapy to anybody and I believe it to be incredibly dangerous for people’s mental health.

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY BETTERHELP!

It’s clear Mr Herzog’s refused in his own analysis to work through and engage with the negative transference and his repressed rage against his own father. The Oedipal drama is so utterly unresolved!

My husband's therapist recommended him a book that opened with an interesting statistic: "95% of therapy doesn't work." Looking at all my friends in therapy, all of whom are getting fatter and more addicted to pornography and video games (neither of which are inherently bad things, my brother and I have made both professionally), I can't reasonably argue against the statistic. From what I can tell, most people simply use therapists as a subscription-service-vent-friend, and then proceed to be more and more impulsive. It really sucks.

Ayyee, you're monetized bro? Wel, i may just have to watch ALL your Content now , could be enough for a coffee XD Thanks again and again, for all of it !

What a man. What a talent

Thank goodness that these methods are being criticised.They are useless ! And a lot of therapists do more harm than anything good!! Including psychologists.

The Bear Man is one of the most poetic and brilliant documentaries about the human soul. There, Herzog acutely analyzes the protagonist's motivations, from a perspective that is very close to psychoanalysis.

Where is the full interview?

Carl Jung sees it completely opposite. I personally agree with Carl Jung.

Reminder that Wener was born in the 1940s. The psychology of his early adulthood largely consisted of a series of theories that are now largely included in an intro to psych class purely for historical interest and not because they're taken seriously anymore. The now soft science of psychology was arguably straight-up pseudo science when he was forming these opinions.

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.” ― Carl Gustav Jung. (Yip, I can see some conflict here, some strong defence functions expressed here).

Not just Psychoanalysis , I am suspicious of Therapists as well.

I've never understood Herzog's abject rejection of psychoanalysis, except to read as a symptom of his own ongoing analysis. It's like a painter deciding to arbitrarily negate the color yellow from his/her palette. You might not like yellow, but if you mix it with blue you get green. So it has potential. As a film director, and as an advocate of lock-picking and document forgery, I would have expected Werner to be more open on this front.

There are obvious reasons why Herzog wouldn’t want to be psychoanalized.

"...what upsets us about other people, reveals more about aspects of ourselves" (Carl Jung)... The work of W.Herzog entertained me, the work of C.G.Jung enlightened me. So...whatever, Mr. Herzog!

The problem he describes reaches far deeper than only Psychoanalysis. His critique should aim at the whole "Enlightenment" project , of which Psychoanalysis - at least in its more Freudian branch - is but a more recent branch. He is tapping into one of the core issues of the "Modern Era" itself. His metaphor of the uninhabitable house in this perspective is merely more than the Romantics critique of the Enlightenment Movement and therefore comes with both, the plausibility and truth as well as the pitfalls already worked out in that discourse.

I mean he’s absolutely right, speaking as someone who has gone through a decade of therapy. The goal of a therapist is to make sure you conform to the norm and don’t upset the apple cart. It’s sad that in our world it’s much more convenient to “fix” broken people instead of fixing the world that broke them in the first place. If every broken person was ironed out and fixed, there would be no interesting people in the world, no “characters”.

He's said that he doesn't like them but he hasn't really explained why.

"My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but most people just call me Giorgio."

Isn't it a zen principle to shine light on the dark continent within us? Love his work but I disagree. Interesting perspective though I guess

I think he's right. More mental illness than ever rn, and more "therapy" than ever.

Therapist told me I'm bothered, crying for help. The rapist told me don't bother crying for help.

Never talk to a therapist never read the RU-vid comments .

I was thinking this would be some rationalistic twaddle, but I find it wiser than I anticipated. I think this sentiment may genuinely help me.

Herzog is the most germanic man since Arminius.

As a Psychologist, I agree 100%

I am sure they have not seriously read classic psychoanalytic bibliography. Also, there are a lot of anti heroes that have no counter proposals. The typical person resists to the teeth at a certain point in the psychoanalytic cure, and this is where people stop sometimes their analysis. You have to live the experience to believe it, empirically see the results on your way of being and the come the behaviours that were before impasses and full of anxiety. I salute you from México.

This is a dangerous message for chronically ill psichopaths and narcissists

Wir schicken sie alle nach Madagaskar! ;)

From what he says, it is evident that Herzog has never read a book on psychoanalysis in his life

The assertion, that "Psychonanalysis tries to illuminate every corner of the house" is very misleading, and in fact omitting one of the greatest insights of psychonanalysis: That the house has corners, that can never be illuminated and these corners will affect you, even if you are not aware of it. To be more concrete: The unconscious will be there, whether you try to illuminate it or not. Or as Freud put it: "The ego is not master in its own house." And I for one think, it's far more helpful to at least try to figure out what has an effect on my behavior, than ignoring these forces.

He was before his time. Psychoanalysis has largely been discarded at this point. A few still let themselves be fooled by it by several sessions a week for years to decades.

Herzog, the lack of exploration of intentions and motivations of characters in some of your movies is what makes them bland and one-dimensional; psychoanalysis could do you some good, perhaps.

I fail to see the point of his argument. “It’s bad to illuminate the corners of the human mind, because if the corners of a house were illuminated the house would be inhabitable.” It makes no sense to me. I think the corners of the human mind should be looked at because it gives us a better understanding of the origins of evil and malevolence and in turn a heightened recognition of that same darkness that is in us all.

Thank you for saying the simple truth

Anyone asking themselves how Elon ended up watching this video?

Based

My Hero, Werner Herzog! This makes having sat through Aguirre a worthwhile sacrifice. It’s no coincidence that “therapist” can be parsed as “the” “rapist”. Analysists are mind and soul rapists.

Need therapy? Just talk to a caring friend.

I don't think therapy is quite as bad as he says, but I do worry that its increasing prevalence is damaging our society. People seem to get more and more emotionally distant from each other, and more infantilizing in their view of themselves, as they outsource the task of handling emotions to therapists. It simultaneously absolves you of responsibility for your own life, because a therapist will always support you, and, perhaps worse, it absolves you from the responsibility to treat others with decency because that's a therapist's job, not yours.

What is the context? What was the interview all about?

the difference is most psychological people are not actually pychologists

Hmmm, interesting that Herzog totally objects to psychoanalysis, believing that "if you light up the soul, shadows and darkness and all, then people will become ‘uninhabitable'." And yet Carl Jung advised, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Psychos analysis

One can also hide things in that darkness that they do not wish to see. Sweep it under the rug, as it were.

Calling psychologists a desease is just unfair. He seems to be angry about them because of whatever reason. His arguments lack of facts.