This is why I believe that psychoanalysis is one of the great mistakes of the 20th century.... I think it is not good if you illuminate all the dark recesses of the human soul. It’s good that we can forget and that we forget traumas. We do not have to unearth them and articulate them in endless sessions with a psychiatrist. And the 20th century is full of very, very deep mistakes. Psychoanalysis is only one. But because of all these monstrous mistakes of this century, I do believe that the 20th century in its entirety was a mistake....
I was also interested in his opinion of art museums:
No, I don’t go to museums. Museums as a threshold, it’s very hard for me to step over this threshold. Sometimes my wife manages to get me into a museum. I was, for example, at the Prado in Madrid, but I walked through it, I hastened through it, through the entire museum, not looking left and right, because I wanted to go to one single room with Goya’s black nightmare images. I only saw that.... It’s somebody who touches me, as one of the true artists that I know. There’s very few. I could name you only two or three, and that’s about it.... Matthias Grünewald... The Isenheim Altar. It’s something which is beyond belief.... Just knowing that there’s somebody out there who is the truest of true artists, somebody who touches me to my core. Same thing with Goya, the black nightmares touches me to the core.
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First he says " I think it is not good if you illuminate all the dark recesses of the human soul" and then he talks about "the black nightmares touches me to the core." as being great art.
Seems inconsistent to me.
This all sounds terribly introspective.
The more I read from this guy the more I like him. Also saw an interview with him a few months ago. Very interesting and brilliant man.
I happen to love Museums. I don't go there for the horrors of our dark recesses, but they do show up from time to time. He is definitely carrying some inner fears around with him.
Lastly, I would say that if he thinks the 20th century was a mistake (and Lord knows he may be right), I would tell him the 21st century is telling the 20th to "hold my beer". We're just getting going.
I think of "introspection" as self-reflection on what I've done wrong, to myself and others, in order to correct it; not bitching to someone else about all the wrongs done to me.
"Seems inconsistent to me."
Yes, but on the other hand, I think if you put them together and find out how that makes sense, you would arrive at a higher level.
In psychoanalytic sessions, the patient is not producing art and putting anything out there to touch other people. The patient is looking for all the answers inside himself and spending many hours speaking to one other person, who isn't touched deep in his soul but is some sort of doctor, purporting to do something he probably isn't really doing. It is 2 brooding humans, stewing in a room.
An artist isn't purporting to contain anything but only to express and to express with a tangible work product that is then sent out there into the world, where anyone can walk up and see it and perhaps be touched, if it happens to have the capacity to touch. Meanwhile the artist earns a living for plying his trade and goes on to make many objects, for good or ill, never seeing himself as a patient and never seeking treatment from an authority figure.
The freaky secret is a voyeuristic orientation.
Some people produce/create while others consume/observe. Each may be terrible when pushed to the opposite side.
Former Governor Rick Perry is pushing an initiative to promote treatment of PTSD and other afflictions with ibogaine and other psychedelics. These drugs use intense introspection as a direct mechanism for treatment. There are some reports of spectacular results with this.
So, sometimes, introspection can be a good thing?
I think the basis for psychoanalysis is wrong that humans are repressed (well we have seen where that goes)
No Guernica? Too pop? Ha- yes, Grünewald is a rock star. Thought I was the only fan…
I think if you put them together and find out how that makes sense, you would arrive at a higher level.
You are right but it could easily be he likes to pick scabs…
Mark Andreessen has been mocked recently on X for expressing this same sentiment. You know which group of people are very introspective? Cannabis smokers.
There is a great clip of him talking about which languages he can speak. He avers that he can understand French, but refuses to speak it. Though he was once held hostage by 13 year old Africans pointing AK47s at his head, and in that instance he spoke French. He quickly added "but I regret it".
Hey, that navel won't gaze at itself.
Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery claims to have teleported to a Waffle House that is now out in the open, thanks to a new report.
"I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was. And they said, 'Where are you?' and I said, 'A Waffle House.' And 'a Waffle House where?' And I said, 'Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.' And they said, 'That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.' But it was possible. It was real."
Our world would be a lesser place without Herr Herzog.
Ann Althouse said...
"Seems inconsistent to me."
Yes, but on the other hand, I think if you put them together and find out how that makes sense, you would arrive at a higher level.
But you can also get stuck in recursion. Hence the need (sic) for psychiatrists.
Herzog must be fun at parties.
"This is why I believe that psychoanalysis is one of the great mistakes of the 20th century."
When the establishment gets something wrong they just sweep it under the rug and don't talk about it. Fellow-traveling in the 30s, Going to the USSR in the 20s and saying "Ive seen the future and it works". Talking about what a great guy "Uncle Joe" was in the 40s.
And of course, Freud and Pyschoanalysis. John Huston actually made a move about what a great scientific genius Freud was in the early 60s. But Huston was also a commie fellow traveler in the 40s.
The most interesting man in the world
I agree its better to let things go. WW II was 80 years ago, time to live in the 21st century.
I share Herzog's distrust of psychoanalysis and therapy. Similarly, whenever I hear someone say they have intergenerational trauma I always assume the bulk of that problem is caused by the parents or adults in that child's life who intentionally or negligently passed on that trauma. Bad things happen in everyone's life, and it can be okay to mull them over and talk about them. That doesn't mean that mulling them over or talking about them is always the best thing to do.
"...endless sessions with a psychiatrist."
When they're automated away they'll have AI's shoulder to cry on.
When you stare into the navel, the navel stares into you.
Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the buried treasure of victimhood.
Intelligent people I respect have often praised therapy, but I just don't get it. I know what my own problems are, and I even know how to fix them. I just don't choose to make the effort or sacrifice, or I fail. How is someone going to help me with that by talking. I'm not even sure I want my issues fixed. If I really did, I guess I would.
Does he like hot sauce?
The examined life is not worth living
There's a difference between introspection and rumination. While therapy should encourage the former, I think too many people tend toward the latter. Instead of moving on from the trauma, they keep dwelling on it and the trauma becomes their identity.
"When you stare into the navel, the navel stares into you."
I say this to Sydney Sweeney all the time.
About her breasts.
I am Laslo.
Werner Herzog is not your average Joe.
Guernica is in a different museum.
The dark Goya room is really something. I think he should have detoured on his way there to check out the Hieronymus Bosch room. Seems like that would be right up his alley.
YouTube : ”Where you don’t want to look is where your healing is” I hated this scene the first time I saw this movie. Now, years later I understand it better.
Maybe there was a good reason why the little penguin intrigued Herzog so much. Nihilist penguin
I'm paraphrasing Gracian, but he wrote, "Forgetting your problems is a good solution, but we forget the solution."
As with travel, you have to live with art to get the full experience. Not that you have to own the picture or sculpture, but you have to spend time with it and keep coming back to it. You can compare pictures to see how they work and how effects are achieved, but one rushed visit to see everything in a museum doesn't give you much. Special exhibitions can give you a good overview of an artist's work though.
If you're "brooding" all the time in psycho therapy, you and your therapist are doing it wrong.
One of the memes or cliches of the psychoanalytic era was the artist who submits to psychoanalysis, works out his problems, and loses his inner demons and creativity. Even the proponents of psychoanalysis realized that there was a downside.
The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory. -- Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus also famously said, "Psychoanalysis is the disease it purports to cure." There is something in that, but nervous introspection was around before Freud and waiting for something to do.
As Oswald Spengler pointed out, "the idle animal sleeps, the idle man broods." I think we were at a Waffle House in Georgia and the 'shrooms were really starting to kick in.
A penguin walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "What can I do for you?"
The penguin says, "Have you seen my brother in here today?"
The bartender says, "What does he look like?"
The thing about trauma is that it bends and warps your thinking, PSTD does this too, but trauma inflicted on the very young does this especially, forming how they view and interpret events, and even were you somehow able to forget whatever happened that traumatized you, your bent and warped thinking would remain without attention to it.
“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization, it was the greatest before there was any civilization; the development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions.” Freud
I suppose that billy clubs, jails, and the liberal use of the noose, where human desires that conflicted with the peace escaped repression, accomplished similar ends for society as therapy, and it was all so simple then, wasn't it, and his attitude reminds me a little of "Let them eat cake."
Mark Andreessen has been mocked recently on X
He summarizes, or Claude does, Nietzsche on the subject of introspection. I found it very interesting because it echoed many of my own views. A worthy follow on to Ann's earlier post about the nature of consciousness.
Back in the early 90's The Harvard Film Archive had a Werner Herzog retrospective for a semester or so. I saw his dada-odd first feature Even Dwarves Started Small, and a lot of his early short films which I recommend.
One of Herzog's movies, Stroszek, is bleak and nihilist and must-see for the cinephile. It stars this homeless mental case Herzog pulled off the street, Bruno S, who plays a lonely loser living in Berlin who makes a few kopeks a day playing the glockenspiel on the sidewalk. His best friends are an old eccentric bum, and a hooker. The hooker runs afoul of her pimp who is going to kill her, so Bruno takes all his money and buys the 3 of them plane tickets to the USA! Of course their idea of America is palm trees and movie stars, but they end up in Wisconsin in the middle of winter. I won't describe the miseries that followed, but the trio does not survive Wisconsin.
At the end of the retrospective, Herzog himself showed up and gave a great speech, very engaging and interesting and full of stories and famous characters. He told a lot of Klaus Kinski stories and how Kinski made Bruno S seem sane. And he talked about shooting Stroszek in Wisconsin that winter. The same crew that had been with him from humble filmmaking beginnings, through necessary deprivations and sacrifices, that had endured near-starvation, isolation, danger and near-death experiences in the Amazon, every single actor, crew member and person involved said that the shoot in Wisconsin was the worst experience they'd ever had. Herzog said that Bruno S would go into rages throughout the day and attack Herzog throttling and hitting him, screaming and begging to be sent back to the homeless streets of Berlin. Some scenes in Stroszek were shot in a truck stop in Madison, according to wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroszek
When I was around 40, I came out of the shower and spotted a plastic soap dish sitting on the bathroom sink. In a millisecond, I flashed on a memory from when I was in my fourth year. Standing by the sink, I spotted an old Gillette blue blade sitting on the sink. I picked it up and reached for the soap dish attached to the wall over the faucets. I put the blade, unknowingly, in a bar of soap. My father subsequently washed his hands. Blood everywhere. Screaming mother no one beat me. My father never, but once laid a hand on me much later in life.
That trauma had immediate and far reaching effects on my personality, which I will not catalog here. There is much that is shameful and very painful. One lucky thing was that I was not a victim. I was the one responsible for my own trauma.
klaus kinski was he ever sane?
Herzog said of Kinski: He had hundreds of roles, was in hundreds of movies, because no director could stand him for more than a day or two, so he would get fired then move on to the next job.
I believe that
Now that Chuck Norris (pbuh) has left us, Werner Herzog must take up the mantle of superhuman memes.
Werner Herzog never gets depressed. He elevates the world around him.
Werner Herzog once had an irrational thought. The thought apologized to him.
Werner Herzog, given the choice to reign in hell or serve in heaven, said "why choose? Lead the demonic army to take over heaven."
Werner Herzog wanted to make a horror movie, but he couldn't think of anything that scared him.
My best shots on short notice. CC, JSM
Creepy dolls are afraid of Werner Herzog. CC, JSM
when Sam rescues Frodo from the Orcs..
Frodo is telling him about the torture he endued..
And Frodo says:
"..thought i would go mad.. I'll never forget their claws and eyes."
And Sam replies: "You Won't, if you talk about them, Mr Frodo"
So they left the tower.. and saved Middle Earth.
But We're told, that you HAVE TO dwell on the torture,
and Not only never forget it.. but Never Stop reliving it.
His performance as The Zec in Jack Reacher was completely riveting.
- Krumhorn
I saw a doc where Klaus Kinski wanted to kill Werner Herzog, and Werner Herzog wanted to kill Klaus Kinski, and they both had plans for how they were going to do it. Both of them were jungle crazy. And Klaus was waving a gun around crazy, while Werner was quiet crazy. Extrovert crazy and introvert crazy.
Herzog made a documentary about his experiences with Klaus. My Best Fiend.
Nice clip on Conan.
About Bruno S.
I remember some people discussing Bruno Ganz, and I said "He's an idiot." They objected, and I said, "No, isn't he literally an idiot?" They straightened me out.
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