Psychoanalysis, Werner Herzog, and Björk

december 29 2025

the following was an article I wrote a year ago for a student journal. It was rejected, but looking back at it now, I think it's worth posting here.

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The famous wisdom of the eclectic filmmaker Werner Herzog supposedly knows no limits. He has spoken on the cruel indifference of nature (Grizzly Man), the absurdities of human civilization (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser), nihilist tendencies in penguins (Encounters at the End of the World), methods for pulling boats over Amazon mountains (Burden of Dreams), and so on. In his 2022 memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Herzog makes his case on psychoanalysis:

“I’d rather die than go to an analyst, because it’s my view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become ‘uninhabitable.’ I am convinced that it’s psychoanalysis—along with quite a few other mistakes—that has made the twentieth century so terrible.”

It's shocking that there exists something Herzog refuses to explore; the same Herzog who, mid interview, remained unbothered after being shot in the stomach, could not bear seeing a psychoanalyst (Skronk123). His discomfort by a harshly lit house also seems trivial in comparison to his fascination with fire, like that of oil fires in Lessons of Darkness, and of volcanoes in Into the Inferno. In his second documentary on volcanoes, The Fire Within, Herzog admires the volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft for risking their lives to create footage of eruptions. Then, what scares someone so supposedly fearless from lighting too harshly at his soul?

According to the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, the capacity for introspection begins from the mirror stage, when a child identifies with their mirror reflection for the first time. However, the child’s split between their interior and exterior causes a pervading sense of alienation throughout their life (Lacan 76). Lacan attributes this alienation to the aggressiveness that manifests when a person struggles to identify with another. For instance, a subject of psychoanalysis often becomes frustrated with their analyst when they do not respond to them according to their expectations (Lacan 84). Yet, this imperfect self-image is a progression from the absence of one in earlier life, when babies can barely coordinate their own bodies (Lacan 92). Despite the aggression perpetuated by the mirror stage, the development of a child’s capacity for introspection is essential. Herzog’s soul may become irritable under harsh light but hiding it in the shadows risks stunting its growth.

The aggression involved in growth is sublimely expressed by Icelandic popstar Björk in her song "Pluto." Harsh, electronic noise plays to Björk’s screams as she undergoes a violent transformation. She will “just have to explode / explode this body” off her, and she will be “brand new tomorrow / a little bit tired / but brand new.” Björk sheds her old body, externalizing it in favor of a new interiority. Introspection is a similar act of externalization; one makes themselves an object for their own judgement. Echoes of "Pluto" are heard in Lacan when he describes the objectification of self as “mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, and bursting open of the body” (85). However, in this moment is the potential to subjectify oneself once again; to do out with the old and in with the new. Herzog’s harshly lit house is certainly a fire hazard, but there is potential to be made of its ashes.

Growth demands active rejection and separation from one form to another. Passivity risks absorption into one’s exterior, where individuality is lost and where babies cannot coordinate themselves to do anything else but babble and cry. Lacan’s mirror stage is the empowerment of one to introspect and transform, on the condition of a will to risk lighting up the soul. Though having explored as far as the jungles of Peru to the frozen ends of Antarctica, Werner Herzog seems to fear that which is closest to him, living in the dark in his own home. To put the process of growth into the eloquent words of poet Dylan Thomas: “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Works Cited