A Far Cry from Berlin – Jung’s New Return

Part II – The Shadow That Berlin Cannot Bury

The Gaze of the Collective

(Kleine Mensche in Berlin, © 2011 Peter Jaakko Louhivuori)

When Rammstein released their Deutschland video in 2019, it was not merely seen as a musical performance. It functioned as a ritual, a collective act that unearthed the deeply buried shadows of German history. In the video, fragments of time converge. The battles of Roman legions, the darkness of concentration camps, the revolt of the Baader–Meinhof group, and the faces of contemporary surveillance society appear side by side. The work does not follow a linear narrative, but instead opens up the images of history into an affective sequence.

Jung (1942/1967) reminded us that a symbol is not a sign but a form for that which is not yet comprehensible. A symbol does not explain. It invites participation. This is precisely how Deutschland functions. As a cultic work, it does not ask to be analysed but to be endured. In James Hillman’s words (1975), this is the work of the soul, to dwell with images without the compulsion to resolve them. Rammstein’s imagery is at once brutally violent and poetically intense. Deutschland discloses the shadow of history, which cannot be contained within narrative but demands an experiential response.

At the same time, the piece addresses diagnoses in contemporary philosophy. A German sociologist and cultural theorist, Andreas Reckwitz (2017) describes late modern culture as one where the resonance of symbols has disappeared, replaced by the relentless performativity of identity. A South Korean-born philosopher and cultural theorist, Byung-Chul Han (2010; 2015), examines how the demand for digital transparency pushes the psyche away from depth towards efficiency and immediate responsiveness. Deutschland positions itself within these diagnoses. It does not interpret history, it endures it. In the Jungian sense, this is the very essence of the symbol. An inner resonance that resists words yet disturbs the present.

If Deutschland unveils the shadow, Berlin’s new landmark, the Humboldt Forum, seeks to conceal it. The reconstructed Baroque palace in the city’s centre mimics the past, yet its core is a patchwork of cost-efficient modern structures. As a symbol, it does not open but closes. From a Jungian perspective, this signifies the suppression of archetypal dynamics. Outwardly, the building conveys continuity. Psychologically, it narrates rupture.

A German cultural theorist, Aleida Assmann (2018), has explored cultural forms of remembrance, noting that in our era, memory has become a strategy rather than a genuine connection to the past. The Humboldt Forum exemplifies this shift. The techno fortress does not foster encounter but instead controls its representation. From a Jungian perspective, such governance of memory is never neutral. When symbolic depth is removed from public space, the psyche does not stop its activity. Instead, it retreats into shadow. The result is a symptom that manifests as a dissonance between aesthetics and meaning. The building appears to commemorate, yet it feels like a reminder of what has been forgotten.

Ecological Crisis and the Inner Ecosystem

Let us consider another perspective and how Jung remains strikingly relevant in 2025. Climate change is not only evident in news reports or statistical data. It is also felt in the way a city breathes. Berlin’s summers have shifted. The heat becomes oppressive, and shade no longer offers any relief. Before anything is visibly destroyed, some internal structure begins to break apart. A once familiar landscape begins to seem unfamiliar. This is a psychological fracture, a sign that the balance between self and world is weakening.

Jung did not impose a strict boundary between psyche and nature. They reflect each other. When the environment is harmed, inner stability is disrupted. Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann (1954) described the emergence of consciousness at the edge of chaos. The ongoing ecological chaos acts as a similar awakening. Hillman (1992) clearly reminded us that nature does not need a symbol. It is the symbol. Mountains, rivers, and forests are not merely representations of something else. They are psychic expressions. When they are destroyed, the psyche loses part of its language.

Environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht (2019) has introduced the term solastalgia to describe the grief of losing one’s home, not because the place vanishes, but because it feels alien. In Jungian terms, this indicates an imbalance in the inner ecosystem. The psyche refuses to be separate from nature. When the planet is harmed, therapy alone is not enough. What is needed is a landscape where a symbolic connection can be restored.

This does not entail a romanticised return to nature. It implies that psychic recovery is impossible without the symbolic renewal of the environment. Jung’s Red Book (2009) presents images that do not rise from the individual but from the earth itself. They flow through the anima mundi, passing into and out of the human being. From this perspective, the question is not how humanity saves nature, but how nature may yet save the human psyche.

Longing Without Dogma

In 2025, spiritual longing does not appear in churches filled with believers, but in restlessness, in dreams, in sudden moments of awareness. Jung (1938/1969) did not suggest dogma, but listening. The religious dimension, in his view, does not mean a system of doctrines but a movement of the soul. A sole experience that something greater than myself speaks within me.

Religious scholars Jeremy Carrette and Richard King (2005) describe how modern spirituality has been commodified as a means of attaining inner well-being. Such appropriation risks diminishing its original intensity. Philosopher Charles Taylor (2007), by contrast, shows that the modern individual continues to seek experiences where the ordinary and the sacred intertwine. German sociologist Hartmut Rosa (2019) speaks of resonance. The desire for a relationship with the world that is not one of control, but one of reciprocity. It is precisely within this context that Jung’s thought remains relevant. It does not propose ready-made solutions, but urges us to pay attention to what seeks to become visible when no current answer suffices.

Was Jung a Misogynist Pig?

The question of Jung’s contemporaneity is inevitably linked to his limitations. His conceptual language reflects patriarchal and Eurocentric frameworks (Rowland, 2002). Archetypes appear as universal, yet they simultaneously overlook cultural and embodied diversity (Singer & Kimbles, 2004). They fail to connect with queer experience or the realities of postcolonial communities (Samuels, 1993). This boundedness does not diminish his significance, but it reminds us that his thinking is always rooted within a specific context.

However, Jung’s value does not lie in being right but in raising questions. Post-Jungians, such as Hillman with his polytheistic psychology of the soul, Thomas Singer with his concept of cultural complexes, and Polly Young-Eisendrath with her intersubjective interpretations, have further advanced his ideas. They do not follow him slavishly. They challenge and reshape his thoughts. Yet, in doing so, they maintain his core question. How to listen to that which is yet beyond words.

Cultural theorists like bell hooks, Achille Mbembe, and Judith Butler expand this trajectory. They are not Jung’s followers, yet they remind us that the psychic cannot be separated from the social. They address the very concern Jung sought to explore. The inner language of experience that arises when official structures collapse. Jung does not survive as a method; he persists as an opening.

A City That Does Not Close

Berlin offered me no ready answers. It did not shape experience into a form that could be preserved unaltered. Instead, it provided a space in which to start anew. A city whose layers breathe both history and future opened Jung’s thought to me as echoes, not as doctrine. It was as though someone had spoken before me and then stayed to listen to what I might say next.

Such is the language that comprehends the movement of the psyche. It does not reach conclusions but places us on the threshold. In this threshold lies Jung’s relevance. His thinking aligns us with questions that cannot be answered. It allows for incompleteness.

Jung’s language may not be able to express everything, but his questions endure. How to build an inner world when the outer one fails? How to listen to what resists being articulated? How to agree to live within the question?

This concludes A Far Cry from Berlin – Jung’s New Return.

References for Part I and II

Albrecht, G. (2019). Earth emotions: New words for a new world. Cornell University Press.

Assmann, A. (2018). Der europäische Traum? Vier Lehren aus der Geschichte [The European dream? Four lessons from history]. C. H. Beck.

Carrette, J., & King, R. (2005). Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. Routledge.

Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press.

Han, B.-C. (2010). The burnout society (E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 2010 in German)

Han, B.-C. (2015). The transparency society (E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 2012 in German)

Han, B.-C. (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power (E. Butler, Trans.). Verso.

Harari, Y. N. (2016). Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. Random House.

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Hillman, J. (1992). The thought of the heart and the soul of the world. Spring Publications.

Jung, C. G. (1967). Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 6: Psychological types). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1942)

Jung, C. G. (1968). Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9, Part II: Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)

Jung, C. G. (1969). Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 11: Psychology and religion: West and East). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1938)

Jung, C. G. (1973). Collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8: The structure and dynamics of the psyche). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1960)

Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus (S. Shamdasani, Ed.; M. Kyburz, J. Peck, & S. Shamdasani, Trans.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Löwy, M. (2005). Fire alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history” (C. Turner, Trans.). Verso.

Neumann, E. (1954). The origins and history of consciousness (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press.

Reckwitz, A. (2017). Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten: Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne [The society of singularities: On the structural transformation of the modern world]. Suhrkamp.

Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance: A sociology of our relationship to the world (J. C. Wagner, Trans.). Polity Press.

Rowland, S. (2002). Jung: A feminist revision. Polity Press.

Samuels, A. (1993). The political psyche. Routledge.

Singer, T., & Kimbles, S. L. (Eds.). (2004). The cultural complex: Contemporary Jungian perspectives on psyche and society. Brunner-Routledge.

Solms, M. (2021). The hidden spring: A journey to the source of consciousness. W. W. Norton & Company.

Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking Press.