Tag: albert maysles

I think there is some­thing not right about [psy­chother­a­py]. It does­n’t do any good to any­one. I have a metaphor: If you illu­mi­nate your house with strong lights to the very last cor­ner, the house becomes unin­hab­it­able. And it’s the same thing if you try to illu­mi­nate a human being to the last crevices of his or her soul — these human beings become unin­hab­it­able. I do not want to deal with it. It’s a lit­tle bit like — of the same mag­ni­tude as — the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion. The Inqui­si­tion did­n’t do much good, and it was a sim­i­lar quest. It was a quest to search and to illu­mi­nate the last lit­tle cor­ner and crevice of your faith — scru­ti­niz­ing all the depth of your faith, whether you were with­in the doc­trine of faith or not. It did­n’t do much good. So I think psy­cho­analy­sis is a mis­take of the same mag­ni­tude.

Wern­er Her­zog, “Mad Bavar­i­an Duke: Wern­er Her­zog” STOPSMILING Issue 25

One very basic think that you learn as a psy­chol­o­gist is a respect for sci­ence, and always test­ing out what you think is a con­clu­sion. You nev­er come to a con­clu­sion until you have full evi­dence for it. When you’re mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary, it’s impor­tant you don’t come to a judg­ment on peo­ple, but you go through an open-mind­ed dis­cov­ery process. Peo­ple always say, “Are you objec­tive? Are you sub­jec­tive?” Those two extremes come togeth­er with empa­thy and love. It’s not cold sci­en­tif­ic report­ing, but there’s an objec­tiv­i­ty there. At the same time you’re deal­ing with human emo­tions that require that the cam­era per­son have heart-to-heart con­tact. I believe that’s pos­si­ble.

Albert Maysles, “Shoot­ing From the Heart: Albert Maysles” STOPSMILING Issue 25