Elisabeth Schilling: The Crisis of Narration

In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I sit down once again with Elisabeth Schilling to dive into Byung-Chul Han’s The Crisis of Narration. Our conversation winds through the healing power of stories, the hero’s journey, and how narrative shapes our sense of meaning and belonging. We reflect on Han’s critique of our data-driven age and explore what’s lost when narrative gives way to information overload.

Elisabeth shares insights from her work teaching world mythology and connects Han’s ideas to Joseph Campbell, Greek myths like Eros and Psyche, and even her own spiritual journey. Together, we wrestle with tensions between metanarratives and personal myths, the promise and pitfalls of therapy as a storytelling space, and whether Han’s nostalgia for communal narratives has a place in today’s fragmented world.

From Hallmark movies to Amanda Knox, from Jung’s notion of individuation to the dangers of thin stories, this episode asks what it really means to live in—and through—narrative.