The Jungian Guide to Cities

Some years ago I had an illuminating experience.

While sharing a meal, some friends and I discussed a television documentary we had all recently seen about the damming of theYangtze River's Three Gorges. The documentary outlined details of the massive project and the subsequent relocation of thousands of villagers who lived by the river’s banks.

As we spoke about the program, it became increasingly apparent that we had experienced, internalized and reacted to the same story in profoundly different ways.

One of us expressed a sudden urge to travel to China and journey through the Gorges before they ‘disappeared’. Another focused exclusively on the human dimension of the relocation, expressing great empathy for the hardships and upheaval that the river folk would no doubt endure. A third member of the group was intrigued by the engineering feat of the project and asked carefully worded questions about how the water levels were to be raised and the dam constructed.

These conversational tangents fascinated me, and made me wonder how three people of similar backgrounds could respond in such divergent ways to the same set of facts. I also wondered if our three individual and strongly pre-occupied responses to the documentary were illustrative of greater divergent individual ‘world views’, and if so, what shaped whether we might respond to something primarily in terms of its potential experience value; its emotional triggers, or its mental challenges.

The ‘Enneagram of personality', a psychological and spiritual tool which builds on the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, offers some interesting answer to my musings.

The word ‘Enneagram’ is Greek and means ‘nine lines’. The word refers to the tool’s key tenet that there are nine distinct human personality types and that each different personality type perceives and responds to the world in a distinct way.

Each of the nine types is labeled with an archetype that expresses its core worldview. For example, a #1 type, known as the ‘Reformer’, is by nature more intuitive than cerebral or emotional. The #1 focuses much of his or her attention on self-judgment, striving to achieve personal integrity, justice and balance. The #4 ‘The Romantic’, on the other hand, views the world through a heightened emotional prism. The #4 gains a sense of identity through self-expression, wears one’s heart on one’s sleeve and is essentially individualistic and introverted.

There is no hierarchy in the Enneagram’s numbering system and no particular number is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than the other. The classification system seems to genuinely cut across cultures and while we may be able to find a little bit of all nine of the types in our personality, the Ennegram asserts that each person’s basic personality type defines and dominates how one consciously and sub-consciously processes and relates to the world and to other people.

The Enneagram would explain the divergent tangents that emerged during the Three Gorges Dam conversation by observing that the person who wanted to see the dams before they disappeared was a #7 (‘The Enthusiast’, or the experience junkie of the nine types). The empathetic people-focused member of the conversation was perhaps a #2, or ‘Giver’. #2s are emotionally demonstrative types who are validated by their concern and care for others. The intellectually curious member of the group would most likely be a #5 or an ‘Observer’: someone who initially responds to information or stimulus by investigating facts and searching for patterns.

While not wanting to be doctrinaire, the notion that there may be different personality types has been consistently helpful to me, particularly when I encounter views that differ greatly from my own. The idea of varying personality types also helps to explain to me why most religious traditions include archetypes in their teachings (Think for example of the Seven Deadly Sins of Christianity, or the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism) .

Archetypes (like learning styles) address the reality that we are different in how we process and act on information. When it comes to how we live our lives, some of us predominantly are lead by our hearts, while others are more instinctual or intellectual.

As I travel, I sometimes like to think about whether cities project particular archetypal qualities. Is Paris the ultimate #4: expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed and temperamental? What about the cities featured in this blog?

Sydney seems to be greatly concerned with pleasure and acquisition, so by the Enneagram's reckoning it would be a #7: playful, hedonistic and outgoing, but also acquisitive, scattered and reluctant to address its own suffering.

Hong Kong seems to bear all the hallmarks of a #3 'The Achiever'. A city built by refugees, it is above all else, success-oriented and pragmatic. Hugely adaptable and unsentimental, Hong Kong, like the #3, is energetic, driven and image-conscious.

Berlin is an altogether different beast. In summer when the days are long and the city parties al fresco at its 'beach bars', it might be mistaken as a #7 (albeit one with political consciousness). But during the long winter months, Berlin's true nature is more evident. It is without doubt an introvert.

My guess is that Berlin is a #5. A centre of ideological warfare for much of its past, Berlin values its political acumen, its intellectual rigour, and its sense of irony. These are not qualities of the heart. Like #5s who can be lost too deeply in their own thoughts, Berlin can become detached, intense and nihilist. An island of the Free World and a capital of a Communist state, both halves of Berlin learned how to be independent and inventive, qualities distinctive of the #5.

Despite efforts to move it towards 'integration' (to use a word favoured by Jung), Berlin's two former parts continue to exist more as non-identical than Siamese twins. Its halves (indeed its neighbourhoods) like to feel removed and self-contained, and like a #5, the city fares best when its left alone to ponder.

Berlin's visible history

No other city in the world physically conveys the historical dramas of the 20th Century like Berlin.

Walking along a particular block in Wilhelm Strasse, one can visit where the Gestapo and SS Headquarters once stood; see the surviving Fascist bulk of Goering's Reich Aviation Ministry; pause at the place where Russian tanks crushed East Berlin's 1953 uprising, and view a section of the Berlin Wall in-situ.

While not all streets in Berlin can compete with the historical intensity of Wilhelm Strasse, the city has an extraordinary number of places that evoke the last century's defining events, ideologies and conflicts.

Some, like the Soviet architecture of Karl Marx Allee or the American sponsored House of World Cultures, are politically conceived and strikingly monumental. Others, like the apartment buildings that still bear scars of Communist neglect or bullet hole pock marks from World War II, are more quotidian, but equally affecting.

Such is the scale of Berlin's visible history, that many remarkable sites are virtually unvisited by tourists. A case in point is a villa in Karlshorst, a quiet suburban quarter in former East Berlin. Here, on 8 May, 1945, Wehrmacht commanders met with Soviet Marshall Zhukov to sign an unconditional surrender, and end the European War. Despite its profound historical importance and its free admission, the villa's museum was virtually empty the day I visited.

Visitor numbers also seem to be puzzlingly small at the House of the Wannsee Conference (where Heydrich, Eichmann and their hatchet men conceived the Final Solution) and at the Tiergarten's German Resistance Memorial Centre. The latter houses the offices of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (leader of the 1944 Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler), and commemorates people who offered resistance to the Nazis.

Dozens of seemingly unremarkable places in Berlin also yield incredible historical stories. When reading Stasiland, (Anna Funder's moving and brilliant history from below of those who resisted the German Democratic Republic's regime), I discovered that I lived just blocks from locations ennobled by courage and ingenuity.

Funder, for example, details how in 1963 a tunnel was dug beneath the cellar of an ordinary residential block in East Berlin. From the tunnel, 30 odd people planned to crawl under the Berlin Wall and escape into the West. Sadly, their tunnel was discovered by the Stasi and they were arrested and imprisoned. A shop now fronts the building under which the tunnel was started, and ironically, it sells plumbing pipes.

Sculptures by the Sea: Sydney at its best

A few nights ago, someone in Berlin asked me what I missed most about Sydney. After family and friends, I realised it was the sea.

More precisely, I think I love and miss Sydney's blues -its intensely bright skies, and its deep ocean shades.

The Sydney blues that I hold most firmly in my imagination are those you see while taking the cliff walk from Bondi to Bronte Beach.

Literally at the edge of the continent, this one hour coastal stroll captures all that is most seductive and marvelous about Pacific Sydney.

On summer days, the coast's negative ions and southerly breezes bestow a sense of profound well being. In autumn, the walk gives view to schools of wet-suited surfers who bob expectantly in the blue lull as they wait for offshore winds to return. In winter, when the less acute arcs of light soften the water's tones, a pod of whales might be spotted as you follow the bends of the coastline.

But it's in November, that this 2.5km stretch of coast is at its most wonderful. Then, its headlands, parks, beaches and foreshores are populated with sculptures from around the world

Sculptures by the Sea is an exhibition of more than a 100 works set against the blues of the Pacific. It's a free event that invites participation and interaction and its very public setting means that your laughter, sigh or puzzlement is quickly heard, and often echoed, by a stranger. As people volubly debate their favourite pieces, schoolchildren crawl amongst the legs of a giant metallic squid or rub their noses up to panes of coloured glass. Moved by art to create art, visitors take photos, sketch and commit images to mental memory.

A memory that I hold onto is of a blue glass sculpture that commanded a headland and refracted the coastal light. Its sensuous curves literally stopped people in their tracks. Struck by its wonder and pure loveliness, crowds of onlookers gathered around it to share a happy state of speechlessness.

Oktoberfest ... in Hong Kong

One of my favourite feelings of cultural disorientation involves sitting on a long bench with a group of friends, drinking a stein of Bavarian beer and listening to racy German folk songs. In Hong Kong.

For a few weeks every October and November, Hong Kong's Marco Polo Hotel hosts a large and wonderfully strange German beer festival. Held on a giant terrace, which - despite boasting one of the world's Great Views- usually operates as a carpark, the Marco Polo Bierfest is a marvellous cultural (con)fusion.

The festival assembles a carnival of food stands, a big tent in Bavarian blue and white, and a motley group of musicians. Catering to the cultural diversity and general silliness of the occasion, the band sings alpine ditties, a bit of Tina Turner and a television theme song in Mandarin. Anyone who remembers Smokie's 1970s song 'Living nextdoor to Alice' will be most amused by this band's version ('Alice? Alice? Who the *!#* is Alice?')

For me, the event's enormous pleasure comes from the evening's lack of predictable cultural scripts: one can use an Octopus (smart) card to purchase pork knuckles; engage in a horn blowing competition with Winnie from Kowloon, or if the mood takes you, dance on a trestle table while looking at Hong Kong harbour.

Christmas lights: a psychological necessity

As a lad from sunny Sydney, Christmas always coincided with mid summer's blue skies, mangos and birdsong.

But in the 4pm darkness of Berlin, Christmas is a time for dreaming and introspection.

Hibernating like this city's symbol, I find myself rising at 11.00am and breakfasting at midday. When not consciously engineering reasons to make contact with the increasingly rationed daylight, I often discover that night has fallen before I've left the house.

This state of solar preciousness makes me realise the true value of light inside and outside the winter home. When short days breed deep thoughts that echo the external darkness, candles can soften a room and the people inside it. Challenged by a chiascuro glow, dark ideas are tempered and contained.

Outside, street lights keep the urban peace.

I noticed when I returned to Berlin from Sydney this November that the easy going Berliners of the previous summer had turned irritable and impatient. Within a few days, I had too. Winter adds an effort to daily chores and it's difficult to exchange public courtesies when all you want to do is get indoors.

Like the candles in our homes, Berlin's Christmas street lights try to contain our gruff or sad nature. Yule-tide street lights are not just atmospheric seasonal symbols of good cheer, but a psychological and social necessity. Juice for the pineal gland, they're reminders that warmth and sunshine, leisure and courtesy, will reappear at the end of the winter tunnel.