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Sehnsucht (German pronunciation: [ˈzeːnˌzʊxt] ) is a German noun translated as "longing", "desire", "yearning", or "craving". Some psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.

Etymology and language change

A suffering reference of the word Sehnsucht in Middle High German usage is associated with "Siechtum" in the German dictionary as follows: Weakening the disease reference, the word later denoted the high "degree of a violent and often painful longing for something, especially when one has no hope of attaining what is desired, or when attainment is uncertain, still distant."

The word "Sehnsucht" is used as a Germanism in some other languages. Because of its vagueness, analogous terms cannot easily be cited. Portuguese language has the similar but not identical term saudade.

Sehnsucht in mythology

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In Greek mythology, the Erotes are the gods of loving Sehnsucht, found with Eros in the company of Aphrodite.

A common mythical explanation of the feeling of Sehnsucht is offered by Plato in his dialogue Symposium though the speech of Aristophanes, who presents a comic and unusual myth about spherical two-headed men. The myth was invented by Plato himself, but likely utilized mythical motifs which predate his work. Aristophanes, the famous comic playwright, gives a speech about Eros. According to the myth, humans originally had spherical bodies as well as four hands and feet and two heads. In their great arrogance, they tried to storm the sky and dwell amongst the gods. For this, Zeus punished them by cutting each of them in half, cleaving them into people with two arms, two legs, and just a single head. These halves are the people of today. However, these divinely divided humans suffer from their incompleteness; each one is looking for the lost other half from which they were split. The longing for the former wholeness is expressed erotic desire, which aims at union back into a two headed, four armed, and four legged state. The state of longing for the completeness of one's lost half, caused by the primordial division of the human beings by Zeus, can be characterized as Sehnsucht.

In psychology

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Psychologists have worked to capture the essence of Sehnsucht by identifying its six core characteristics:

1. utopian conceptions of ideal development;
2. sense of incompleteness and imperfection of life;
3. conjoint time focus on the past, present, and future;
4. ambivalent (bittersweet) emotions;
5. reflection and evaluation of one's life; and
6. symbolic richness.

In a cross-cultural study conducted to determine whether the German concept of Sehnsucht could be generalized to the United States, four samples of American and German participants “rated their 2 most important life longings and completed measures of subjective well-being and health.” German and American participants did not differ in their ability to identify life longings or the intensity of their Sehnsucht. However, German participants associated it more with unattainable, utopian states while Americans reported the concept as not as important to everyday life.

Some researchers posit that Sehnsucht has a developmental function that involves life management. By imagining overarching and possibly unachievable goals, individuals may be able to create direction in their life by developing more tangible goals, or “stepping stones” that will aid them on their path toward their ideal self. " important developmental functions, including giving directionality for life planning and helping to cope with loss and important, yet unattainable wishes by pursuing them in one's imagination." It can also operate as a self-regulatory mechanism.

However, in a study that attempted to discover whether Sehnsucht played an active role in one's ability to influence their own development, psychologists asked 81 participants to report “their most important personal goals and life longings, and these with respect to their cognitive, emotional, and action-related characteristics.” Results showed that goals were perceived as more closely linked to everyday actions, and as such more controllable. Sehnsucht, on the other hand, was reported as more related to the past and future, and therefore more emotionally and developmentally ambiguous.

Also, in a study conducted in 2009, 168 middle-aged childless women were asked to rate their wish for children according to intensity and attainability. If the women rated their wish as intense and long-standing, their wish was considered a life-longing. If they rated their wish as intense and attainable, it was simply a goal. “The pursuit of the wish for children as a life longing was positively related to well-being only when participants had high control over the experience of this life longing and when other self-regulation strategies (goal adjustment) failed.”

In popular culture

"Sehnsucht" is a poem by Friedrich Schiller that inspired composers like Franz Schubert and Siegfried Wagner. Goethe's "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" was set to music by multiple composers, including Ludwig van Beethoven.

Longing, specifically longing for some unknown joy, is a central idea in many of the books by C. S. Lewis, such as his autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955).

Richard Strauss composed a setting of Detlev von Liliencron's poem "Sehnsucht" in 1896 (Opus 32, number 2).

Sehnsucht appears in the title of two songs by Einstürzende Neubauten, Sehnsucht (1981), from Kollaps, and Sehnsucht - Zitternd (1985), from Halber Mensch.

Sehnsucht (1997) is the title of the second album, and title track of that album, by the German metal band Rammstein.

Sehnsucht (2009) is the title of an album by the German gothic metal band Lacrimosa.

In 2011, the film director Badran Roy Badran treated the concept of Sehnsucht in his feature film A Play Entitled Sehnsucht.

See also

• Hiraeth
• Mono no aware
• Peak experience
• Romanticism
• Saudade
• Wabi-sabi
• Weltschmerz

References

1. "LEO Results for "sehnsucht"".
2. Kotter-Grühn, D.; Wiest, M.; Zurek, P.; Scheibe, S. (2009). "What is it we are longing for? Psychological and demographic factors influencing the contents of Sehnsucht (life longings)". Journal of Research in Personality. 43 (3): 428–437. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2009.01.012.
3. Scheibe, S.; Freund, A. M.; Baltes, P. B. (2007). "Toward a developmental psychology of Sehnsucht (life longings): The optimal (utopian) life" (PDF). Developmental Psychology. 43 (3): 778–795. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.3.778. PMID 17484587. S2CID 15306026. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-03-08.
4. Scheibe, S.; Blanchard-Fields, F.; Wiest, M.; Freund, A. M. (2011). "Is longing only for Germans? A cross-cultural comparison of sehnsucht in Germany and the United States". Developmental Psychology. 47 (3): 603–618. doi:10.1037/a0021807. PMID 21219068.
5. Scheibe, S.; Freund, A. M. (2008). "Approaching Sehnsucht (life longings) from a life-span perspective: The role of personal utopias in development". Research in Human Development. 5 (2): 121–133. doi:10.1080/15427600802034868. S2CID 143657106.
6. Mayser, S.; Scheibe, S.; Riediger, M. (2008). "(Un)reachable? An empirical differentiation of goals and life longings". European Psychologist. 13: 126–140. doi:10.1027/1016-9040.13.2.126. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-FBCB-C.
7. Kotter-Grühn, D.; Scheibe, S.; Blanchard-Fields, F.; Baltes, P. B. (2009). "Developmental emergence and functionality of Sehnsucht (life longings): The sample case of involuntary childlessness in middle-aged women". Psychology and Aging. 24 (3): 634–644. doi:10.1037/a0016359. PMID 19739919.
8. "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" at LiederNet Archive
9. "A Play Entitled Sehnsucht". IMDb.
10. "Reviews written by Khourysara6". IMDb.

Bibliography

• Bruner, Kurt; Ware, Jim (2005), Finding God in the Land of Narnia, Tyndale House, ISBN 0-8423-8104-X

External links

• C. S. Lewis on Joy, Sehnsucht, Longing and True Myth
• Joy and Sehnsucht
• Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal
• An English description of the word by a German native speaker
• "Sehnsucht" song texts at The LiederNet Archive

Scores at the International Music Score Library Project

• Schubert:
  • Sehnsucht, D.52
  • Sehnsucht, D.123
  • Sehnsucht der Liebe, D.180
  • Sehnsucht, D.310
  • Sehnsucht, D.359
  • Sehnsucht, D.481
  • Sehnsucht, D.516
  • Sehnsucht, D.636
  • Sehnsucht, D.656
  • 4 Gesänge aus 'Wilhelm Meister', D.877
  • Sehnsucht, D.879
• Mozart: Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling, K.596
• Beethoven:
  • Sehnsucht, WoO 134
  • Sehnsucht, WoO 146
  • 3 Gesänge, Op.83
• Siegfried Wagner: Sehnsucht

v t e Emotions (list)
Emotions	Acceptance Admiration Adoration Aesthetic Affection Agitation Agony Amusement Anger Angst Anguish Annoyance Anticipation Anxiety Apathy Arousal Attraction Awe Belongingness Boredom Calmness Compassion Confidence Confusion Contempt Contentment Courage Cruelty Curiosity Defeat Depression Desire Disappointment Disgust Distrust Doubt Ecstasy Embarrassment vicarious Emotion work Empathy Emptiness Enthrallment Enthusiasm Envy Euphoria Excitement Faith Fear Flow Frustration Gratification Gratitude Greed Grief Guilt Happiness Joie de vivre Hatred Hiraeth Homesickness Hope Horror Hostility Humiliation Hygge Hysteria Ikigai (sense of purpose) Indulgence Infatuation Insecurity Inspiration Interest Irritation Isolation Jealousy Joy Kindness Loneliness Love limerence at first sight Lust Mono no aware Neglect Nostalgia Outrage Panic Passion Pity self-pity Pleasure Pride grandiosity hubris insult vanity Rage Regret Rejection Relief Remorse Resentment Revenge Sadness melancholy Saudade Schadenfreude Sehnsucht Sentimentality Shame Shock Shyness Social connection Sorrow Spite Stress chronic Suffering Surprise Sympathy Trust Wonder sense of wonder Worry
Worldviews	Cynicism Defeatism Fatalism Misanthropy Nihilism Optimism Pessimism Reclusion Weltschmerz
Related	Affect consciousness in education measures in psychology Affective computing forecasting neuroscience science spectrum Affectivity positive negative Appeal to emotion Amygdala hijack Emotion and art and memory and music and sex and sleep classification evolution expressed functional accounts group homeostatic in animals perception recognition in conversation regulation interpersonal work Emotional aperture bias blackmail competence conflict contagion detachment dysregulation eating exhaustion expression and gender intelligence and bullying Empathy quotient intimacy isolation lability labor lateralization literacy prosody reasoning responsivity security symbiosis thought method well-being Emotionality bounded Emotions and culture history in decision-making in the workplace in virtual communication moral self-conscious social social sharing sociology Feeling Group affective tone Interactions between the emotional and executive brain systems Jealousy in art Meta-emotion Pathognomy Pathos Social emotional development Stoic passions Theory affect appraisal constructed emotion discrete emotion somatic marker
Italics indicate emotion names in foreign languages

• Emotions
• German words and phrases
• Suffering
• Melancholia
• Words and phrases with no direct English translation
• Nostalgia