Things have never been better here in Germany, we are told. And yet the German nation still can’t seem to get up off the collective couch (the psychiatrist’s kind).

This guy has an interesting take on Germany’s latest “season of angst” or why a prosperous nation has this obsessive need to turn on itself (and those around it).

His bewilderment is uncalled for however, I find. I can only wonder why he wonders. The Germans were, are and always will be collectively schizophrenic, in their own peculiar (cute?) little way. They are permanently krankgeschrieben (off sick) and that couch is, well, where they live.

Yet it is very hard to find anyone here who is happy about this state of affairs. Unlike the great Rhineland industrial booms of the 1950s and 1970s, this one is provoking Germans to turn against their government, against Europe, against technology and growth, against outsiders. It is an inward-looking, self-questioning moment in a country that the rest of Europe very badly needs to be involved in affairs outside its borders.