The Chrysanthemum versus the Sword in Suicide: Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima

ABSTRACT: Within the last few years, two world-famous Japanese writers have committed suicide. Kawabata represents the chrysanthemum aspect of Japanese culture and resignation-despair. Mishima symbolizes the sword aspect and aggression. Kawabata described loneliness-helplessness and Mishima an ecstasy under the threat of imminent death. Their different childhood experiences produced an “orphan” complex in Kawabata and the problem of sexual identity with an inferiority complex in Mishima. The former sublimated his complex in literature, the latter overreacted to it. For both, an immediate cause of suicide was the conflict between their ideal and the postwar reality. For Mishima, there were also occasions that gave vital blows to his extremely narcissistic temperament.     

Pyromania and the primal scene: a psychoanalytic comment on the work of Yukio Mishima

In the writings of the Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, primal scene experiences and derivative expressions of them recur persistently. The element of fire figures prominently in connection with the wish to wreak vengeance on the persons originally observed in the act of intercourse. As a destructive, attention-compelling spectacle, fire is a particularly suitable vehicle for this purpose. In Mishima's works, revenge takes the form of retaliation in kind: parental figures, or their surrogates, are put into the position of having to observe the child, or substitutes for him, in the act of sexual infidelity. These observations as well as clinical reports in the literature suggest some insights into fantasies of pyromania. They also make possible certain speculations concerning Misima's turbulent life and dramatic suicide.     

Under the mirror of the sleeping water: Poussin's Narcissus

Examined in conjunction with a close reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Nicolas Poussin's four paintings on the preoccupying theme of Narcissus and Echo reflect a developing aesthetic interpretation of its textual source. Poussin's reflective vision supports a radical reappraisal of the enigmatic myth at the heart of psychoanalytic theory and practice, in which Narcissus is construed as a far more object‐related figure that seeks the formative, affirmative mirroring of the other. This in turn encourages a more versatile conceptualization of narcissistic disturbance, in which an etiologically heterogenous constellation of issues stems from a variety of disturbances in the myriad dynamic and developmental aspects of mirroring and attunement: the narcissisms.     

Psychosynthesis: A psychotherapist's personal overview

Psychosynthesis, a therapeutic orientation based on personal experience, bridges psychological and theological conceptions of human nature. Psychotherapy is conducted in the here-and-now with emphasis on the relationship. Within that context, many techniques are employed. Imagination and intuition are cultivated. The client is helped to identify with his personal self, the center of consciousness and will, and to exercise willing control over the process of therapy and over his life. Basic principles include the existence of a higher unconscious, which is the locus of transpersonal needs, the interrelatedness of one to all, the reality of consciousness and will. Positive strivings and continuing growth are emphasized.Dr. Haronian is in private practice     

Football passions: A personal view

Abstract

The first ever conference that brought together psychotherapists, academics, footballers and football fans, took place on Sunday 24 May at Chelsea Football Club. Organized by the Freud Museum and the University of East London, it at first may seem an unlikely combination of interests. However, for many years I have been boring colleagues with insights on therapy based on a love of football. ‘Why not write about it?’ people have said, usually to shut me up. Then it occurred to me that a report of the conference would be an ideal way finally to put pen to paper on the relationship between football and psychotherapy.     

A personal view: Counselling and women

This personal view explores a number of gender issues relating to counselling and women clients. Attention is drawn to the lack of content of many training courses in the psychology, sociology and biology of women. Links are drawn between a woman's position in society and mental health. It is argued that counsellors need to be alert and sensitive to women's special needs and to avoid an emphasis on intra-psychic aspects at the expense of acknowledgment of societal pressures.     

A personal odyssey

In this autobiography, I tried to capture important aspects of my personal and professional development from my childhood in the ethnic ghettos of South Philadelphia to Pennsylvania State University and the University of Chicago and eventually to over 45 years on faculty at Yale. It has been a journey that I could never have anticipated and that has given me a sense of the unpredictability of psychological development. We all evolve in an open system and a significant portion of the variance of the outcome is determined by fate. But much is also determined by the ability to recognize opportunities and the willingness to take chances and to work hard when opportunities arise. As I reflect on my career of over 50 years, I have been delighted that I opted for a career as a clinical psychologist because it has provided me with opportunity to develop clinical skills and to combine these skills with scholarship and research. While I take considerable satisfaction in the recognition that my contributions have received, the most important aspect of my career has been my relationship with students and colleagues. These collaborations have clearly enriched my work; but more important, they have enriched my life.     

Freud's Oedipus and Kristeva's Narcissus: Three Heterogeneities

The paper shows that three heterogeneities in Freud and Kristeva (unconscious/conscious, semiotic/symbolic, and imaginary/symbolic) expose the historical emergence, significance, and demise of psychic structures that present obstacles to our progressive political thinking. The oedipal and narcissistic structures of subjectivity represent the persistence of two past, bad forms of authority: paternal law and maternal authority. Contemporary psychoanalysis reveals a humankind going through the loss of this past in a process that opens up a different future of sexual difference in Western cultures.     

The mental pain of the psychoanalyst: A personal view

Abstract

Mental pain is a common concern of psychoanalysts in their professional life. Combining her clinical experience with previous contributions by others, the author presents a personal overview of the patient-triggered mental pain of the analyst. Countertransference is considered to be the major source of the analyst's work-derived mental pain. This type of mental pain is not to be avoided or discarded by the analyst. Rather, the analyst will benefit from tolerating and even welcoming professional mental pain: in most cases, mental pain will bring with it rich clinical material that, upon interpretation, will help him or her to offer previously intolerable contents back to the patient in a transformed version that now becomes acceptable. The analyst's mental pain may emerge in his dreams; clinical examples of this phenomenon are presented. It is suggested that there is an increased chance of the analyst undergoing mental pain when treating patients suffering from severe psychopathology, and a clinical case is reported to illustrate this assertion. The author proposes that a lifelong effort is to be expected from analysts in terms of enhancing their threshold of tolerance to professional mental pain. In situations of mental pain, analysts must be particularly aware of the need to modulate their interpretations before transmitting them to the patient. The capacity of analysts to transform their mental pain (Ta, according to Bion) will depend on the plasticity of their container functions, the quality of their transformation abilities and, in particular, their threshold of tolerance to mental pain.     

Phallic narcissism, anal sadism, and oral discord: the case of Yukio Mishima, Part I

Thus far I have explored Mishima's traumatic childhood and the experiences leading him toward misogyny, phallic narcissism, and the drive to murder his own weakness and sexual vulnerability. Mishima suffered the extraordinary trauma of being separated from his parents and sequestered to the sickroom of a psychotic grandmother for the first twelve years of his life. Intense rage over abandonment and impingement engendered a disgust for femininity and the need to escape feminine messiness through homosexual pursuits. Mishima's entrenched feelings of shame and weakness gave rise to phallic narcissistic tendencies, as he idealized powerful men and eventually strove to become a powerful and beautiful male. In pursuing this erotic masculine image Mishima continued to fantasize about murdering his weak and shameful self-image, and commingled this sadistic impulse with fantasies of sexual merger with murdered love objects. Finally Mishima was the murderer erotically eradicating his sexual vulnerability as both subject and object. His suicide was a repetition of this erotic sadistic fantasy. In a further article I will continue the discussion by examining Mishima's fantasies of murdering beautiful and abandoning love objects. I will also address the complex nature of his ritual suicide as fantasy of rebirth, sexual merger, the murder of toxic introjects, and escape from death, decay, and regression to helpless infancy.     

Apocalyptic Specularity in Dante's Eschatology: Narcissus and the Imagination of Salvation

Dante's Commedia provides a performative eschatology or “apocalyptic specularity” that shows well how to keep concerns for apophasis, imagination, and salvation in balance. His literary appreciation for mirroring enables him to re‐present and imitate revelation. Displaying a metaphysically robust imagination, Dante's eschatology is akin to the biblical genre of apocalypse. Dantean analogy—personal and historical while theological and apocalyptical—resists tendencies to account for theology in reducibly negativist terms. The Divine Comedy hopes for the salvation of Narcissus, whose figure reflects the “everyman,” who would furthermore reflect even the triune God.