Narcissistic Revenge And Suicide: The Case Of Yukio Mishima, Part II

In a previous article I explored Mishima's fantasies in terms of intense oral ambivalence, anal conflict, and phallic narcissism. I adumbrated these themes in reference to his homosexuality and misogynistic proclivities, derived from excruciating and traumatic experiences, sequestered from his mother, in the nauseating sickroom of his grandmother for the first twelve years of his life. Wishes to merge with an idealized masculine object and to destroy the weak and diseased self derived from the internalized aggression of his grandmother and an immense need to escape her diseased and engulfing environment. Mishima's disgust for the feminine amidst split-off idealized imagery of benign women was seen in reaction to the experience of the feminine as death, decay, suffocation, and helplessness. Meanwhile, an erotic joy in killing the diseased and weak self enabled Mishima to eradicate images of his own vulnerability. In this article I explore Mishima's fantasies of murdering both abandoning objects and the idealized self-image from which he felt alienated in his entrenched feelings of ugliness. I also explore the complex fantasies in Mishima's voyeurism and suicide.

Revenge upon beautiful objects is yet another aspect of Mishima's sadistic erotic current. Mishima has fantasies of killing his weak and decrepit self, or attaining masculine beauty, and of merging with (and therefore becoming) beautiful male sex partners. However, the murder of beautiful objects complicates the merging fantasy. While Mishima is aroused by powerful, masculine