Kamikaze & Freudian Death Instinct

I’m currently doing a module that needs a lot of thinking and psycho-bable mumbo-jumbo crap.

Trust me, I’m not good at this thinking stuff (Do I sound like a himbo now? Hahaha).

But it’s interestingly enough, these analyzing stuff are actually helpful in aiding me understanding people better.

For example, I’ve always been fascinated by World War II Japanese Kamikaze pilots who hurl their airplanes at enemy ships.

Pointless? Crazy-fools?

Maybe or there’s more to it. Well this is my analysis so far using Freud’s theory. Some might not agree on Freud’s theory which is seem outdated based on his earlier clinical data, but it has some basis to it. Actually this is a summary of what I’ll be writing in the exams, I thought I might put it up here to share.

When trying to understand Kamikaze pilot’s who pilot suicidal flying bombs, Freud’s psychoanalysis of human behavior motivated by the drives or in these case death instincts

Freud believe that the goal of life is death

Aside from his life instincts theory which perpetuate (a) the life of the individual, by motivating him or her to seek food and water, and (b) the life of the species, by motivating him or her to have sex, everyone of us has an unconscious wish to die

He believed that for most of us, life is a painful and exhausting process and it’s true as for most parts, most of us struggle in life to achieve and seek better comforts of life. You could say there’s more pain than pleasure in life and he believes it is this death instinct which promises release from the struggle.

He relates the death instinct to a nirvana principle where it refers to non-existence, nothingness, the void, which is the goal of all life in Buddhist philosophy. It is this desire for peace that drives us to escape from stimulation, our attraction to alcohol and narcotics, our penchant for escapist activity, such as losing ourselves in books or movies, our craving for rest and sleep.

Freud theorized, sometimes we direct it out away from ourselves, in the form of aggression, cruelty, murder, and destructiveness. Sometimes it presents itself openly as suicide and suicidal wishes.

To relate this to the Kamikaze pilots, Japanese military exploited the minds of its military men by resurrecting and enshrined the power of legend as a national hero who epitomized loyalty, courage, and devotion to the emperor. The tide had clearly turned in Japan’s war, if they were to continue fighting the war as they had been, Japan would be defeated. Something had to be done to change the course of the war, something drastic

Kamikaze ideology was initiated

This potent Kamikaze ideology did not arise out of a vacuum. Rather, it was shaped and formed from the rich material of 2,000 years of tradition. Beyond the individual tales and metaphors that formed the building blocks of the kamikaze ideal, vast cultural forces exerted a great influence. From Shintoism came the belief that the dead live on as spirits, from Buddhism, the idea that life is transient and death is not the end of life, and from the code of bushido, the concept of absolute loyalty to one’s lord.

The term “kamikaze” was more than a name of an event – the word itself had power for the Japanese, calling forth feelings of nationalism and bringing to mind larger ideas of Japan’s “divine destiny” to rule. For the pilots, their mental association between themselves and the original Kamikaze legends insured in their own minds the efficacy of their self-sacrifice: Japan was protected by the Gods and therefore their latter-day divine wind could not fail to bring victory.

For the Japanese, who saw nothing ugly or scary in dying, as death could be beautiful. So too could the idea of young men falling out of the sky be beautiful, and they compared these men to the cherry blossoms that fell from the trees in spring from the legends.

The kamikazes believed that they would have a special place reserved for them at Yasukuni Shrine, beyond that of the ordinary war dead, and were promised that they would be named “war-gods” like their heroes in the Japanese tales, which undoubtedly served to make their unavoidable deaths easier to face.

Such sacrifices were made by ordinary citizens whose actions were molded by the same sort of cultural forces that govern all human beings. Specifically, the Japanese military, drawing upon a rich tapestry of legend and tradition, willfully created a cultural framework in which the use of suicide tactics was not only justified, but made into a comforting process in which, by making him feel connected to a larger tradition, the soldier’s actions were culturally validated

It is unprecedented in the recorded history of warfare of Japanese human instinct for self-preservation on such a massive scale where it is an honor to pilot suicidal mission of flying bombs

Inspired with the loftiest and most noble ideals of self-sacrifice and personal honor, was used as weapon to harm and destroy by a society bent on immolating itself rather than yielding to defeat