The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima

(Hardback)

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This psychological study focuses on one of Japan's most prolific writers, Yukio Mishima, whose fiction was suffused with images of sadomasochism, homosexual rape, hatred of women, vengeance, rage, and humiliation. Mishima's violent homoerotic imagery and fascistic politics have aroused a range of reactionsfrom hostile criticism to idealizing fantasies and even militant devotion. Still, he has been called an extraordinary talent and compared to Hemingway, Proust, and Joyce. Here we venture deep into the mind and personal history of Mishima, who was also an eccentric exhibitionist, posed nude for surreal photographs, acted in gangster films, and played the part of a Hollywood celebrity. Amid his flamboyance, Mishima's sexual perversity and right-wing militant politics have also aroused trepidation in many readers and critics, especially in light of his ritual suicide by disembowelment. Piven gives us a psychological understanding of the life, fantasies, and obsessions of Mishima, as all followed early trauma, severe conflict, narcissistic injury and an ensuing fixation on death. We see, for example, how Mishima's psychotic and authoritarian grandmother suffocated him emotionally by sequestering him from his mother and the outside world for the first 12 years of his life. Unlike other works that explain and amplify his philosophy, The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima deconstructs his philosophy, removing his masks, pretenses, and disguises.

Reviews

.,." Piven has written a brilliant definitive exploration of the life and writings of Mishima. It is an excellent insightful psychobiography.... Anyone interested in psychohistory or psychobiography could do well to study this book by Piven. Anyone interested in some facets of Japanese culture as well as important pieces of literary production would also gain significantly from reading this book...."-Sander J. Breiner, M.D.F.A.P.A., Associate Professor, Psychiatry, Michigan State University, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, Wayne State University
"It is truly a gratifying experience to find a duet of two marvelous talents: one a world-renowned Japanese writer and the other an American who, with unyielding scholarship and abundant passion, explores the mystified psychological landscapes of the novelist....Behind Piven's strenuous intellectual endeavor to remove the mask of Mishima, there is always a quiet current of deep compassion toward somebody whose soul was severely damaged....Whereas Mishima ended his own life by mangling his body, love and compassion enabled Piven to exercise his scholarly passion and recover a sense of Mishima as a whole body and person. I am so glad to see this peaceful work of words, which created another kind of magic and beauty....Thirty-four years after his death, a true attempt was made to touch Mishima psychoanalitically. And it was by the hand of Piven."-Contemporary Psychoanalysis
It is truly a gratifying experience to find a duet of two marvelous talents: one a world-renowned Japanese writer and the other an American who, with unyielding scholarship and abundant passion, explores the mystified psychological landscapes of the novelist....Behind Piven's strenuous intellectual endeavor to remove the mask of Mishima, there is always a quiet current of deep compassion toward somebody whose soul was severely damaged....Whereas Mishima ended his own life by mangling his body, love and compassion enabled Piven to exercise his scholarly passion and recover a sense of Mishima as a whole body and person. I am so glad to see this peaceful work of words, which created another kind of magic and beauty....Thirty-four years after his death, a true attempt was made to touch Mishima psychoanalitically. And it was by the hand of Piven.-Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Piven presents a psychoanalytic case study of Mishima, drawing on biographical evidence--particularly from John Nathan's Mishima: A Biography (CH, Mar'75)--to argue for the traumatic, emotionally injurious nature of Mishima's early childhood, spent largely in his grandmother's sickroom....Recommended. All levels.-Choice
"Piven presents a psychoanalytic case study of Mishima, drawing on biographical evidence--particularly from John Nathan's Mishima: A Biography (CH, Mar'75)--to argue for the traumatic, emotionally injurious nature of Mishima's early childhood, spent largely in his grandmother's sickroom....Recommended. All levels."-Choice

Author Bio

JERRY S. PIVEN teaches at the New School for Social Research and New York University, where his courses focus on the psychology of death, evil, and religion.