Exploring Freud's Influence in Anime

Chances are, if you've watched any of the prolific anime from the pre-2000s, you've noticed some similar themes and topics. Connection between beings, psychological explorations of the characters, memory and its true boundaries, the next stage of human evolution, and even more trippy topics. Most notably, you may hear a quite clear, direct mention, the collective unconscious. Information stored in the primordial nature of human beings, genetic information paving the way of our future. the breakdown of barriers between not just us and our history, but each other and even our own selves. This is a theory posited by Carl Jung, a Sigmund Freud contemporary, and the idea is these two bounced off of each other in the early 20th century, left a profound impact on the landscape of the late 20th century anime industry. Yes, actually. From Evangelion to Lane, and Akira to Ghost in the Shell, these series and movies have much more in common than just the time when they were made. But looking at the thoughts of these two controversial figures, we'll be able to gain insight not just on these anime that we all know and love, but ourselves and possibly the nature of human beings on the whole. Now this is just the second part of a series on the subject. Last time we covered the collective unconscious and how it's portrayed in Serial Experiments Lane, well today we'll see how Freud influenced Neon Genesis Evangelion, possibly followed by some multiple anime videos which will relate back to both with at least Ghost in the Shell and Ocarina I hate to split this up, but making a 3 hour video not knowing if it would do well is a bit much for my current schedule. So for those other videos to be made, this one will have to perform well. Use those usual features to let our algorithmic overlord know it should push the video a bit more, but also so I can see your thoughts on the topic we'll be covering. Trust me, it'll be a very fitting idea for everyone to give their own take on the subject, and I would love to see them all. I said last time I'd include some interesting comments from the last video, so here's a few of those now, and I'll do that again with comments from this video in the potential next one. But we've wasted enough time already, so be warned, there's spoilers ahead for Neon Genesis Evangelion, and let's get into it. You've probably encountered some memes like this in your time in anime spaces regarding Neon Genesis Evangelion. McGillian about its quite, let's say, interesting uses of parental issues and conflicts. The one I showed specifically references Freud because he was one of the leading figures in consideration of the unconscious, where he claimed many repressed desires exist and motivate us outside of awareness. Now, as with Jung in the first video of the series, we have to include a somewhat hefty warning about these ideas. We should appreciate the value that sprung from Freud's mad explorations, but move on from the specifics of his ideas for much better ones which emerged based on evidence and research, rather than self-justifying conjecture. To show why, though, we really just have to get into it to explain his most influential idea, his take on the unconscious mind. This is, to put it simply, the idea that we may not know why we perform the actions we do. In essence, that we lie to ourselves about our motivations. For example, I could say I'm making these videos to encourage higher thought and education, and that sounds pretty nice and rational. I'm doing a positive, altruistic thing. But maybe I'm just doing it because deep down I harbor a desire for attention as a selfish creature seeking out pleasure. Being witnessed fulfills some animalistic desire within my instincts. This idea has two sides. Why I'm unconsciously doing what I do, and how I consciously reconcile that desire into a personally- and socially acceptable manner. It's called lying to ourselves because we are honest with others as far as we know. We aren't lying to them, we're expressing what we genuinely believe to be the case, unaware of the unconscious holding our real desires. We see something like this with perception. Now if you want a good video to explain what I'm about to say further, the card on screen will have one from the always golden Vsauce, but put simply, what we think we see isn't actually what we're seeing. Our vision takes in a small portion of our surroundings and our brain fills in the rest. It's how optical illusions work, because what we're seeing isn't actually sight, but our brain creating context based on limited input. And this is an accepted fact of life, optical illusions existing doesn't really elicit much fear, even though it shows how our perception mismatches with reality. But thinking that kind of concept applies to ourselves becomes a lot more terrifying. The idea that maybe our internal vision of ourselves is a small sliver of the truth, and that the rest is a false recreation developed through repression of our inner selves. You could say Asuka shows this in the anime quite simply. She rejects Shinji as As far as she says, often feuding with him over the simplest of issues and outright mentally rejecting him to the point of saying something like, not even if you were the last person alive. However, in the unconscious states in the end of Evangelion, she also states to him that if she can't have him all to himself, then she doesn't want him at all. Asuka expresses hatred for Shinji, but the why is more complex. It isn't because she actually hates him, but because she desires more from him. She wants him to show her his desire in strong terms so she can accept it as both pleasure and proof of her value. This could recontextualize a few of her actions like the lengthy kiss they share. Maybe it was so awkward because she secretly wished for him to take more action for her to stand up and make it a better experience for himself. Kaji may be an attractive target for her because he has that kind of quality Shinji lacks, to take what he wants and we see this directly in the movie. as the pairs these kisses share are juxtaposed twice. Asuka's desire for Shinji to be less passive is actually because she desires him to some extent. Asuka is trying to get what she wants, but the true reasons as to why are a bubbling up of unconscious desires reasoned away by her conscious mind. At least all that is what you'd assume from the theories we'll be looking at today, which, keep in mind, are shaky at the very best. This leads to the idea of repression. that our minds are holding back on these unconscious aspects to protect us from a greater pain. We can jump right into an example to explain this best. In the later episode, Shinji recalls that despite claiming to have never seen an Eva before in the first episode, he actually had seen them before on a visit to NERV with his father and mother, who both worked there. In fact, it was the very day that Yui died in the experiment and had her soul bound into Unit 1, which Shinji appeared to directly be watching. This repression seems to go quite far, as Shiji even states to Gendo he can't recall what his mother looked like when they visit her grave. I don't think it takes much to see this safety of repression through this. What happened to Yui was a complicated mess a young child couldn't ever begin to comprehend, all of that pain rushing in at once. Now, it would be a lifelong pain to forget his mother, but it would save him the immense and immediate psyche-destroying toil of recognizing that day. To survive these brushes with immediate mental death, we spread the pain out in smaller aspects of our psyche, at least in Freud's ideas. That is why his therapy was focused on these almost aha moments. The therapist would sit out of view of the patient, asking them questions to try and get the patient to suddenly recall something which was repressed, nearly instantly solving the issues which arose unconsciously from the repressed memories or desires. In essence, it's quite similar to how we see the characters interact with their own unconscious minds in the anime. They poke and prod, drawing out reactions and chasing leads by egging on their more conscious minds to recognize these facts again and again, like how Shinji questions his own motivations in most of the scenes, eventually even saying that he wasn't abandoned, but rather that he ran away himself. By pushing into the pain, it was reasoned that we could solve it. It isn't about trying to tell someone what to do. why they are this way, but getting them, who secretly inside knows the truth, to uncover these inconvenient truths they reasoned away to avoid pain. Evangelion is like one big psychoanalysis session, even down to the TV ending where Shinji has an immediate realization, which leads him to much more positive thinking after two episodes worth of unconscious prodding. Fitting along with how the series is really Anno exploring depression, the series is basically kind of like one big psychoanalysis therapy session, which is a very interesting way to look at it. There is some truth to all this view of the unconscious. Think about walking. When you go to take a step, do you actively think about constricting and loosening all the right muscles to do so? Of course not, we probably don't even know the names of them. We don't consider every single thing we do. The hallmark case of this kind of study is Henry Molaison, a man with amnesia who gets still developed new. motor skills even though he had no memory of the actions taken to develop them. As such, we saw that active recollection isn't required for everything we do. The unconscious mind does exist, but keep in mind that that doesn't mean it's anywhere near exactly as Freud said. So what did he think of the mind? Well, it's sometimes tough to say because his opinions of conjecture changed over time, and he sometimes layered new theories over previous ones in what I'd personally call saving face. As such, we won't be covering all of them here, and keep in mind that everything from this point on is an explanation of theories that should be considered more like philosophy than psychology. Now, Freud's most commonly explained structure of the mind separates into three factions. The id, the ego and the superego. The id comes first, being the side present at birth. It operates on what he called the pleasure principle. It wants pleasure and it wants it now, a dumb animalistic force saying mine mine mine. You can see why he thought this as the actions of a newborn are all typically pleasurable ones for survival's sake. But then babies cry kind of a lot, they learn pretty quick that they don't always immediately get what they want. For a reason that due to this delay in satisfaction, we learn pleasure isn't always accessible, and so we begin to develop a way to either achieve or repress our desires, which gives rise to the other two sides. The ego comes from this discovery operating on the reality principle, trying to satisfy or give up on one's pleasures within worldly context, and this is the origin of our consciousness, a method to reconcile with a lack of instant pleasure. We think so that we can realistically achieve that pleasure that we do, delayed since we learned that it required active effort. And then on the other end is the superego, containing the internalized rules we learn, like from parents or society. We are punished for certain pleasure-seeking actions, one which are deemed inappropriate or wrong, and so we develop a conscience, the little angel on our shoulder. But it's not a smart force making suggestions, it is like the id, stupid, and impulsive yelling at us, no, no, no, be ashamed, be guilty. It's so strict that not only should we not do bad things, but we shouldn't even think them, we should repress them. The hidden superego are not conscious thoughts or introspection, but they are rather unconscious processes bubbling up and being expressed and interpreted by the conscious ego, which serves as the middle point between the two. Now this is really more groundwork, it's necessary to address more direct aspects which can be seen in the anime, but finding these three factions represented clearly isn't really possible. Now, I want to address a theory you may find that the three pilots each represent a side of the mind, commonly stated with Asuka as the id, Shinji as the ego, and Rei as the superego, but I've also seen them all reversed into other positions. I can see why people say this. Asuka is always saying, me, me, me. Shinji is trying to make others happy, but still concerned with his own pleasure, even if he hates himself, often acting as the middle ground between the other two pilots who are at each other's throats. and then Rei is devoid of almost all pleasure with her bare room and stoic demeanor. However, it's quite broad and you can find evidence to fit any organization of these three traits. Shinji has moments of seeking pleasure quite overtly, Asuka comes to hate herself and remove all pleasure from her life, as well as being genuinely intelligent unlike the id is supposed to be, and the same goes for Rei, who should also be much more animalistic and aggressive rather than calm to fit with the theory. Now, there is some overlap, even if just a convenient rule of threes matchup. But I do think that's as far as we should go without more of Freud's ideas, however. We can point to specific scenes where Shinji and Asuka converse with their unconscious mind, which is confirmed in episode 20 where Shinji is described as past the ego boundary. So you see he's past the ego. He's conversing with the id and superego under Freud's theories. But I don't think there are defined lines past that to say which is the id or... which is the superego in these scenes without any real meaning, and would only lead us to backtracking on elements to re-explain them later with more detail. Now, Freud laid out a supposed set of stages for personality development from birth all the way through adulthood. He believed that each stage encountered a central issue, and how that issue was handled would determine the characteristics of our developed adult personalities. If it was done properly, we would become a well-adjusted, typical, healthy adult. But if it was done improperly, we would develop a fixation. being stuck in one of these stages and unconsciously embodying unhealthy habits to try and achieve the lost satisfaction we felt from that stage. First, there's the oral stage, which is from birth until one year, characterized by pleasure derived from the mouth. Freud reasoned these pleasure centers at each stage based on the idea that life is seeking out pleasure and looking at what part of the body characterized those developmental years regarding pleasure. So the core issue here is breastfeeding and incorrectly timed weaning would lead to a fixation, which would be expressed in activities related to the mouth, like smoking or chewing gum, while the person themselves would end up quite passive, gullible, immature, and even manipulative. Next up is the anal stage, taking place from one year through our third. You can guess it centers around, well, the rear end of our bodies, more specifically to Freud, the act of toilet training. Someone with too little or too much emphasis in the stage could either become anal-expulsive or anal-retentive, respectively. An expulsive person would end up reckless, disorganized, and defiant, while a retentive one would be overly neat and organized, basically like a claim-free. From year 3 through 6, we undergo the phallic stage, where the focus of pleasure shifts, according to Freud, to the genitals. Here we also began to differentiate between male and female, and by that I mean ignoring that women even existed for the most part in focusing on some absolutely insane things. theories involving sexual development. We'll come back to those in a dedicated section though, so for now just know that the fixations here are either excessive masculinity for males, or the need for attention and domination for females, as well as promiscuity and low self-esteem across the board. The last two stages don't really have much of note. The latent stage of 6 to puberty is the repression of sexual feelings, with the fixation resulting in the inability to have fulfilling non-sexual relationships, And after puberty, there's the genital stage, which is just the default stage of adulthood, if one has moved on from any fixations. Evangelion has a few direct mentions here, starting with the oral stage. Most notably, episode 20's second title is Weaving a Story Part 2 Oral Stage, which is the episode centered around Shinji's unconscious, after it achieves a 400% sync rate and is taken up into Unit 01. We can only assume this presents Shinji as having an oral fixation backed up further by this image used in those same 22 minutes of him breastfeeding the core issue of the stage. The traits of this fixation also fit within his character. He is exceptionally passive, often expressly stating he'd rather please everyone by simply doing what they say and then defending that position. He can be quite gullible, at least to Asuka who can egg him on easily whether it's reckless piloting or the dare to kiss her. His immaturity shows when no one is watching. Like calling Asuka a child after the mama scene, and his own unconscious full of screaming scenes or scenes of his childhood. When faced with pressure from other consciousnesses seeing his own, he lashes out, yelling and crying for someone to solve his issues, and blaming others for lying. Quite immature. And manipulative is the least present, but seen clearly in the end of Evangelion, where he uses Asuka for his own pleasure consciously in the hospital scene, and unconsciously when he begs for her help in the collective consciousness of human instrumentality. He claims he needs her, but as she says, anyone would do, expressing this manipulation. How he developed the fixation, though, is more of a wonder. Yui dies when he's four years old, meaning he'd be well out of the oral stage. Plus, she seemed to be a genuinely caring mother who would have taken proper care of a young child. So going on Freud's idea that improper weaning would be what causes an oral fixation, it- doesn't really make sense because Yui doesn't seem like the kind of person who would mess that up. Now, we can see more of his character and some of Asuka's as well in the Felix stage though. Asuka lost her mother at 4 as well, giving them each a great conflict within this state that Freud certainly would have claimed to cause a fixation. Continuing with Shinji, the low self-esteem certainly fits here, with his often repeated claims that he isn't worth much of anything at all, like his fight with Toji saying He himself is a scoundrel who should be hit. But more interesting is Asuka, who fits with Freud's quite demeaning ideas. We've stated already how Kaji is quite a dominating person, often holding sexual intimacy over Masato in scenes directly contrasted against Asuka in Shinji's. She is desiring someone who will take her, not someone who has to ask to do so. Working under Freud's theory, we could reason she likes Kaji for that reason, the need for domination across the board. required from Phaelic stage fixation. The need for attention is prominent in her as well, serving as the defining interaction between her and Kaji and really almost anyone, and most of her character is defined by this, giving us the ever-famous look at me as she spells out her actions in plain detail. Like she explains to Rei, she pilots so she can be witnessed, a juxtaposition to the other two pilots'uncertainty of their own reasons. So, Asuka and Shinji each have a fixation in this stage, but again let's get deeper into it, let's see how exactly they would have had it. Well we didn't cover the issue that would cause it here yet because, well, strap in, it's when things get really wild. Oedipus Rex is a play written by ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, a series of three which survive concerning the titular Oedipus. Very briefly, it is the story of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Laius, the king of Thebes, is informed that his son will one day kill him and marry his wife, the queen. So to avoid this, he sends his son away after birth, which of course leads to Oedipus having no knowledge of his family, thus leading to him unwittingly doing exactly as the prophecy stated, killing his father and marrying him. his mother. When this is revealed, he gouges out his own eyes while his mother hangs herself. This play inspired the name for Freud's Oedipus Complex, what he believed to be the phallic stage desire within every male to kill his father and achieve pleasure through his mother. He put some logic to this idea as follows. Aware of the penis and its connection to pleasure, they search out a nice, warm, comforting outlet for that pleasure. At a young age and without many options, they naturally turn to their mother. mother as this source. However, clearly the father stands in the way, which presents a problem. Dad has to be gotten rid of to abide by the pleasure principle. But he's the larger, faster, stronger one, so what if he finds out about this, and what if they failed in killing their father and face retribution? Well, surely the father must retaliate in the worst way imaginable, which Freud believed was castration. In a great fear of this, they go into latency and repress their sexual desires, beginning to respect rather than hate their fathers, identifying with him and finding safety in that. Now, clearly key to resolving this stage is the presence of a father, since he's one half of the issue. Now, you'll notice a problem with this idea being a whole stage of child development. Not everyone has a penis. Well, that itself was Freud's answer, as he purported that females go through something called penis envy. Holding a similar thought process to the males, he believed girls must witness their lack of a penis and assume they were already castrated. leading to a lifelong sense of inferiority. With this in mind, they begin to shift their parental agences, rejecting their mother as another inferior being and a rival for the attention of their father, who they begin to desire in a more deep-held desire to be more masculine. If they solve the complex correctly, they'll do the same as the males and identify with their same-sex parent once more. There is even more to all of this, but it's not really worth mentioning in any more detail than this because... while it's quite clearly both insane and extraordinarily demeaning all at once. If I mention that the Evangelion units contain the souls of the pilots'mothers, which is why they act at their own times to protect the pilots, and how the entry plugs are basically one big metaphor for the womb, then you can begin to see where this comes into play. The pilots are inside of their mothers, something the series isn't subtle about, reminding us very often how warm and familiar the fluid-filled entry plugs are. An idea based around conflict, we clearly see it in Shinji. The father needing to be present for a successful resolution of the complex, in addition to his mother being absent as well, would no doubt leave lasting marks as far as Freud was concerned. The younger Ikari holds a deep antagonism, told his father, shifting anywhere from attempting a successful resolution by accepting and seeking Gendo's praise. to going full on Oedipus when he states his hatred directly for his father. He realizes who his true enemy is after some mental prodding, when in his own mind, even wishing to stab the man to death as he did the angels who he thought was his enemy. And this is all something he realizes while he's physically integrated with Unit 01, the manifestation of his mother. We can see the holding of power over the younger side as well, with Gendo being able to take away Shinji's source of power at any time. which he does after forcing Unit-01 to nearly kill Toji against his son's will. Of course, this is all subconscious as well, bubbling up in actions across the series or past the ego boundary, and only directly during scenes with the unconscious. Supposedly an unresolved complex would lead to Unit-01 becoming aggressive, vain, or over-ambitious, but aggressive is the only one which really fits Shinji, and only in flashes of his more animalistic nature, witnessed in the minority of his screentime. We see more of this incestuous nature from Misato, whose relationship with Kaji is explained by herself as a reminder of her father. Drunk after a wedding, she opens up as to the real reason she left him all those years ago, the realization that what she loved about him were the traits of her father, who she claimed to hate. He left no time for Misato or her mother due to his work with Nerve, and he wasn't very active in her life or even caring in general, except for one grand action. saving her life, something which would confuse her forever. Witnessing the second impact, he places Misato in the only available escape pod, ensuring the safety of her own life over his. As such, unable to ever resolve her feelings for the man, Freud would likely assess that this is the real reason for all of Misato's actions, an unconscious drive to express these feelings, something she backs up herself with his speech to Kaji. She joins Nerv just the same, dedicates her life to it just the same, but... claims these are for distraction and revenge, in reality wishing to understand the man who left her. I mention this here because it's also likely, according to Freud, some relation to phallic stage issues. Unable to ever resolve penis envy due to her absent father, she remained obsessed with him, transferring the obsession to an unconscious desire for the traits he held. It would be a complex, like any of the ones we discussed with Shinji or Asuka. In Freud's Pleasure Principle, he saw an answer for every action that takes place in life. This depends on the idea of drives, which could roughly be called instincts, but people on the internet will get snippy about that because of some apparent past translation errors. But drives are explanations for our behavior through inherent traits of the species. For example, in On Topic, the instinct to breastfeed. We don't explain to a newborn that they need to nurse for survival or how they're to do it they just have a natural drive to do so even if they don't understand that fact you could say the same for nourishment in general for sleep for sex for many behaviors all things we don't have to learn but do temper a desire for later in life you can see why he reasoned the id which operates on the pleasure principle came first with this logic now for a reason that one drive could explain life eros or the life drive like a subset of the pleasure principle creating the energy which drives us forward called libido. The basis of Eros is that everything we do we derive some sort of pleasure from, which pushes us onwards. We eat because of pleasure, sleep because of pleasure, have sex because of pleasure, and whatever we could reason otherwise is just another explanation of finding pleasure. For example, you could say you eat simply for survival, not for pleasure at all, but then aren't you just surviving for other pleasures? Maybe we engage in no pleasure whatsoever, but then the satisfaction of doing so could be called a pleasure as well. As such, all behavior is explained by securing satisfaction, which often, as Freud believed, came in the form of releasing sexual energy, in line with how most of his ideas came back to sex. And that's mostly how we see it represented in Evangelion as well. As we dive through the jumbled mess of the character's inner thoughts, they're resolved most often as a sexual drive. Shinji sees the repetitive images of all his attractions, asking if he would like to become one with them, presenting the act as an ultimate melding of body and spirit between two people. Even in the darkest moments of the series, sex runs through as a motivating factor, like distracting Shinji of his pleas in the hospital scene. I bring this up because it shows pleasure as a reason for survival. The younger Ikari is at his worst, overcome with guilt and despair after killing Kaworu. Misato later has to drag him along as he's content to simply lie down and die when faced with danger. Yet this terrible, manipulative desire is something which temporarily breaks him from this state and forces him to some kind of action. It's also how Misato motivates him to push onwards before she dies. Now, Misato's inner exploration is almost entirely about sex, the most interesting coming in the end of Evangelion as well, where Shinji witnesses her in the act and The characters debate the real point of sex. Some say it's simply seeking the pleasure of others, while Masato calls for its higher benefits. Proof of not just our value, but even of our existence itself. If you look at this with Eros in mind, it makes Freudian sense. Since the release of sexual energy is the main secure of satisfaction, the point of life itself, then sex would have the context of proving one is even alive to begin with. This also adds context to Shinji and Arash. Asuka's relationship, underlining their somewhat romantic encounters as an element of human nature itself. Since we seek such a release as the reason to exist, even two people who hate each other on the outside may still desire it from one another. It's quite a pessimistic view for the defining drive of life, but that's Freud. However, he came to witness behavior he couldn't explain through the life drive, such as the tendency to relive painful experiences or people engaging in self-destructive behaviors. This would conflict with the pleasure principle because there's no logical reason to do something with no pleasure gained under it. But what if pleasure wasn't the root? What if deep in the human psyche there was some final, some greater form of satisfaction to explain it all? Beginning to think there may be something like this under the surface, he introduced the concept of the death drive or thanatos, although that second name would be added later by others. The energy created by this drive was named distruto in opposition to libido. The death drive is quite simply the hidden, unconscious desire within all humans to die, reasoned as a pleasurable return to a simple state. Freud's ideas all revolved around conflict and tension, and how these internal tensions created anxieties within humans. Working under this assumption, it could be reasoned that a previous, more basic and thus relaxed state would be desirable. It will always be so because we are always in tension, and so the desire for it is eternal. He ended the idea with this, The most basic state we can achieve is death. It's seen as a return to what we once were, an unthinking, unfeeling collection of atoms without anxiety. And not just on the individual level as humans, but overall for life itself. It all at some point sprung from inanimate objects It's a mass devoid of consciousness somewhere along the line beginning to feel and thus suffering of having higher thought. The only way to get close to that state without tension would be to remove our consciousness that sprung forth. To die. Venetos is directly addressed in the series, with Nerv members often calling out things like Destrudo is rising during tense psychological scenes. We can even see it here on one of the psychographs as one of the axes along with Libido on the other. With Nerv as monitor. Monitoring in all their technobabble is actually the Freudian idea of consciousness. When we consider the mention of things like ego boundaries and sync rates, you could potentially read piloting an AVA as an act of allowing the animalistic unconscious forces to manifest their energy into combat. The danger line they watch out for would be the final point where such a thing is safe without destroying the ego of the pilot, which would turn them into a simple form for the id and superego to utilize. You could also see this in how the AVA units, which contain humans, and souls go berserk. Now for more view of Thanatos, it is also central to Seal's plans in the third impact, and we could see them as a representation of it on the whole. While they and Gendo both desire the impact, he is seeking the collective consciousness while they want it to lead to the end of mankind. They speak to the returning of man to his true form of life and death in equal measures and how such things will be the only peace for their souls. They desire the non-existence from the world. fraud supposed was inherent to all beings, seeking relief from the tension included within the fabric of consciousness. To achieve this, they make Shinji, who holds control over the outcome of the third impact, have his own distruto rise, driving Shinji past the ego boundary so he gives into that destructive force no longer tempered by the ego, and decides to end the world. There's a lot that's interesting in there, like how the collective unconsciousness could be the power of God itself, but the specifics of the third impact are not. third impact are, well, they deserve a whole explainer of their own and how it relates to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, a video I'd love to make because it would be more introspective like the Lane video, where this one is a bit more shallow in favor of direct explanation. Freud explained defense mechanisms as a specific process of the unconscious mind, used to prevent the id and superego from making it to consciousness. They weren't pathological to him, unhealthy things to be solved like complexes, but rather as a part of the daily life necessary to maintaining a healthy balance within consciousness. You'll see these differ between sources, so this won't be an all-exhaustive list of every defense mechanism, but just a select few memorable ones. And I'll be using Evangelion as a examples of each, since they're all relatively short and are best explained through examples. First off, there's sublimation, which is the process of turning these darker motivations into a positive energy. Gendo is our best example here. Feeling just as inadequate as his son, and depressed and alone at the loss of his wife, he turns the negative energy of these emotions into something he believes to be genuinely positive for all, the human instrumentality project. His feelings are so strong that his act of sublimation becomes most of his action in general. Next we have Displacement, where one refocuses their dark thoughts and desires into a more acceptable route. This is an id-super-ego conflict. The former needs to express negative energy in accordance with the latter. Now this is Shinji fighting the angels with the aggression he feels towards his father. He questions why he fights many times, culminating in the scene where he repeatedly tries to affirm the angels as his enemy, but the images slowly turn to his father instead. He uncovers his act of displacement. He wanted to kill something, but it's not acceptable to kill his father, so he killed what everyone told him was the enemy. Next, we have projection, which is a defense mechanism where one places the desires they're uncomfortable with on others. This one is all Asuka, as she pins sexual blame on many others, while herself making inappropriate passes at Kaji and secretly deep down desiring such things. She expresses a disgust for Masato's adult view of sex, but then desires everything adult. don't. It's also seen in how she calls Rey a doll, a reference to her own mother's stand-in doll for Asuka. Out of this fear, she places this trait on someone else to feel like she isn't so. And this is also likely part of her chance scene, where the other voice actors read out her lines as she repeats, that's not me. By so often placing her desires on them, the angel examining her mind actually confuses this with her true nature. Next, there's rationalization, which is the act of giving the thought to a person. or feeling of a more rational or acceptable motivation, quite easily seen in how Masato exposits about her own desire to join NERV, realizing later it was just chasing her father, not helping the world. And for one last defense mechanism, we can look at regression. Faced with a great trauma, the individual returns to a previous state of their development to cope. This is Shinji pretty much any time he's faced with great psychological damage inside of Unit 1. He'll curl up into the fetal position in this warm enclosure, before going back to the memories of his mother and his own childhood. Since he's unable to reason with everything going on, he runs from it all, runs from the displeasure to an earlier stage where no one would be able to comprehend such a thing. And that's going to do it for Freud's influence on Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you liked this video or the lame one before it, let me know because there's definitely more topics in here I can discuss. I do still want to tackle how Evangelion itself tackles the collection. collective unconsciousness, because there really is genuinely some super interesting stuff in there with Seal's plan and Gendo's plan, and you know, basically stating that the collective unconsciousness and that more basic state that it represents is itself the power of God. And you can see how that interplays. with the idea of Adam and Lilith, these creations of God and angels, which the humans are one of, and there's so much interesting going on in there, and I think we can actually begin to make sense of the third impact and everything before it through that, so I would love to do that if that's something you want to see, and I think it would be a bit more deep and reflective than this video was. I called this section Freud Off because, Jesus Christ, I want to be done with this. I understand Freud, he considered the unconscious. conscience. A lot of things came from that. A lot of people built on that idea and made actual good research, but oh my god, I didn't think I'd ever have to say the phrase penis envy in a video. I want to be done with Freud. I'm honestly glad this is over. So, you know, any support on this video would be greatly appreciated because it would help out since this one was kind of a pain to make. I obviously still enjoyed doing it, but I wanted to be done more than usual. So, likes and comments always help. They're also good because they let me know what you liked. And comments especially because I can see your input on these. I'm sure there are going to be some people more versed in psychoanalysis than me who will add some corrections in the comments and I do welcome that because there's no way I could cover everything completely here. So please, I guess, basically help finish off the video in the comments there because this is always a community effort and I love to see your input. I'll have some more comments from this video in the front of the next one when that eventually comes out if it does, if this does well and anything like that. You'll notice I'm rambling a lot because I didn't write write an outro for this video because I was literally that done with wanting to talk about Freud. So I think I said everything I really needed to cover here. The next video will probably be Ghost in the Shell and Akira who each slightly take a glance at some of these Jungian ideas. So maybe we'll get into that one. Maybe we'll just make the video explaining Evangelion's take on it. So we'll have to see what people want more. But anyway, important links in the pinned comment, Twitter, occasionally post stupid things, me in outfits, different things. if you really want that. Discord, where everyone hangs out and has discussions. Every, rarely, occasionally we do community nights and I'll pop in, but I feel bad because I'm very busy and can't do it as much as I'd like to. But most importantly down there will be Patreon with these lovely people above me, support me, and help me keep doing insane stuff like this every week. But anyway, I'll just say thank you for watching as always, for spending some time with me, and I hope I'll see you again soon.

Information stored in the primordial nature of human beings, genetic information paving the way of our future. the breakdown of barriers between not just us and our history, but each other and even our own selves. This is a theory posited by Carl Jung, a Sigmund Freud contemporary, and the idea is these two bounced off of each other in the early 20th century, left a profound impact on the landscape of the late 20th century anime industry. Yes, actually. From Evangelion to Lane, and Akira to Ghost in the Shell, these series and movies have much more in common than just the time when they were made.

But looking at the thoughts of these two controversial figures, we'll be able to gain insight not just on these anime that we all know and love, but ourselves and possibly the nature of human beings on the whole. Now this is just the second part of a series on the subject. Last time we covered the collective unconscious and how it's portrayed in Serial Experiments Lane, well today we'll see how Freud influenced Neon Genesis Evangelion, possibly followed by some multiple anime videos which will relate back to both with at least Ghost in the Shell and Ocarina I hate to split this up, but making a 3 hour video not knowing if it would do well is a bit much for my current schedule. So for those other videos to be made, this one will have to perform well. Use those usual features to let our algorithmic overlord know it should push the video a bit more, but also so I can see your thoughts on the topic we'll be covering.

Trust me, it'll be a very fitting idea for everyone to give their own take on the subject, and I would love to see them all. I said last time I'd include some interesting comments from the last video, so here's a few of those now, and I'll do that again with comments from this video in the potential next one. But we've wasted enough time already, so be warned, there's spoilers ahead for Neon Genesis Evangelion, and let's get into it. You've probably encountered some memes like this in your time in anime spaces regarding Neon Genesis Evangelion.

McGillian about its quite, let's say, interesting uses of parental issues and conflicts. The one I showed specifically references Freud because he was one of the leading figures in consideration of the unconscious, where he claimed many repressed desires exist and motivate us outside of awareness. Now, as with Jung in the first video of the series, we have to include a somewhat hefty warning about these ideas. We should appreciate the value that sprung from Freud's mad explorations, but move on from the specifics of his ideas for much better ones which emerged based on evidence and research, rather than self-justifying conjecture.

To show why, though, we really just have to get into it to explain his most influential idea, his take on the unconscious mind. This is, to put it simply, the idea that we may not know why we perform the actions we do. In essence, that we lie to ourselves about our motivations. For example, I could say I'm making these videos to encourage higher thought and education, and that sounds pretty nice and rational.

I'm doing a positive, altruistic thing. But maybe I'm just doing it because deep down I harbor a desire for attention as a selfish creature seeking out pleasure. Being witnessed fulfills some animalistic desire within my instincts. This idea has two sides. Why I'm unconsciously doing what I do, and how I consciously reconcile that desire into a personally- and socially acceptable manner.

It's called lying to ourselves because we are honest with others as far as we know. We aren't lying to them, we're expressing what we genuinely believe to be the case, unaware of the unconscious holding our real desires. We see something like this with perception. Now if you want a good video to explain what I'm about to say further, the card on screen will have one from the always golden Vsauce, but put simply, what we think we see isn't actually what we're seeing.

Our vision takes in a small portion of our surroundings and our brain fills in the rest. It's how optical illusions work, because what we're seeing isn't actually sight, but our brain creating context based on limited input. And this is an accepted fact of life, optical illusions existing doesn't really elicit much fear, even though it shows how our perception mismatches with reality. But thinking that kind of concept applies to ourselves becomes a lot more terrifying.

The idea that maybe our internal vision of ourselves is a small sliver of the truth, and that the rest is a false recreation developed through repression of our inner selves. You could say Asuka shows this in the anime quite simply. She rejects Shinji as As far as she says, often feuding with him over the simplest of issues and outright mentally rejecting him to the point of saying something like, not even if you were the last person alive.

However, in the unconscious states in the end of Evangelion, she also states to him that if she can't have him all to himself, then she doesn't want him at all. Asuka expresses hatred for Shinji, but the why is more complex. It isn't because she actually hates him, but because she desires more from him.

She wants him to show her his desire in strong terms so she can accept it as both pleasure and proof of her value. This could recontextualize a few of her actions like the lengthy kiss they share. Maybe it was so awkward because she secretly wished for him to take more action for her to stand up and make it a better experience for himself.

Kaji may be an attractive target for her because he has that kind of quality Shinji lacks, to take what he wants and we see this directly in the movie. as the pairs these kisses share are juxtaposed twice. Asuka's desire for Shinji to be less passive is actually because she desires him to some extent.

Asuka is trying to get what she wants, but the true reasons as to why are a bubbling up of unconscious desires reasoned away by her conscious mind. At least all that is what you'd assume from the theories we'll be looking at today, which, keep in mind, are shaky at the very best. This leads to the idea of repression.

that our minds are holding back on these unconscious aspects to protect us from a greater pain. We can jump right into an example to explain this best. In the later episode, Shinji recalls that despite claiming to have never seen an Eva before in the first episode, he actually had seen them before on a visit to NERV with his father and mother, who both worked there. In fact, it was the very day that Yui died in the experiment and had her soul bound into Unit 1, which Shinji appeared to directly be watching. This repression seems to go quite far, as Shiji even states to Gendo he can't recall what his mother looked like when they visit her grave.

I don't think it takes much to see this safety of repression through this. What happened to Yui was a complicated mess a young child couldn't ever begin to comprehend, all of that pain rushing in at once. Now, it would be a lifelong pain to forget his mother, but it would save him the immense and immediate psyche-destroying toil of recognizing that day. To survive these brushes with immediate mental death, we spread the pain out in smaller aspects of our psyche, at least in Freud's ideas.

That is why his therapy was focused on these almost aha moments. The therapist would sit out of view of the patient, asking them questions to try and get the patient to suddenly recall something which was repressed, nearly instantly solving the issues which arose unconsciously from the repressed memories or desires. In essence, it's quite similar to how we see the characters interact with their own unconscious minds in the anime. They poke and prod, drawing out reactions and chasing leads by egging on their more conscious minds to recognize these facts again and again, like how Shinji questions his own motivations in most of the scenes, eventually even saying that he wasn't abandoned, but rather that he ran away himself. By pushing into the pain, it was reasoned that we could solve it.

It isn't about trying to tell someone what to do. why they are this way, but getting them, who secretly inside knows the truth, to uncover these inconvenient truths they reasoned away to avoid pain. Evangelion is like one big psychoanalysis session, even down to the TV ending where Shinji has an immediate realization, which leads him to much more positive thinking after two episodes worth of unconscious prodding. Fitting along with how the series is really Anno exploring depression, the series is basically kind of like one big psychoanalysis therapy session, which is a very interesting way to look at it. There is some truth to all this view of the unconscious.

Think about walking. When you go to take a step, do you actively think about constricting and loosening all the right muscles to do so? Of course not, we probably don't even know the names of them. We don't consider every single thing we do.

The hallmark case of this kind of study is Henry Molaison, a man with amnesia who gets still developed new. motor skills even though he had no memory of the actions taken to develop them. As such, we saw that active recollection isn't required for everything we do. The unconscious mind does exist, but keep in mind that that doesn't mean it's anywhere near exactly as Freud said. So what did he think of the mind?

Well, it's sometimes tough to say because his opinions of conjecture changed over time, and he sometimes layered new theories over previous ones in what I'd personally call saving face. As such, we won't be covering all of them here, and keep in mind that everything from this point on is an explanation of theories that should be considered more like philosophy than psychology. Now, Freud's most commonly explained structure of the mind separates into three factions.

The id, the ego and the superego. The id comes first, being the side present at birth. It operates on what he called the pleasure principle.

It wants pleasure and it wants it now, a dumb animalistic force saying mine mine mine. You can see why he thought this as the actions of a newborn are all typically pleasurable ones for survival's sake. But then babies cry kind of a lot, they learn pretty quick that they don't always immediately get what they want.

For a reason that due to this delay in satisfaction, we learn pleasure isn't always accessible, and so we begin to develop a way to either achieve or repress our desires, which gives rise to the other two sides. The ego comes from this discovery operating on the reality principle, trying to satisfy or give up on one's pleasures within worldly context, and this is the origin of our consciousness, a method to reconcile with a lack of instant pleasure. We think so that we can realistically achieve that pleasure that we do, delayed since we learned that it required active effort. And then on the other end is the superego, containing the internalized rules we learn, like from parents or society. We are punished for certain pleasure-seeking actions, one which are deemed inappropriate or wrong, and so we develop a conscience, the little angel on our shoulder.

But it's not a smart force making suggestions, it is like the id, stupid, and impulsive yelling at us, no, no, no, be ashamed, be guilty. It's so strict that not only should we not do bad things, but we shouldn't even think them, we should repress them. The hidden superego are not conscious thoughts or introspection, but they are rather unconscious processes bubbling up and being expressed and interpreted by the conscious ego, which serves as the middle point between the two. Now this is really more groundwork, it's necessary to address more direct aspects which can be seen in the anime, but finding these three factions represented clearly isn't really possible. Now, I want to address a theory you may find that the three pilots each represent a side of the mind, commonly stated with Asuka as the id, Shinji as the ego, and Rei as the superego, but I've also seen them all reversed into other positions.

I can see why people say this. Asuka is always saying, me, me, me. Shinji is trying to make others happy, but still concerned with his own pleasure, even if he hates himself, often acting as the middle ground between the other two pilots who are at each other's throats. and then Rei is devoid of almost all pleasure with her bare room and stoic demeanor.

However, it's quite broad and you can find evidence to fit any organization of these three traits. Shinji has moments of seeking pleasure quite overtly, Asuka comes to hate herself and remove all pleasure from her life, as well as being genuinely intelligent unlike the id is supposed to be, and the same goes for Rei, who should also be much more animalistic and aggressive rather than calm to fit with the theory. Now, there is some overlap, even if just a convenient rule of threes matchup. But I do think that's as far as we should go without more of Freud's ideas, however.

We can point to specific scenes where Shinji and Asuka converse with their unconscious mind, which is confirmed in episode 20 where Shinji is described as past the ego boundary. So you see he's past the ego. He's conversing with the id and superego under Freud's theories. But I don't think there are defined lines past that to say which is the id or...

which is the superego in these scenes without any real meaning, and would only lead us to backtracking on elements to re-explain them later with more detail. Now, Freud laid out a supposed set of stages for personality development from birth all the way through adulthood. He believed that each stage encountered a central issue, and how that issue was handled would determine the characteristics of our developed adult personalities.

If it was done properly, we would become a well-adjusted, typical, healthy adult. But if it was done improperly, we would develop a fixation. being stuck in one of these stages and unconsciously embodying unhealthy habits to try and achieve the lost satisfaction we felt from that stage. First, there's the oral stage, which is from birth until one year, characterized by pleasure derived from the mouth. Freud reasoned these pleasure centers at each stage based on the idea that life is seeking out pleasure and looking at what part of the body characterized those developmental years regarding pleasure.

So the core issue here is breastfeeding and incorrectly timed weaning would lead to a fixation, which would be expressed in activities related to the mouth, like smoking or chewing gum, while the person themselves would end up quite passive, gullible, immature, and even manipulative. Next up is the anal stage, taking place from one year through our third. You can guess it centers around, well, the rear end of our bodies, more specifically to Freud, the act of toilet training.

Someone with too little or too much emphasis in the stage could either become anal-expulsive or anal-retentive, respectively. An expulsive person would end up reckless, disorganized, and defiant, while a retentive one would be overly neat and organized, basically like a claim-free. From year 3 through 6, we undergo the phallic stage, where the focus of pleasure shifts, according to Freud, to the genitals.

Here we also began to differentiate between male and female, and by that I mean ignoring that women even existed for the most part in focusing on some absolutely insane things. theories involving sexual development. We'll come back to those in a dedicated section though, so for now just know that the fixations here are either excessive masculinity for males, or the need for attention and domination for females, as well as promiscuity and low self-esteem across the board.

The last two stages don't really have much of note. The latent stage of 6 to puberty is the repression of sexual feelings, with the fixation resulting in the inability to have fulfilling non-sexual relationships, And after puberty, there's the genital stage, which is just the default stage of adulthood, if one has moved on from any fixations. Evangelion has a few direct mentions here, starting with the oral stage. Most notably, episode 20's second title is Weaving a Story Part 2 Oral Stage, which is the episode centered around Shinji's unconscious, after it achieves a 400% sync rate and is taken up into Unit 01. We can only assume this presents Shinji as having an oral fixation backed up further by this image used in those same 22 minutes of him breastfeeding the core issue of the stage. The traits of this fixation also fit within his character.

He is exceptionally passive, often expressly stating he'd rather please everyone by simply doing what they say and then defending that position. He can be quite gullible, at least to Asuka who can egg him on easily whether it's reckless piloting or the dare to kiss her. His immaturity shows when no one is watching. Like calling Asuka a child after the mama scene, and his own unconscious full of screaming scenes or scenes of his childhood.

When faced with pressure from other consciousnesses seeing his own, he lashes out, yelling and crying for someone to solve his issues, and blaming others for lying. Quite immature. And manipulative is the least present, but seen clearly in the end of Evangelion, where he uses Asuka for his own pleasure consciously in the hospital scene, and unconsciously when he begs for her help in the collective consciousness of human instrumentality. He claims he needs her, but as she says, anyone would do, expressing this manipulation.

How he developed the fixation, though, is more of a wonder. Yui dies when he's four years old, meaning he'd be well out of the oral stage. Plus, she seemed to be a genuinely caring mother who would have taken proper care of a young child. So going on Freud's idea that improper weaning would be what causes an oral fixation, it- doesn't really make sense because Yui doesn't seem like the kind of person who would mess that up.

Now, we can see more of his character and some of Asuka's as well in the Felix stage though. Asuka lost her mother at 4 as well, giving them each a great conflict within this state that Freud certainly would have claimed to cause a fixation. Continuing with Shinji, the low self-esteem certainly fits here, with his often repeated claims that he isn't worth much of anything at all, like his fight with Toji saying He himself is a scoundrel who should be hit.

But more interesting is Asuka, who fits with Freud's quite demeaning ideas. We've stated already how Kaji is quite a dominating person, often holding sexual intimacy over Masato in scenes directly contrasted against Asuka in Shinji's. She is desiring someone who will take her, not someone who has to ask to do so.

Working under Freud's theory, we could reason she likes Kaji for that reason, the need for domination across the board. required from Phaelic stage fixation. The need for attention is prominent in her as well, serving as the defining interaction between her and Kaji and really almost anyone, and most of her character is defined by this, giving us the ever-famous look at me as she spells out her actions in plain detail. Like she explains to Rei, she pilots so she can be witnessed, a juxtaposition to the other two pilots'uncertainty of their own reasons.

So, Asuka and Shinji each have a fixation in this stage, but again let's get deeper into it, let's see how exactly they would have had it. Well we didn't cover the issue that would cause it here yet because, well, strap in, it's when things get really wild. Oedipus Rex is a play written by ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, a series of three which survive concerning the titular Oedipus.

Very briefly, it is the story of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Laius, the king of Thebes, is informed that his son will one day kill him and marry his wife, the queen. So to avoid this, he sends his son away after birth, which of course leads to Oedipus having no knowledge of his family, thus leading to him unwittingly doing exactly as the prophecy stated, killing his father and marrying him.

his mother. When this is revealed, he gouges out his own eyes while his mother hangs herself. This play inspired the name for Freud's Oedipus Complex, what he believed to be the phallic stage desire within every male to kill his father and achieve pleasure through his mother.

He put some logic to this idea as follows. Aware of the penis and its connection to pleasure, they search out a nice, warm, comforting outlet for that pleasure. At a young age and without many options, they naturally turn to their mother.

mother as this source. However, clearly the father stands in the way, which presents a problem. Dad has to be gotten rid of to abide by the pleasure principle.

But he's the larger, faster, stronger one, so what if he finds out about this, and what if they failed in killing their father and face retribution? Well, surely the father must retaliate in the worst way imaginable, which Freud believed was castration. In a great fear of this, they go into latency and repress their sexual desires, beginning to respect rather than hate their fathers, identifying with him and finding safety in that. Now, clearly key to resolving this stage is the presence of a father, since he's one half of the issue.

Now, you'll notice a problem with this idea being a whole stage of child development. Not everyone has a penis. Well, that itself was Freud's answer, as he purported that females go through something called penis envy.

Holding a similar thought process to the males, he believed girls must witness their lack of a penis and assume they were already castrated. leading to a lifelong sense of inferiority. With this in mind, they begin to shift their parental agences, rejecting their mother as another inferior being and a rival for the attention of their father, who they begin to desire in a more deep-held desire to be more masculine. If they solve the complex correctly, they'll do the same as the males and identify with their same-sex parent once more.

There is even more to all of this, but it's not really worth mentioning in any more detail than this because... while it's quite clearly both insane and extraordinarily demeaning all at once. If I mention that the Evangelion units contain the souls of the pilots'mothers, which is why they act at their own times to protect the pilots, and how the entry plugs are basically one big metaphor for the womb, then you can begin to see where this comes into play.

The pilots are inside of their mothers, something the series isn't subtle about, reminding us very often how warm and familiar the fluid-filled entry plugs are. An idea based around conflict, we clearly see it in Shinji. The father needing to be present for a successful resolution of the complex, in addition to his mother being absent as well, would no doubt leave lasting marks as far as Freud was concerned. The younger Ikari holds a deep antagonism, told his father, shifting anywhere from attempting a successful resolution by accepting and seeking Gendo's praise. to going full on Oedipus when he states his hatred directly for his father.

He realizes who his true enemy is after some mental prodding, when in his own mind, even wishing to stab the man to death as he did the angels who he thought was his enemy. And this is all something he realizes while he's physically integrated with Unit 01, the manifestation of his mother. We can see the holding of power over the younger side as well, with Gendo being able to take away Shinji's source of power at any time. which he does after forcing Unit-01 to nearly kill Toji against his son's will. Of course, this is all subconscious as well, bubbling up in actions across the series or past the ego boundary, and only directly during scenes with the unconscious.

Supposedly an unresolved complex would lead to Unit-01 becoming aggressive, vain, or over-ambitious, but aggressive is the only one which really fits Shinji, and only in flashes of his more animalistic nature, witnessed in the minority of his screentime. We see more of this incestuous nature from Misato, whose relationship with Kaji is explained by herself as a reminder of her father. Drunk after a wedding, she opens up as to the real reason she left him all those years ago, the realization that what she loved about him were the traits of her father, who she claimed to hate.

He left no time for Misato or her mother due to his work with Nerve, and he wasn't very active in her life or even caring in general, except for one grand action. saving her life, something which would confuse her forever. Witnessing the second impact, he places Misato in the only available escape pod, ensuring the safety of her own life over his.

As such, unable to ever resolve her feelings for the man, Freud would likely assess that this is the real reason for all of Misato's actions, an unconscious drive to express these feelings, something she backs up herself with his speech to Kaji. She joins Nerv just the same, dedicates her life to it just the same, but... claims these are for distraction and revenge, in reality wishing to understand the man who left her.

I mention this here because it's also likely, according to Freud, some relation to phallic stage issues. Unable to ever resolve penis envy due to her absent father, she remained obsessed with him, transferring the obsession to an unconscious desire for the traits he held. It would be a complex, like any of the ones we discussed with Shinji or Asuka.

In Freud's Pleasure Principle, he saw an answer for every action that takes place in life. This depends on the idea of drives, which could roughly be called instincts, but people on the internet will get snippy about that because of some apparent past translation errors. But drives are explanations for our behavior through inherent traits of the species.

For example, in On Topic, the instinct to breastfeed. We don't explain to a newborn that they need to nurse for survival or how they're to do it they just have a natural drive to do so even if they don't understand that fact you could say the same for nourishment in general for sleep for sex for many behaviors all things we don't have to learn but do temper a desire for later in life you can see why he reasoned the id which operates on the pleasure principle came first with this logic now for a reason that one drive could explain life eros or the life drive like a subset of the pleasure principle creating the energy which drives us forward called libido. The basis of Eros is that everything we do we derive some sort of pleasure from, which pushes us onwards. We eat because of pleasure, sleep because of pleasure, have sex because of pleasure, and whatever we could reason otherwise is just another explanation of finding pleasure. For example, you could say you eat simply for survival, not for pleasure at all, but then aren't you just surviving for other pleasures?

Maybe we engage in no pleasure whatsoever, but then the satisfaction of doing so could be called a pleasure as well. As such, all behavior is explained by securing satisfaction, which often, as Freud believed, came in the form of releasing sexual energy, in line with how most of his ideas came back to sex. And that's mostly how we see it represented in Evangelion as well.

As we dive through the jumbled mess of the character's inner thoughts, they're resolved most often as a sexual drive. Shinji sees the repetitive images of all his attractions, asking if he would like to become one with them, presenting the act as an ultimate melding of body and spirit between two people. Even in the darkest moments of the series, sex runs through as a motivating factor, like distracting Shinji of his pleas in the hospital scene.

I bring this up because it shows pleasure as a reason for survival. The younger Ikari is at his worst, overcome with guilt and despair after killing Kaworu. Misato later has to drag him along as he's content to simply lie down and die when faced with danger.

Yet this terrible, manipulative desire is something which temporarily breaks him from this state and forces him to some kind of action. It's also how Misato motivates him to push onwards before she dies. Now, Misato's inner exploration is almost entirely about sex, the most interesting coming in the end of Evangelion as well, where Shinji witnesses her in the act and The characters debate the real point of sex.

Some say it's simply seeking the pleasure of others, while Masato calls for its higher benefits. Proof of not just our value, but even of our existence itself. If you look at this with Eros in mind, it makes Freudian sense.

Since the release of sexual energy is the main secure of satisfaction, the point of life itself, then sex would have the context of proving one is even alive to begin with. This also adds context to Shinji and Arash. Asuka's relationship, underlining their somewhat romantic encounters as an element of human nature itself.

Since we seek such a release as the reason to exist, even two people who hate each other on the outside may still desire it from one another. It's quite a pessimistic view for the defining drive of life, but that's Freud. However, he came to witness behavior he couldn't explain through the life drive, such as the tendency to relive painful experiences or people engaging in self-destructive behaviors.

This would conflict with the pleasure principle because there's no logical reason to do something with no pleasure gained under it. But what if pleasure wasn't the root? What if deep in the human psyche there was some final, some greater form of satisfaction to explain it all? Beginning to think there may be something like this under the surface, he introduced the concept of the death drive or thanatos, although that second name would be added later by others.

The energy created by this drive was named distruto in opposition to libido. The death drive is quite simply the hidden, unconscious desire within all humans to die, reasoned as a pleasurable return to a simple state. Freud's ideas all revolved around conflict and tension, and how these internal tensions created anxieties within humans. Working under this assumption, it could be reasoned that a previous, more basic and thus relaxed state would be desirable.

It will always be so because we are always in tension, and so the desire for it is eternal. He ended the idea with this, The most basic state we can achieve is death. It's seen as a return to what we once were, an unthinking, unfeeling collection of atoms without anxiety. And not just on the individual level as humans, but overall for life itself. It all at some point sprung from inanimate objects It's a mass devoid of consciousness somewhere along the line beginning to feel and thus suffering of having higher thought.

The only way to get close to that state without tension would be to remove our consciousness that sprung forth. To die. Venetos is directly addressed in the series, with Nerv members often calling out things like Destrudo is rising during tense psychological scenes. We can even see it here on one of the psychographs as one of the axes along with Libido on the other. With Nerv as monitor.

Monitoring in all their technobabble is actually the Freudian idea of consciousness. When we consider the mention of things like ego boundaries and sync rates, you could potentially read piloting an AVA as an act of allowing the animalistic unconscious forces to manifest their energy into combat. The danger line they watch out for would be the final point where such a thing is safe without destroying the ego of the pilot, which would turn them into a simple form for the id and superego to utilize. You could also see this in how the AVA units, which contain humans, and souls go berserk. Now for more view of Thanatos, it is also central to Seal's plans in the third impact, and we could see them as a representation of it on the whole.

While they and Gendo both desire the impact, he is seeking the collective consciousness while they want it to lead to the end of mankind. They speak to the returning of man to his true form of life and death in equal measures and how such things will be the only peace for their souls. They desire the non-existence from the world.

fraud supposed was inherent to all beings, seeking relief from the tension included within the fabric of consciousness. To achieve this, they make Shinji, who holds control over the outcome of the third impact, have his own distruto rise, driving Shinji past the ego boundary so he gives into that destructive force no longer tempered by the ego, and decides to end the world. There's a lot that's interesting in there, like how the collective unconsciousness could be the power of God itself, but the specifics of the third impact are not. third impact are, well, they deserve a whole explainer of their own and how it relates to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, a video I'd love to make because it would be more introspective like the Lane video, where this one is a bit more shallow in favor of direct explanation.

Freud explained defense mechanisms as a specific process of the unconscious mind, used to prevent the id and superego from making it to consciousness. They weren't pathological to him, unhealthy things to be solved like complexes, but rather as a part of the daily life necessary to maintaining a healthy balance within consciousness. You'll see these differ between sources, so this won't be an all-exhaustive list of every defense mechanism, but just a select few memorable ones.

And I'll be using Evangelion as a examples of each, since they're all relatively short and are best explained through examples. First off, there's sublimation, which is the process of turning these darker motivations into a positive energy. Gendo is our best example here.

Feeling just as inadequate as his son, and depressed and alone at the loss of his wife, he turns the negative energy of these emotions into something he believes to be genuinely positive for all, the human instrumentality project. His feelings are so strong that his act of sublimation becomes most of his action in general. Next we have Displacement, where one refocuses their dark thoughts and desires into a more acceptable route.

This is an id-super-ego conflict. The former needs to express negative energy in accordance with the latter. Now this is Shinji fighting the angels with the aggression he feels towards his father. He questions why he fights many times, culminating in the scene where he repeatedly tries to affirm the angels as his enemy, but the images slowly turn to his father instead.

He uncovers his act of displacement. He wanted to kill something, but it's not acceptable to kill his father, so he killed what everyone told him was the enemy. Next, we have projection, which is a defense mechanism where one places the desires they're uncomfortable with on others.

This one is all Asuka, as she pins sexual blame on many others, while herself making inappropriate passes at Kaji and secretly deep down desiring such things. She expresses a disgust for Masato's adult view of sex, but then desires everything adult. don't. It's also seen in how she calls Rey a doll, a reference to her own mother's stand-in doll for Asuka.

Out of this fear, she places this trait on someone else to feel like she isn't so. And this is also likely part of her chance scene, where the other voice actors read out her lines as she repeats, that's not me. By so often placing her desires on them, the angel examining her mind actually confuses this with her true nature.

Next, there's rationalization, which is the act of giving the thought to a person. or feeling of a more rational or acceptable motivation, quite easily seen in how Masato exposits about her own desire to join NERV, realizing later it was just chasing her father, not helping the world. And for one last defense mechanism, we can look at regression. Faced with a great trauma, the individual returns to a previous state of their development to cope.

This is Shinji pretty much any time he's faced with great psychological damage inside of Unit 1. He'll curl up into the fetal position in this warm enclosure, before going back to the memories of his mother and his own childhood. Since he's unable to reason with everything going on, he runs from it all, runs from the displeasure to an earlier stage where no one would be able to comprehend such a thing. And that's going to do it for Freud's influence on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

If you liked this video or the lame one before it, let me know because there's definitely more topics in here I can discuss. I do still want to tackle how Evangelion itself tackles the collection. collective unconsciousness, because there really is genuinely some super interesting stuff in there with Seal's plan and Gendo's plan, and you know, basically stating that the collective unconsciousness and that more basic state that it represents is itself the power of God. And you can see how that interplays. with the idea of Adam and Lilith, these creations of God and angels, which the humans are one of, and there's so much interesting going on in there, and I think we can actually begin to make sense of the third impact and everything before it through that, so I would love to do that if that's something you want to see, and I think it would be a bit more deep and reflective than this video was.

I called this section Freud Off because, Jesus Christ, I want to be done with this. I understand Freud, he considered the unconscious. conscience.

A lot of things came from that. A lot of people built on that idea and made actual good research, but oh my god, I didn't think I'd ever have to say the phrase penis envy in a video. I want to be done with Freud.

I'm honestly glad this is over. So, you know, any support on this video would be greatly appreciated because it would help out since this one was kind of a pain to make. I obviously still enjoyed doing it, but I wanted to be done more than usual.

So, likes and comments always help. They're also good because they let me know what you liked. And comments especially because I can see your input on these. I'm sure there are going to be some people more versed in psychoanalysis than me who will add some corrections in the comments and I do welcome that because there's no way I could cover everything completely here.

So please, I guess, basically help finish off the video in the comments there because this is always a community effort and I love to see your input. I'll have some more comments from this video in the front of the next one when that eventually comes out if it does, if this does well and anything like that. You'll notice I'm rambling a lot because I didn't write write an outro for this video because I was literally that done with wanting to talk about Freud. So I think I said everything I really needed to cover here. The next video will probably be Ghost in the Shell and Akira who each slightly take a glance at some of these Jungian ideas.

So maybe we'll get into that one. Maybe we'll just make the video explaining Evangelion's take on it. So we'll have to see what people want more. But anyway, important links in the pinned comment, Twitter, occasionally post stupid things, me in outfits, different things.

if you really want that. Discord, where everyone hangs out and has discussions. Every, rarely, occasionally we do community nights and I'll pop in, but I feel bad because I'm very busy and can't do it as much as I'd like to.

But most importantly down there will be Patreon with these lovely people above me, support me, and help me keep doing insane stuff like this every week. But anyway, I'll just say thank you for watching as always, for spending some time with me, and I hope I'll see you again soon.

Transcript for:Exploring Freud's Influence in Anime

Transcript for:
Exploring Freud's Influence in Anime