Psychoanalysing Reiner Braun

it is quite a popular activity of academics commentators and influencers alike to try and provide psychical or psychological accounts of fictional characters this can be a means for renewed interest and engagement with artistic forms creative practices and a revitalized and renewed critique of pop culture one of ernest jones most famous pieces as a welsh psychoanalyst was a text looking into the oedipus complex and shakespeare's hamlet lionel trilling will make the statement that it's all well and good to apply psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory to fictional worlds and peoples but in the end none of these characters have childhoods or developed simply because they aren't real now i agree with this to a certain extent that what do we really gain from creating elaborate psychobiographies and speculative histories of particular fictional characters when these sorts of efforts can be applied to the real world then again might this characters not serve as primary exemplars for certain neuroses psychosis and mental states that we see all the time in waking life shingeki non-kyojin otherwise known as attack on titan is a manga series that has been recently adapted into anime form through several series originally restricted by hajime sayama and adapted into audio visual format by wit and more recently mapper studios we largely follow the character growth of aaron jaeger who witnesses his mother being killed as his hometown is invaded by great hulking giants called titans aaron goes along several arcs as he is part of the survey corps a military group responsible for scouting beyond the city walls and gathering as much knowledge as they can on the titans with aaron's progression and the story in general we learn a lot more about the nature of the titans to a degree their origin does lie somewhere within human control but also carries an odd metaphysical aspect to it as well but without going too much further into this the most recent releases in the manga in the anime series have turned this entire dimension on its head the power of titans has been utilized and weaponized by nation states for the purpose of supranational control and subjugation as such the most recent arc of attack on titan is a shift from an action horror mystery form of narrative to one that is political and sociocultural rhino brown who up until this point has been perceived as an antagonist in the series is a central figure in this latter sociopolitical arc despite what i have said about what we can gain from analyzing fictional characters rhino as an antagonized and antagonist character in the narrative largely corresponds with the psychological phenomena known as split personality disorder as such this investigation is divided into three parts firstly how his character embodies what melanie klein refers to as the paranoid schizoid position second an excursion into the relevance of the armored titan which he has the ability to turn into to political metaphor and political subjectivity in addition to how this complements reiner's position as a split subject and thirdly the depressive position to melanie klein within which the ego faces potential annihilation as much as a possibility for creative solution what i hope you will gain from this investigation are insights into basic psychological concepts in accordance with melanie klein and jacqueline khan specifically as well as of course a fun excursion into the mind of a fictional character from a very well beloved anime series and i must say off the back quickly i apologize for the quality of the audio and maybe the quietness of my voice throughout this video i'm still getting used to using a microphone either way i'd greatly appreciate it if you sat through the majority of this video and i do recommend you sit down with a hot beverage of your choice or play an easy video game in the background as i slowly wade my way through this cycle called quagmire which is rhino brown and with that i'll make a starter foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] what is of interest in rhino brown's character is that he's not simply split on psychological grounds but he also has this fantastic ability to shift into one of the nine titans since he holds the power of the armored titan when he is undercover on paradise in the survey core he is split politically insofar as he must blend in with the people of paradise as well as remember his mission as a warrior a soldier for the marley nation what i wish to do through a clinian analysis of rhino's character his splits even if fantastically physical and political is to ascribe to him the position of being a paranoid schizoid rather the persistent regression to this position it is a position that is key for childhood development yet can remain unresolved if via trauma there's been no opportunity for a resolution i'll provide a quote by hannah segall in her introduction to the work of melanie klein the leading anxiety in the paranoid schizoid position is that of the persecuted object or objects will get inside the ego and overwhelm and annihilate both the ideal object and the self these features of the anxiety and object relationships experienced during this phase of development led melanie klein to call the paranoid schizoid position since the leading anxiety is paranoid and the state of the ego and his objects is characterized by the splitting which is schizoid you certainly don't need to go that far into rhino's character and the manga and the anime to find exactly where he has these splits i think it would benefit firstly to look at the general sort of splits he has in his ideologue to himself firstly primarily the idealization of marley and secondly the denied devil's apparatus consider the scene where reiner is on the warrior training squad and he is accused by porco of having nothing to his character in terms of strength agility or intelligence beyond his mere perseverance and adherence to malian doctrine other than that he has nothing else that really puts him above any of the rest of his colleagues as such why should he have any expectation of himself to inherit one of the nine the answer to this lies in reiner's response to porque's accusations with further even more severe accusations of him not understanding the breadth and depth of the mission they are on and being an alden restorationist interestingly this is the precise opposite of the idealized marley loyalist the usurper that is underneath lying within the marination ready to sabotage it from within this object of the denied aldian is the opposite of the idealized marlin as such sits on the other side of this split the split that constitutes reiner's of course this only ends in tears for reiner as he's subsequently beaten by porco there is a very similar set of events that occurs to reiner on paradise after the unexpected death of marcel and he considers that the group should head back to marley what they have hoping to recover the draw titan as well when reiner responds with the same level of patriotism annie responds by accusing him of his sembled nature and once again coming to blows by this point i hope to have covered enough of what constitutes rhinos hugo from the idealized side but what about the thing which she is less conscious of hajime isayama actually provides us an insight into rhino's infantile life through seeing between himself and his mother reiner learns two very important facts through this single intimate moment with his mother firstly about the penitents that must be paid by the eldians to the malian people through caging themselves in ghettos and sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the nation on the part of their own people's sins the second is a much more real aspect of rhino's own history that being the nature of his father as a marlian it is illegal of course for mali's to procreate with aldians and it is further evident that reiner's mother greatly resents the fact they are a split family through what could be understood as the idealization of his own mother unconsciously via the adherence to malian doctrine he renders aldians and further the unrepenting sinful demons of paradise as abject to throw speculative span into the works further i would want to presume that he actually resents his father like he resents the eldians and that possibly sits as an unconscious fact in his psyche that is masked by an incredible adherence to the abjection of the elden people what i mean here in short is that he consciously idealizes the marlian people and his role as a warrior while unconsciously idealizing what his mother teaches him what she represents while he is abject to the elden people and the demons and unpenitent people of paradise whilst unconsciously resenting his father's absence and thus splits nature of his family of course when he does finally meet his father for the single and only time he is met with hostility on the part of his father that he does not wish for them to be reunited as a family and he himself actually being in his workshop is a serious threat to rhino's father's rights as a marlin citizen since it would certainly prove that he had procreated with an aldian his father's response representing the denied and abject side of rhino's ego is a threat of absolute annihilation of the ego in its entirety since his abject side of the split which reiner and his mother resents can overwhelm the idealized side as such we see that reiner represses his encounter entirely and keeps moving along with his adherence to malian doctrine despite the fact that he knows deeply unconsciously that is all just assemblance just like his hopes and dreams for a reunited family without going too far into the oedipus complex i would want to refer to reiner's state of mind at this point in his childhood as unresolved as such he has remained in the paranoid schizoid phase somewhat or has regularly found himself returning to it throughout his life because he has not been able to find a means by which to realize the semblance aspect of his fantasies his idealizations as objections but he's only been able to repress them he's only been able to deny them through further neurotic behavior in his adherences to morally his objections to elder and his so-called responsibilities so hopefully through that very complicated point i've been able to illustrate his split ideal and denying side in addition to their dimensions unconscious and unconscious planes it really wasn't my intention to get caught up in this small section for so long but it's so easy to just get caught up in the multi-faceted dimensionality of rainer's character and how well he's written for a non-protagonist nevertheless at this point we ought to move on to his young adult phase where he appears most in the series in the manga and his regressions to split states of mind and returns to paranoid schizoid states of mind further i think it's worth explaining what exactly are his schizophrenic facets and what are his paranoia facets the first young adult point of regression or at least signal a progression like to point out when reiner is working with the paradis survey corps undercover when he saves connie springer from a titan incredibly thankful to reiner connie asks berthold whether reiner was always the saving type but hold responds in an interesting manner saying that orion used to be the warrior type understandably there's quite a few interpretations you can give to what berthold says here reiner has just saved one of the so-called enemies of marley a devil eldian from a titan then again i think there's something more to look into here and that is on one side berthold sees that reiner has somewhat improved on being just a warrior who adheres to ideas of marley and supremacy further reiner's response an absolute dumbfounded confusion what berthold says is an interesting key to his very literal schizophrenic nature when rhino asks what berthold is talking about i do not believe that simply him remaining undercover i think that's the basis that he really has split his personality into as an adult that he is currently adhering to the side where he wants to support his brethren in the survey corps you could say it's a somewhat of a synthesis between the abject and the idealized in the idea of idealizing your fellow ld and survey corps members but it's still nonetheless unresolved because reiner still remains completely oblivious here to his mission as a warrior for marley again to remind ourselves of klein's definition of schizophrenia the schizoid position it is about you being split your ego split one side being one that you incorporate whilst the other attempts to attack and annihilate the other side that they both work against each other and thus can more or less manifest as hallucinatory things or as complete amnesia states of mind towards other halves of the ego and its experiences the second point of regression to the paranoid schizoid position like to point out is in marco's death which we of course see early on in the story yet we get a good insight into it later on it turns out that marco overheard a conversation between a reunited reiner berthold and annie about what their plans were in taking down the walls after aaron's success in blocking it marco overhears them referring to their own respective titans as such they do not sit idly whilst it's possible that marca could bring it this information back to the survey corps as such they subdue him a while reiner has marco captured in his arms he orders for annie to take off his odm gear the only means he would have to escape death by titan annie with great reluctance follows rhino's orders and removes his gear leaving marco to be eaten alive by a titan in a very similar state of shock to what we refer to prior reiner exclaims from afar why is marco being eaten here rhino has regressed to the paranoid schizoid position in an inverse manner to the prior where he was in conversation with annie and berthold a warrior for marley and all the while he's preparing marco for his death he only then switches back to being a member of the survey corps where he's remarking how horrific it is to see his friend's death let us clarify here then what precisely makes this paranoid as well as schizoid the paranoid side of things comes from the ego's anxious reaction to the reality of splitting as such when rhino makes the switch as we've seen prior in his splitting moments he is exiting one state of mind and re-entering in another through anxiety this reality is briefly apparent for him through this sense of anxiety that he is split very similar to when his father told him that he did not want to be reunited again with his mother reiner repressed this anxious moment this anxiety recurs at every point the split becomes apparent to him and as such becomes the signal for him to then repress it once more as such he is paranoid of these moments under such paranoid of his opposite facets of his ego as well as the fact that you split in the first place the third regressive example i will cover is one incredibly familiar to everybody who watches the anime and certainly given the themes i've talked about is the best example of rhino facing his split ego this being when reiner and berthold reveal to aaron and the survey corps the fact that they aren't the armored and colossal titans in another unresolved synthesis of the idealized abject reiner jovially reveals to aaron that he is alongside berthold responsible for the destruction of aaron's own hometown all that berthold can do is look on with absolute awe and terror with what rhino is revealing to their enemies i will let witch studios own fantastic direction of the scene speak for itself me foreign this is the first instance of rhino facing up to his splits nature in a manner that we might call courageous what he does next regardless of the morality of his decision is a courageous act like he does when he faces his father and subsequently represses that memory yes courage does require an air of repression because how else are we going to escape our own anxious uncanniness and make do the promises we made to people to ourselves to the world in reiner's case regardless of its correctness it is fulfilling his oath as a warrior [Music] [Music] [Music] to take the terminology of jacques clarke another psychoanalyst reiner faces the real or reality here for the first time that he is a split subject that he is unfamiliar with his own actions and that he is not sure of what the world sees of him as such he makes the decision to fulfill the one thing he's stuck to his entire life so far and that is to the oath of being a warrior in courageously escaping the anxious real and moving to what i'll call a symbolic he takes on the first word the first notion of reason that he is a warrior by the way let's talk about that so hopefully that serves as a good break from what is probably the worst asmr voice you've ever heard i want to apologize again that this is definitely a new thing for me hearing the sound of my own voice through a microphone and i will try to do better as we keep going so this section is oriented around rhinos particular ability to inherit and use one of the powers of the nine titans being the armored titan what this power represents about him and how it complements his already split and troubled psyche in short ymir whom all the elders descend from was the first founding titan which became the first of the nine titan powers there are to the eight being created by ymir for particular purposes and tasks primarily in waging war the founding titan ymir and the nine titans as well as all their descendants were born and inherited the titans out of a time of war reiner and his colleagues have inherited the powers of the nine in a very interesting time and place given the storyline of an attack on titan universe it is a point where the mechanisms for waging war machines and technologies have even superseded the powers of the nine titans because of this the powers of the night and further the ldn people's place under marley is very tenuous as marley is realizing that they cannot rely on the titan powers to remain a global political superpower forever as for the first time it is now possible to kill a titan without the usage or corruption of another titan power it is simply possible with a large enough gun so why was it that reiner inherited the armored titan theo mcgaff the commander of the warrior program talks about reiner's inherent perseverance and stalwartness of character as suitable for the tasks of the armored titan this sounds reasonable enough however bear in mind that the only reason that reiner is there to inherit the armored titan is because marcel prohibited his brother porco from inheriting it himself rhino was simply the next candidate in line it would be interesting to consider porco's ability to actually wield the armored titan given that very similar to marcel and the jaw titan he is very quick-witted and rather more suited for the jaw titan as we see after he reclaims it this is mere canonical speculation nonetheless semblant fake or no reiner and his character are well suited for the armored title let me further elaborate that reiner's neurosis his persistent regression to paranoid schizoid states of mind and split personality make him suited for the armored titan because what does armor do it shields and protects from damage and violence but it also serves as a mask of the face and of the body prohibiting people from seeing the original vulnerability underneath each one of the nine titans and even the pure titans are capable of exhibiting some form of emotion take for example zeke's beast titan and annie's female titan then consider the surreal and absurd facial expressions that are locked in the faces of most pure titans every physically manifest titan masks or protects some form of humanity reiner's titan goes further insofar as there's very little you can see through reiner's own titan it's a very locked and plated face what you can only really see difference with the opening and closing of the mouth i think something that's particularly terrifying is that as revealed in season 4 and later in the manga when the warrior candidates are still children their manifest titan form does not correlate with their age the people of shuganshina district of course are scarred with the images of a colossal titan and a heavily armored titan breaking down the walls and changing life forever completely unknown of the fact that deep inside both of those titans or children despite the general variance of deformities in pure titans and the nine titan powers they still resemble something of an outline of an adult human being so reiner and berthold when they are using their titans are reflected through an outline of them as adults and they are expected to behave as adults in waging war against other nations when inside of their titans this is the masking i am talking about the masking of reason and of symbolic authority and place on top of the inherent truth in reality that they are still children i think this frankly original point drives home the fact that reiner continually progresses to a child-like state of mind that of this primordial anxiety when faced with the father and the mother despite his resolute outward character let's put this in lacanian terms again bruce fink in his text the canadian subject between language and jury source says what cannot be said in language is not part of its reality it does not exist strictly speaking in lackholm's terminology existence is a product of language language brings things into existence makes them part of human reality things which had no existence prior to being ciphered symbolized or put into words the real therefore does not exist what do we mean here so when rhino revealed his nature as the armored titan the server core and to aaron he traversed the real he went through a process where his world fell apart and went into egoic oblivion he picked himself up again and regained his ego through adherence to a symbol that of being a warrior being a warrior means that reiner exists he exists through a symbolic chain a purpose and therefore a sense of time and place through his purpose as a warrior the real is when he faces the fact that his assembland as has been revealed to him several times by his colleagues and the world as a whole the reality of assembling nature can now be put into words which is why he meets it with silence and responds to it either with words or with violence with being a warrior or turning into the armored titan the armored titan serves as a pretty good jekyll hyde scenario here insofar as his switch to the armored titan masks something entirely and denies another half entirely within him reinforcing this split state of mind when reiner is a warrior when he is masked and armored by his titan he insists to be like the symbolic and he denies reality [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] yes in the paranoid schizoid position the main anxiety is that the ego will be destroyed by the bad object or objects in the depressive position spring from ambivalence and the child's main anxiety is that its own destructive impulses have destroyed or will destroy the object he loves and totally depends on beyond simply what klein means in the depressive position i think depression can be well predicated with the term fatalism in many cases the goodness in life is gone and it is my fault and now all i feel is ambivalence given there is nothing else i can do to account for the fact that i have lived a conflicted life that i have led separate lives and that they cannot co-exist or become synthesized the depressive position however is something that we are always working through it constitutes what it's like to be an adult let alone be somebody who can understand the breadth and struggles of relating to other people and just because there is no permanent way to subdue the depressive position doesn't mean that we cannot find creative ways to live with it and to account for its issues let me briefly assert that in childhood development the depressive position is somewhat dealt with through creativity through play and learning languages the same ideas are repeated in adulthood where creativity relationships activities and whatever helps you work through the depressive position further to find some synthesis between what is good and what is bad yet even these minor syntheses of situations are always semblant only ever temporary however that also implies that you can also do nothing you can sit in ambivalence and anticipate and welcome the parts of yourself and the world that will destroy the good things in life you have held dear reiner brown's conflicted life comes to a head during the final fight in shigenshina upon the death of berthold and his saving by zeke strangely upon his return to marley his life simply begins to repeat again despite his many failures and his mission on paradise he is still a warrior he still wages wars for marley and he still holds the armoured titan the lack of change in rainer's role as a warrior despite killing hundreds and his own life being on the line several times is the antecedent for his consequent ambivalent life upon returning to marley he is not a warrior because he wants to or because he can reaffirm himself with marley and doctrine or render the aldians and parrot as abject he does it just because there's nothing else to do scenarios i would have previously ignited of regression to the paranoid schizoid situation no longer achieves anything for example when rhino first meets porco again after the battle of forslava porco accuses him of being constantly saved over and over again by various different people obviously implying the fact that his own brother had saved reiner at the cost of his life ryana can only respond in an ambivalent assertion that this might have been the case this is further exemplified through the sense of debt that rhino feels towards marcel him giving his life an alarm reiner to actually become a warrior despite marcel's intentions to protect porco instead porco now knows that rhino wants to be his brother in some ways this is the last nail in the coffin for a sense of depressive ambivalence in rhino since not only are his ideals and objections semblant but his ways to account for them are just assemblant like trying to behave like somebody else but for pity's sake let's acknowledge the elephant in the room reiner's desire to die ryan has anticipated his own death even in the battle of shigen shina where he was captured by hanji and the survey corps and questioned at this point he does acknowledge some of the good things that have come in his life yet are certainly gone forever for him like his peculiar love for crystalline otherwise known as historia rhys by at least asking hanji to pass on a letter from yamir to krista this ymir not this one i'm not really sure why this is a thing before being killed zeke then pulls him out the gutter one more time later exclaiming how lucky he is to be alive i sincerely doubt reiner feels particularly lucky you've already seen that opening scene where reina actively tries to commit suicide using a rifle but this is so well complemented with the concurrent dialogue between ryanair and aaron giving advice and producing a friendship with his most valued enemy this scene must for rhino embody his reflection on its conflictual life up until now the realization of his paranoid schizophrenia it is an extremely impactful scene not solely on the part of what reiner has been through but on the pressures that are put upon the warrior candidates how the mali nation sincerely entrusted committing war crimes to literal children reiner sits on the verge of ending his life anticipating complete egoic destruction on the part of his conventional life in the world nonetheless he does find his particular creative and active solutions to deal with the depressive position one key development out of the depressive position for cline is the recognition not of part objects or split objects of the ego and the world but of whole objects and whole people in other words the realization that people are people in themselves rather than either things to be idealized or to become abject this recognition of the whole object the whole person comes in falco's interruption of reiner suicide attempt in his bashing on the wall trying to get his attention while reiner gasps for air and is in shock at what he's just tried to do he realizes what is going to keep him going these being falco and gabby as the next warrior candidates both seeking to inherit reiner's armoured titan falco and gabby can be regarded as innocent people mere children filled with mali induction and resolve to wage war against elder and the surrounding nations yet still innocent in the eyes of reiner and importantly a chance for redemption a chance to stop this repetition gabby of course being of the same family as reiner sees him as an ideal figure or person falco does so as well through aspiring to take his position as the owner of the armored titan when rhino protects falco from aaron during the ensuing battle in debeirio he finds himself again a strange case of ambivalence locked away in a hardened cage he used to protect falco with his titan powers falco gabby and the others call from outside for reiner to help to use his armored titan to subdue aaron but we hear his inner monologue the same mantra the desire to rest the desire to die reiner's resolution to protect and fight for his friends using his titan is done through a very intriguing artistic rendition on the part of hajime sayama the armored titan ascends from the rubble largely without its normal plating and with an exact replication of reiner's face without seeking too much out of mere metaphor i really admire this motif as it shows a strange reluctant yet strong and present synthesis of the ideal and abject and rhino between the armored titan and his real body perhaps this marks the turning point for rainer to decide to keep going not for himself but for the people he cares about from this point i had planned on talking about later issues of the manga and how rhino goes on seeking resolution for his conflicts and crimes in the past on one hand i don't want to throw in too many spoilers for anime watchers although on the other hand i think that this account actually captures rhino for the majority of the rest of the manga anyways as he continues to seek resolution and to keep going fighting and persisting for the sake of those that he loves gabby falco his mother and his friends given this account alone i think it'll be interesting to think about how reiner survives this the ensuing battles to come necessarily in his character preservation in the story but how he survives through the people he loves and cares about how what he's done wrong can serve as a good lesson for those who are going to take on his responsibilities however we will have to just wait and see for what hajime sayama brings about in the final issues of attack on titan one thing i consider in light of this investigation is definitely how much more i could have gone into looking at reiner's character his many facets and dimensions worthy of analysis for example there are the various moments by which he hints to his warrior role during training events with the survey call back in season one of the anime and early on in the manga additionally there is a very explicit scene of reiner split personalities when they're in the forest of giant trees having captured aaron and yamir finally what might have been worth some serious analysis was the anime rendition of reiner's confessions to aaron in the basement whilst willie tyber is giving his speech as you know however especially the first section i was afraid of this investigation becoming too bloated with specific cases additionally since i'm coming out this cycle analytically it can be a lot more satisfying and refreshing to find such huge character defining traits and only those minor of exchanges anyway if you have any thoughts in these particular scenes or more that i haven't mentioned given my methodology and thoughts or an entirely different method please feel free to comment below if i could find a brief enough means to submit what this investigation has brought however i'd want this to be an account of what it means to be defensive what it means to love and to hate and what it means to give up to get up and to keep going i really admire reiner's character and how a fictional world does so well to encompass such a common mental disorder that is endemic to every single one of us at some point in our lives as such despite the fact i'm not a psychoanalyst let's learn anyone who's licensed to say what things are what things aren't that you can still take away from this investigation and think about people you know people you see and you hear of who behave in similar manners and consider what's going on inside of their psyches how people constitute themselves how they see themselves and see the world finally a brief personal note as you can tell it's the first video on my channel and i do have something of a desire to keep going with these kinds of videos whether it be relative to psychoanalysis sociology philosophy politics what have you intertwined with either fiction or non-fiction of course if you want me to produce more of this kind of content certainly like and subscribe but i'm also considering setting up a wii patreon if people have specific ideas what they want me to produce as such you can contribute straight to me so that i can put together videos based upon your own recommendations and desires for content i had a great amount of fun putting this video together and i really do enjoy video editing and recording audio even if i do sound like absolute crap either way comment your thoughts below and thank you ever so much for watching bye you

Channel: Che Vuoi

Views: 18,607

Keywords: Reiner Braun, Armored Titan, Attack on Titan, Marley, Eldia, Split Personality, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Depression, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan

Id: JnLp7BY9MFg

Length: 43min 13sec (2593 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021