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psychologists can gain in their understanding of human behavior by drawing from the deep sensitivity of good authors Kalish, 1972: 8.
From the above quotation, the writer summarizes that the author persuaded people to be more sensitive and critical toward things and circumstances around them
through herhis literary works. Otherwise, the psychologists usually attempt to describe someone’s behavior and try to find the cause in order to get the right
treatment for the patient who has problem with hisher psychological stance. Piercing is one of the novels which genre is psycho-thriller. Here, the
writer uses the psychological approach to understand the novel. To answer the last problem of this study, the writer will try to find some factors that caused
Kawashima to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia.
1. Psychological Factors
Kawashima’s condition that had forced him to move from one place to other place made him want to get more to fulfill the needs of his psychology, the
need that he did not get from his family. In Piercing the writer finds two abuses that Kawashima received during his childhood. They are mental abuse and
physical abuse. Those abuses will answer the reason why Kawashima is categorized as person who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid
schizophrenia does not appear suddenly without triggering factors; that is why abuse can be the factor that leads someone to be paranoid schizophrenic.
a. Mental Abuse
First that will be analyzed is mental abuse. Kawashima got mental abuse because his mother ignored him; he did not have a good communication with his
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mother after his father died and it made him feel unimportant. The mental abuse that happened to Kawashima caused him to miss a figure of mother. Here, feeling
unimportant made him grow up into a man who felt worthless of anyones love or respect. That is why the writer finds that Kawashima got delusions of persecution
because the feeling of being unimportant appeared in him like when he stayed with a stripper. After he got delusions, he would get hallucinations and became
violent. The hallucinations appeared because there were rejections and abuses that
he received when he was a kid. In this case, his ex-girlfriend was angry at him and it made him feel helpless. Here, Kawashima did not want to be rejected by
anybody else anymore like what his mother had done to him. Soon,
t he
feeling of being unimportant appeared when the stripper got angry with him and refused to
be embraced p.26, which caused him to feel anxious and get hallucinations. In his fear, usually Kawashima would hear voices that could calm him down and
sometimes told him what to do which might be dangerous for himself. Here, he got hallucinations when he was in a stressful condition. After all delusions and
hallucinations appeared, the feeling of being unimportant also led Kawashima to have no doubt to resort to violence, and Kawashima was a person who enjoyed
being violent. In the previous paragraph, the writer already mentioned that bad
communications in the family may affect children’s psychological stance. Now, besides communication, there is also another mental abuse that Kawashima
received from his mother. When he was a kid, his mother always said bad words
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to him every time she beat him, especially when his mother failed to produce the desired tears. Here, his mother always said that one day Kawashima would be
insane like her friend who always heard voices that anybody else could not hear p.152 – 153. Here, Kawashima then realized that the mental illness that his
mother always said to him is called schizophrenia. This paraphrase shows that verbal abuse is as dangerous as physical abuse because mental abuse can break the
mirror of his own self. In this story, when Kawashima was a kid, he recorded all events and
words that his mother said until he did not realize that in his unconscious conditions, he had been indoctrinated by his mother and eventually became what
his mother said he would be. Here, bad words that his mother said to him had already haunted and disturbed his psychological stance. Mental abuse through bad
words that his mother said is one factor that caused him to get hallucinations. The hallucination happened because what his mother had said to him made him feel
helpless and useless, which triggered him to feel anxious and fearful. Shortly, the writer concludes that bad words he used to hear when he was a kid is a factor that
caused him to get hallucinations such as visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations.
b. Physical Abuse
Kawashima’s paranoid schizophrenia is also caused by physical abuse that he received from his mother. Physical abuse usually leaves the deepest trauma in
people who experience it, and it will also disturb their mental health. In this novel, Kawashima was raised only by his mother. Since he was four years old, his
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mother started to abuse him. It happened after the death of his father. “When I was four my mother started to hitting me. She’d beat the hell out of me” p.12. From
this quotation, Kawashima got physical abuses from his mother and it disturbed his psychological stance.
Karl Menninger has provided a vivid picture of the defenses – and special vulnerabilities- of adolescents and young adults who have suffered deep
hurts and have come to view the world as a dangerous and hostile place Coleman, 1976: 316.
When someone gets trauma, that person usually prepares a defense to avoid it happened again or she becomes paranoid. According to the quotation,
Kawashima is categorized as a paranoid person. As already described by the writer in the previous chapter, Kawashima Masayuki is a fragile man who had bad
experiences during his childhood. All the bad experiences made him feel lonely and empty. That is why he did not want to feel it anymore. Here, he only wanted
to feel secure and comfortable no matter what. That is why when he found comfort and security from someone, he would try hard to keep it, and if he could
not keep it like what he wanted it to be, violence would be the best answer to keep what he liked or loved to stay with him. Ironically, Kawashima did not realize that
he had become violent like his mother. The violence in Kawashima did not emerge suddenly without reason. Here, he did not realize that he was actually
imitating his mother’s behavior. All two abuses that he got finally increased his vulnerability. No matter
how hard Kawashima tried to hide it, it always appeared every time he remembered his mother and his friends in Home. Below is the evidence to show
his vulnerability.
