Genos and Survivor’s Guilt
Genos is motivated quite strongly by a sense of guilt over surviving the rogue cyborg. This guilt causes it to be simultaneously reckless with its own life, whilst also highly valuing when people save its life.
The guilt primarily arises from a sense of helplessness, and loss of control. In order to regain that control, Genos emotionally imagines a greater capacity to prevent the rogue cyborg, and therefore gains a sense of fault for not doing so.
This guilt is realized by its decision to become a combat-cyborg. Although nominally on a revenge-quest, Genos spends much of its time saving others, therefore retroactively trying to prevent the tragedy it experienced. In this way, guilt is used as a mobilizer towards positive action -- however, its intense need to assert this control, whilst devaluing its own life, makes Genos’ behaviour self-destructive.
Further, through guilt Genos can avoid facing other key issues surrounding its trauma. Focusing instead on repeatedly “preventing” the trauma, it refuses to process the events (Chaplin,1975; Nader, 1997).
This refusal is deliberate; In the absence of bodies to bury, the heart may become the graveyards for the deceased (Danieli, Y, 1984). By holding onto this loss, these internally carried graveyards are maintained, and guilt serves as an expression of loyalty, and commemoration of the dead (Danieli, 1984). Without realizing it, Genos is afraid that to healthily mourn its losses may lead to forgetting the dead and thereby committing them to oblivion (Danieli, 1984).
Finally, this guilt provides a sense of connection and stability for Genos. Having lost not only its family, but community, and place in the world, Genos has a poor sense of belonging. It tries to ease this feeling of displacement both by imprinting strongly to people it perceives as saving its life (Dr Kusheno, Saitama), but also through guilt. The desire for justice gives it purpose, and honouring the dead by carrying their “loss” inside it is all a method to contextualize, and connect Genos to both its past, and its future.
tl;dr genos needs a hug.
- Chaplin, J. P. (1975). Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Dell Publishing. - Nader, K. (1997). Treating traumatic grief in systems. In Figley, C. R. , Bride, B. E. and Mazza, N. (eds.), Death and Trauma: The Traumatology of Grieving, London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 159-192. - Danieli, Y. (1984). Psychotherapists participation in the conspiracy of silence about the holocaust. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 1, 23-42.