Psyche It Up

SPOILER WARNING. POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM HAIKYUU ANIME AND MANGA.

Tsukishima Kei is a volleyball athlete from Karasuno High School in Haruichi Furudate’s manga, Haikyuu!! In the manga and anime adaptation, Tsukishima Kei was introduced as a blunt, and arrogant character. It was also depicted that he does not like to put effort in volleyball and overly enthusiastic people annoys him. As the plot goes on, we were introduced to his brother who is passionate about the sport and still did not make it to the regular line up of athletes. We saw how this affected Tsukki by not being passionate about volleyball as it is “just a club”. He sees no merit in giving his all into something that would not be useful in his future or that it is not certain that he will become the best at it. This is when I noticed that this character is one of the best example of Jonah Complex.

Jonah Complex is coined by Abraham Maslow, a humanistic theorist and psychologist. According to Maslow, Jonah Complex is the fear of success, a fear of being one’s best, and a feeling of awesomeness in the presence of beauty and perfection. Maslow said that there are 2 things that can cause Jonah complex. The first one is because the human body cannot take the feeling of pleasure from achieving fulfillment and the second one is because they do not believe that they will achieve greatness in comparison with other people who have accomplished greatness. Tsukki, in my opinion, falls under the second reason. He mentioned in the training camp arc that even if he becomes good at it, there will always be someone who is better. This is an indication that he lowered his aspirations, humbled himself, just because he does not see himself being greater than other people.  He does not seek to reach his full potential because of this and that is exactly Jonah complex. Tsukki was running away from his fate, from his full potential because he did not think it was possible. Yamaguchi replied with “what else is there besides pride?”. Yamaguchi was suggesting that being good at something and striving to become the best is something to be proud of. Bokuto suggested that reaching his 120% potential is everything and the best feeling in the world. This is a close description to self-actualization depicted in this scene.

Maslow suggested that to beat Jonah Complex, one must remind himself that he is not a god, but not a worm either. This means that a person must not think too highly or too little of his own abilities. He must stay at the middle ground while striving for greatness. This was exactly how Tsukishima Kei overcame this. His brother, Akiteru, mentioned during S3 that Tsukki does not believe his own abilities, he only believes what’s in front of him. When asked if he can stop Ushiwaka, a powerful top spiker, Tsukishima answered with no, but he is planning to stop several spikes. When Hinata and Tsukki were talking about stopping Ushiwaka, Tsukki said that he does not like it when it comes from other people that he can’t do it. He does not think highly of himself that he can block all sorts of spikers. At the same time, he no longer believes that it is impossible for him to get better. He successfully stood on the middle ground. It is now a matter of “if not me, then who?”. That is how we can say that he is over his Jonah complex.

According to Maslow, humans have the natural drive to improve ourselves and to achieve our full potential. This reminds me of that moment when Daichi said that after their 3 on 3 match, he was not worried about Tsukishima. That is most likely because Daichi saw that Tsukki has the natural drive to desire victory. His family, friends, and teammates were all a great support in helping Tsukki overcome this obstacle towards reaching self-actualization.

\First of all, TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE, DEPRESSION, AND OTHER MENTAL HEALTH RELATED ISSUES WILL BE MENTIONED IN THIS POST. There will also be SPOILERS in this post.

I would to start by saying that I am not going to diagnose Yuki with a psychological disorder. I will simply mention several signs and symptoms that I observed from him through the manga and the anime adaptation.

Now let’s talk about the first thing we knew about Yuki. Yuki in the timeline of the manga and anime has already passed away. He hung himself in his room and was discovered by Mafuyu, his boyfriend. You see, people who commit suicide don’t just wake up one day and decide to kill themselves. In most cases, they suffer from being suicidal for long periods of time, plan it out and sometimes fantasize about their deaths. It may not be seen in the manga or anime but Yuki most likely has been suffering with self-harm tendencies and suicidal tendencies for a long time before his death. His conversation with Mafuyu in the beach saying that Mafuyu will forget that moment after 10 years is a sign that he does not plan on staying with Mafuyu in long-term.

After that, we knew that Yuki, Mafuyu, and Hiiragi are childhood friends. Yuki grew up without a father figure. Now if you know a thing or two in psychology, you know that Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists suggest that childhood plays a huge role in a person’s mental health and personality. It is uncertain but Yuki may have suffered a trauma or other form of childhood conflict that may contribute to his suicidal tendencies.

It was mentioned that Yuki’s personality is flashy, domineering, and moody. It was also shown that he feels emotions in an abnormally deep way. Anger, irritability, anxiety, fear - any of these in excess is not normal. His attachment to Mafuyu was also extreme and they are definitely in a co-dependent relationship. People who are dependent in their partners has this huge fear of abandonment. Mafuyu who was a part of him all his life asked him if he was willing to die for Mafuyu. And you bet, he must have contemplated that just to prove his love for Mafuyu. That is why after a fight with Mafuyu, Yuki’s mental health most likely deteriorated. Alcohol lowers inhibition. This means that alcohol loosened his fear of dying which lead to his unfortunate death.

Above mentioned symptoms fall under several criteria for Psychological Disorders in DSM-V and one of them is Borderline Personality Disorder. If I’m gonna make a guess, then I would say Yoshida Yuki suffered from BPD. However, personality disorders are complex and we can’t conclude this without evidence.

Hi! I’m MC :)

I’m a mental health professional and a certified otaku.