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NEON GENESIS
EVANGELION DATABASE
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PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS - REI-THANATOS (PULSATIONS OF DEATH) AND THE PLAN OF HUMAN COMPLEMENTATION (experts)
Rei's name means zero, also soul. The pulsations of Death are the oldest and strongest in existence:
Freud even said that the pulsations of Life were subordinate those of Death. They have the greatest
power of returning life to the inorganic; to what is not an active unit and therefore reducing
tensions to zero. In other words, to take away all the conflicts that are characteristic in forms
of life.
The plan of Human Complementation is in fact, just that. Precisely that humans will become one again,
and thus demolish the separations that make us suffer as individual beings. The Third Impact is
simply the Thanatos function taken to its maximum possible expression, and the one in charge of
carrying it out is Rei, the great representative in Evangelion of these destructive pulsations.
Her character begins as one that is completely emotionless, energy limited at that which she uses
to fight in Eva-00, without any interest in her own life, and with a clearly self-destructive
tendency. Just think on the name of the song that always accompanies her decisive moments; it is
linked to her essence (NOTE: the song name is Thanatos).
When Aramisael attacks Rei and fuses with her Shinji tries to rescue her, but the soul of Rei
reaches out to Eva-01 and an image of Rei says: "Is this my heart? To be one with Ikari-kun?",
in a sexual sense. When the pulsations of death acquire a connotation of this type, it finds
origins within the sadism or erogenous masochism. For that reason Rei kills herself, to save
Shinji of her own sadistic sexual impulses, which is perhaps the same thing that happens to
Kaworu when he also decides to be sacrificed by Shinji.
Rei later appears as a ghost, defined as the hope that people will understand each other and
thus eliminate the conflicts, to return to the state of calm. The reason for which some people
are shown as afraid, is because they know that this calm means the absolute rest, or in other
words, death. However there are those that know that they will die and don't care about the
rest, as with Ritsuko and Misato, and so they don't despair before this vision.
Together with Kaworu (the love for oneself) we have a good combination that compensates for the
destructive meaning of the pulsations of Death. But Shinji chooses to live separately as an unit
and not as part of the Thanatos solution, so this is how he returns with Asuka.
Thus, in spite of the fact that Evangelion's entirety is clearly marked by the pulsations of Death
over the pulsations of Life, for some reason Shinji was always more taken with Rei than with Asuka,
and she always appears in Shinji's subconscious visions. Due to this, Rei is seen as the mother of
Shinji not only in a genetic sense, but also in the psychological sense, as she has the absolute
supremacy in its Ego, like the Thanatos function.
Shinji strangles Asuka in "The End of Evangelion" after seeing the image of Rei on the sea of LCL.
Asuka goes against her own instincts, and so feels that her own force of life is unable to continue
maintaining Shinji's, even after her own mother's words had encouraged her to choose that situation.
Asuka says "How disgusting." - or something like that - when feeling that she cannot overcome the
pulsations of death in Shinji's ego.
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