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The author relates the many adolescent martyrs and murderers in the work of the writer Mishima to his own life, leading to reflections on masochism and sadism as aftereffects of early traumatic experiences. As long as Mishima managed to successfully sublimate through the accomplishment of a literary work, his masochism could be used as a « guardian of life » in an attempt to overcome trauma – afterwards (« après-coup ») – and unfold a hidden message. However, the writer seems to have been subsequently overwhelmed by the destructive potential of detached death impulses and carried away to his death by a mortified masochism without repairing his primordial narcissistic injuries and without curing the primary object deprivation.