Chapter 3653: Injustice League (5)

The dynamics among the Justice League's big three are indeed worth exploring. Most of the time, people are fascinated by the relationship between Batman and Superman, while Wonder Woman is often overlooked.

Yet, in most realities, Wonder Woman acts as a kind of adhesive. To some extent, she is the oldest and most mature in the team, so she naturally tends toward mediating conflicts and maintaining team stability.

The "Injustice League" shows us what happens if Wonder Woman is actually the most immature person in the team. Naturally, the relationship between Batman and Superman has deteriorated beyond repair.

Again, during the whole process, there were many opportunities for them to sit down, talk, and reconcile. Unfortunately, Wonder Woman, who was supposed to be the mediator, acted as if she was mad, fanning the flames, leading to an irretrievable conflict.

Many might wonder: What exactly are the standards of maturity and immaturity? What makes a person mature?

However, in psychology, there is no specific standard for maturity. In psychology, there is only a distinction between healthy and unhealthy states.

In other words, a person doesn't need to be mature, they just need to be healthy. Even if one is quite immature, as long as their mental state does not affect their daily life, it's not considered a disorder, and there's no need to pursue so-called maturity.

But in psychology, there is an important concept called "regression." Many have heard of "degenerative changes," so what exactly is regression?

Regression is a typical unhealthy state. It not only impacts a person's daily life, causing them distress, but it can also potentially affect others.

Wonder Woman in the "Injustice League" displays a very typical regressive state. One of the hallmarks of this state is "dependency on presence."

Perhaps many who have raised children or have seen other people's children will notice that children always seem to want to attract adult attention, sometimes without realizing it themselves, often deliberately making some noise to get adults to notice them.

Currently, psychology and various social sciences understand this phenomenon as an instinct in human evolution. Children who can better attract adult attention are more likely to survive.

Humans have a dependency on presence during their childhood for about 5 to 10 years. This is characterized by extreme sensitivity to others' attention, able to immediately sense others' gaze; a keen interest in proving and enhancing their presence; and a decreased sense of shame—to the point of not caring if they act oddly or embarrass themselves, as long as they attract attention.

This doesn't mean the children are crazy, it is a normal growth phase. Everyone goes through this to some extent, but it may be forgotten as they grow up.

From the perspective of the Psychoanalysis Method, the dependency on presence during childhood is a personality actively exploring outward. They want to determine through their behavior how the world will respond to them, and then reflect this truthfully in their personality, like looking in a mirror.

The responses they get from their environment largely determine how they will respond to others, an influence that may last a lifetime.

For example, if during a child's quest to prove their presence, the parents are very patient and give them enough attention, it helps the child understand the relationship between attention and response. But if the parents do not respond or outright scold them, their understanding of attention and response will be weak. This can result in a personality unable to establish the necessary relationship between attention and response.

The detrimental effects of this are: either they are not adapted to attention, causing them to feel exposed even with normal attention, leading to avoidance; or they are overly insensitive, slow to respond to signals of needing attention from others, or do not feel them at all.

They might not know how to respond appropriately to others' attention—either responding too intensely or not at all is possible.

For adults, regressive dependency on presence often resembles childhood. But they are adults, assumed to be mature, so no one treats them like children, and thus the harm it can cause is naturally greater.

For instance, Wonder Woman in the "Injustice League," on the surface, many of her actions seem to have no reason—they appear purely malicious, like sowing discord or fanning flames. In reality, this is a regressive dependency on presence pathological state.

There is no actual benefit to her for doing this. She's aware that Superman won't fall in love with her because of it. But for a child, profit itself isn't important; what they desire is attention.

As mentioned earlier, during this period, children show symptoms of decreased shame. This symptom exists because during their youth, they have not yet been disciplined much by social morality. For adults, however, besides decreased shame, there is also a decline in moral sense. Simply put, it's about seeking attention by any means necessary.

From the beginning, Wonder Woman sided with Superman. Of course, supporting Superman isn't inherently wrong, but from the start, she wasn't doing it for Superman, but for herself.

If she truly cared for Superman, she would have advised him differently. Anyone can see how painful the break with Batman is for Superman. At the very least, to alleviate this pain, she should have acted as a mediator to reconcile them.

After all, the deceased cannot return to life. The events have already transpired. Breaking with Batman does nothing but make Superman lose his lover and his best friend, offering no benefits. Any normal adult can realize this.

However, Wonder Woman in the "Injustice League" chooses not to do this. This proves that her motivation is absolutely not for the good of Superman, but entirely for herself.

The way she gained a sense of existence from Superman was by blindly agreeing with him. No matter what extreme emotions Superman experienced due to being stimulated, she supported him unconditionally. This way, Superman's attention was always on her.

At the same time, she was also using this method to continually capture Batman's attention. Because if Batman wanted to stop Superman, he had to win her over, ensuring his attention remained on her.

To gain attention, she unscrupulously incited both sides without any moral baseline. For this, she even went as far as spreading bad words like the Joker, without a shred of shame.

So, when dealing with the Injustice League's Wonder Woman, you can't treat her like other Wonder Women by talking about morality, boundaries, or justice. Because to gain attention, she's entirely capable of discarding these things.

To a certain extent, she doesn't need anyone to force her; she can lower her own baseline like a brat.

Many people feel disgusted when they see this Wonder Woman because she clearly has the body and identity of an adult but uses them to do things only a few-year-old child would do: spreading rumors, fanning the flames back and forth, telling one side the other side is bad, telling the other side this side is bad; instigating whenever someone does something; being the first to tell the teacher when something happens; not only causing others to be scolded but also keeping herself completely clean—this is the most common behavior seen in primary school.

So, what's the best way to deal with such a person? Since her symptom is called sense-of-existence dependency, the best way to deal with her is deprivation of that sense.

It's not about denying her a sense of existence, because if she never had it, she might adapt to a life of low excitement. But if she's always in a hyper state and suddenly it's cut off, she will feel pain and possibly become insane. It's the same principle as drug addiction.

The best way to give someone a sense of existence is to make them feel special. If you give everyone an average of 10, even if you give her 10, she won't feel satisfied, because your attention is evenly distributed, and she isn't special.

If you give everyone 1 but give her 9, even though it's less than average, the pleasure she feels is stronger than when it's average.

So Bruce came right up and said Wonder Woman was special. Although it seemed blunt and shallow, it was exactly what she wanted to hear.

In fact, the more superficial and straightforward it is, the happier she gets. Because clearly, no one in the Justice League is that blunt. Originally, Superman was one, but he recently met with misfortune, and the bit of attention he could spare was pitifully small. Earth was constantly plagued by disasters, and no one had time to watch Wonder Woman's performance.

But when people from other universes came, they gave her their full attention. How could she not be happy?

However, this isn't just pure attention and praise. Bruce mixed in a lot of poison.

Firstly, Batman and Wonder Woman from this universe are just ordinary comrades, with no development of extra feelings. It's normal for Bruce, being Batman, to pay more attention to Catwoman, who has a thing with Batman, right?

Secondly, though you are also Wonder Woman, we have our own Wonder Woman in our universe, who is truly my comrade and friend. It's normal for me to focus on her, right?

Lastly, although Batman and Superman in your universe have fallen out, I'm still good friends with our universe's Superman. It makes no sense for me to focus more on him, right?

No matter from an emotional or logical standpoint, the people from other universes have no reason to pay more attention to Wonder Woman. Yet Bruce focused on her right from the start, giving her the illusion that "I truly am special."

See, he has so many people worth caring for, yet he still prioritizes me first, which surely must mean I am special.

And at this point, when Bruce focuses on other people following normal logic, Wonder Woman feels as if something is being taken away by others.

Even though she logically knows, the people from their own universe talking to each other isn't wrong, she just doesn't feel comfortable. Because she once got attention for no reason, proving her specialness, she naturally wanted to leverage this specialness to get more.

For example, if Bruce makes her feel special, she feels she can use this specialness to attract Clark's attention, then Oliver's or Hal's. She wants all of their attention on herself.

But she knows rationally, that's impossible. People from the same family are naturally more intimate with each other. So what can she do?

If they aren't that close to each other, naturally they'd be closer with her. So how she once incited Batman and Superman, is how she'd think of inciting the newcomers.

And when trying to incite their relationships, one person is extremely important, and that's the other universe's Wonder Woman, Diana. As long as she's there, people from the other universe will naturally be closer with their fellow townspeople, because they are counterparts. No matter what she does, she can't replace Diana's position.

Wonder Woman emitted an incredible malice towards Diana, which she might not even realize herself. But Clark saw it all.