[The Japanese language and psychotherapy, with a particular focus on the handling of "contradictions"].
Verbalization, a technique used in analytic psychotherapy, plays a variety of roles including "naming", "uncovering", "clarifying", "weaving a story", and "thinking about the story". When we apply this technique in Japanese, however, resistance to such verbalization is liable to occur. Japanese is often said to be an "ambiguous" language. However, the only reason the Japanese language sounds ambiguous is because Japanese people use it ambiguously. One of the reasons for Japanese people's psychology of placing importance on polysemy and ambiguity is that it is unreasonable to impose an artificially-coined word on another person, and try to make him or her "share it" or "understand it". As a term that opposes "words" in Japanese, there is "jo" (affect) or "kanjo" (emotion) ; and the so-called non-verbal exchange that is emphasized in the Japanese language includes physical contact (such as touching) and interplay of the emotions. Structures that emphasize duality-such as "tatemae to honne," or what one says and what one really means, and "giri to ninjo," or duty and feeling-are internalized in the character of the Japanese people. This is reflected in daily context by the pattern of conflict that Japanese people share: namely, verbal versus nonverbal exchanges. In this paper, the author discusses how the contradictions and discrepancies seen in such exchanges originate from mother-child relationships, and proposes that therapeutic relations be used as an opportunity to deal with such contradictions and ambiguities. In particular, the author quotes from "Yuzuru (The Crane Wife)" and other Japanese folktales, and points out that, to deal with individual tragedies, like the heroine of "Yuzuru" who leaves her husband after he discovers her true nature, the therapist must recognize the existence of such contradictions in himself/herself. For example, contradictions such as a therapist being possibly ill despite appearing healthy, is liable to become a key target of patient scrutiny for testing the therapeutic objective.
Kitayama
Osamu
O
Faculty of Human-Environmental Studies, Kyushu University.
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011572:Psychoanalysis; D011613:Psychotherapy