On Becoming a Psychoanalyst in Japan

This special issue introduces psychoanalysis in Japan, its history, thoughts, and development, through the autobiographies of some Japanese psychoanalysts. I graduated relatively recently from a training course in psychoanalysis at the Japan Institute of Psychoanalysis and was certified as a psychoa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychoanalytic inquiry 2016-02, Vol.36 (2), p.155-161
Main Author: Okada, Akiyoshi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autobiographies
Careers
Culture
Disclosure
Learning
Personal history
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysts
Selfdisclosure
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This special issue introduces psychoanalysis in Japan, its history, thoughts, and development, through the autobiographies of some Japanese psychoanalysts. I graduated relatively recently from a training course in psychoanalysis at the Japan Institute of Psychoanalysis and was certified as a psychoanalyst by the Japan Psychoanalytic Society (JPS). If I am to write about why I aimed to become a psychoanalyst in Japan and how I became one, not only my personal history but also the influences of Japanese culture and Japanese therapeutic culture will undoubtedly be important. In this article, by relating my life history, I trace the path I followed for becoming a psychoanalyst and explore the broader implications of my experience. The paper "An Autobiographical Study" by Freud (1925) is a famous autobiographical psychoanalytic essay, and a more recent paper "Learning from Life-Becoming a Psychoanalyst" by Casement (2006) is also well known. To publicize an autobiography, a psychoanalyst always includes the possibility of self-disclosure. Because I am still practicing psychoanalysis regularly, I hesitate slightly to write this article. However, writing an autobiography is also, in part, a process of self-analysis after becoming a psychoanalyst, and can be considered a part of a psychoanalyst's interminable training (Okada, 2012).
ISSN:0735-1690
1940-9133
DOI:10.1080/07351690.2015.1123998