Freud and the Far East: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the People and Culture of China, Japan, and Korea [Hardcover]

This book is a lexical ambassador with the dual responsibility of bridging the West and East and enhancing psychoanalytic conceptualization in the course of such an encounter. By juxtaposing the familiar with the unfamiliar, it seeks to enrich our understanding of both. Within its pages, distinguished psychoanalysts from East and West weave a fine and colorful tapestry of the ubiquitous and idiosyncratic, the plebian and profound, and the neurotically-inclined and culturally-nuanced. They provide meticulous historical accounts of the development of psychoanalysis in Japan, Korea, and China and familiarize the reader with interesting personages, quaint phrases, cultural nuances, founding of journals, and emergence of groups interested in psychoanalysis. The contributors to the book discuss the depth-psychological concepts ofamae,Wa,Ajasecomplex, and the filial piety complex, thus underscoring the intricate interplay of drive and ego development with the powerful forces of ancestral legacies and their attendant myths and fantasies. The reverberations of these aesthetic and relational paradigms in epic love stories, martial arts, and cinema are also elucidated. In addition, the book offers insights into the psychosocial trials and tribulations of the Western immigrant populations from these countries and their offspring. Finally, the implications of all this to the conduct of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are addressed.Salman Akhtaris professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.

Considering the place of East Asia from both sides of the couch, this long-overdue collection provincializes psychoanalysis from the perspectives of China, Japan, and Korea. Psychoanalytic inquiry can no longer afford to ignore some of the richest East Asian cultural traditions and theories of human relations-such as Buddhism, Confucianism, filial piety, and collective l3$