ABSTRACT
From the start, the development of psychoanalysis in Japan has rested on a paradox: the need to obtain formal approval and acknowledgement from Sigmund Freud himself while simultaneously adapting some of the central tenets of psychoanalytic theory to the demands of Japanese culture. The process of introducing psychoanalysis into Japan was a twofold process: to be faithful to its tenets while at the same time assimilating them within Japanese culture. Though the relationship between psychoanalysis and academic institutions in Europe was not positive, there was from the beginning the possibility of integrating the study of psychoanalysis within academic institutions in Japan, where there was no history of discrimination against Jewish people. In the process of modernization, the world has been becoming more and more homogeneous. Psychoanalysis, laying the axiom, Wo Es war, soll Ich werden , at the centre of its practice, also shared the values of modernization, even as it was practised as a tool to analyse that process critically.
