ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the ways in which we conceptualise ‘differences’ are highlighted in relation to Mihoko Arayama’s life experiences which have contributed to her thinking about the theme of identity more generally. Arayama describes how growing up in Japan, she was not aware of any differences in ethnicity or social class, only nuanced differences in economic advantage. Until recently, Japanese society was racially almost homogeneous with the nation’s mentality reinforcing a collective sense of ‘we are all same’. However, since early childhood, Arayama, an only child, was acutely aware of being different from those around her. The search for her place in the world became threads running through Arayama’s life fostering a deep interest in working with others, in particular, with young people who struggle to fit in. Although being Japanese, and working as a Japanese psychotherapist in the UK, has added complexities and new dimensions to Arayama’s sense of being different, the foundations for this were laid in early childhood. Drawing on her current clinical practice as a psychodynamic psychotherapist working in secondary schools, Arayama uses a clinical vignette to illustrate some of the ways in which she has explored the experience of difference and its social and cultural context with her adolescent clients.
