[A transcultural study of eye perception. Comparison between social phobia and tai-jin-kyofu]

Recently Western psychiatry has been paying more attention to the sense of shame, as is evident from the introduction of the concept of sociophobia which may be regarded as a typical example of "shame-disease", to DSM and ICD. Sociophobia is without doubt similar to Tai-jin-kyofu(= TK), which was often considered as a specifically Japanese culture syndrome. To explore the relation between sociophobia and TK syndrome, the eye perception of the sociophobic patient is compared with that of the TK Patient. The former, to which until now--different from the latter--little attention has been paid, is presented by three cases. This approach shows up a cultural difference between the basic orientation toward the individual in the West and that toward Ma ("Between") in Japan.