[Are psychological concepts of Japanese origin relevant?]

This paper was originally given as a lecture in English at the XII World Congress of Psychiatry held in Yokohama, August 2002. Its primary aim was to introduce Morita therapy and the amae psychology to participants from abroad, not as something exotic, but as something intrinsically relevant to them. In my opinion, Morita therapy is based upon Morita's discovery that certain neurotics, whom he eventually named as shinkeishitsu, can recover spontaneously from severe anxiety when placed in isolation and forced to rest in bed without any diversion under the doctor's strict supervision. In other words, only those patients who follow the doctor's advice faithfully through initial isolation and subsequent work-stages can benefit from Morita therapy. It is further argued that it does not do justice to Morita to speculate that he developed his theory and therapy under the influence of Zen. Apropos of the amae psychology what is most noteworthy about it is that its genuine feeling can be conveyed only nonverbally unlike love which one can express verbally when one says "I love you". It is understood that ambivalence refers to the co-existence of love and hate. This love, however, had better be called amae since it is usually nonverbal and not even acknowledged. Narcissism also entails amae, in fact amae turned upon itself, because narcissism consists in denying one's virtual dependence. Interestingly, the word amae alone may suggest a narcissistic state when it is used in the sense of self-indulgence, the usage which is now becoming quite common. Apart from elucidating two psychiatric terms, the concept of amae turns out to be quite handy in describing what transpires in the psychotherapeutic situation including that of Morita therapy. The concluding remark is to emphasize the importance of psychological concepts against the prevailing view of evidence-based psychiatry. It is argued that the objectivity of scientific findings is in the final analysis a postulate guaranteed by the conscience of individual scientists. If so, the same kind of objectivity may be attributed to the observations made by the doctor when he maintains the psychotherapeutic relationship against all odds and also without any compromise of his conscience.