[The importance of language in psychotherapy education]

A common central postulate in theories and practices of the Occidental psychotherapies requires that both patient's experiences of himself and therapist's experiences of his patient must be transmissible with language. The possibility to verbalize one's experience is also an indispensable prerequisite for education in psychotherapy. In the Japanese culture language (kotoba) is considered to be able to express only surface of reality, while the true reality (koto) can be found out with an "acting intuition" (K. Nishida), i.e. a sort of cognitive function inherent in practical acts before the separation of subject and object. Experiences acquired in the acting intuition cannot be articulated in any rational language. The deep layer of experiences consists of a long history of such an intuition from the birth. The only way to participate in the live experiences of patient is to come into contact with him not only through verbal channel but rather through the acting intuition beyond the verbalization. Psychotherapeutic education by means of theoretical, rational language may be useful as instruction for candidates, but one must bear in mind that it cannot cultivate by itself any ability of true empathy.