Anthropophobia and Japanese performance

Actors are not the only people who act on a regular basis--everyone does some "acting" in his everyday life. The merchant is acting when he pays compliments to his annoying customers. Neurotics often exaggerate their sufferings and assume poses in order to impress their therapists with the seriousness of their illness. When this acting is done so poorly that everyone but the person himself perceives its penny-dreadful nature, the neurosis might be designated a hysteria. Such dramatics can be observed not only in the demeanor of neurotics, but also in their symptoms. The unconscious and concealed acting revealed in the symptoms of neurotics, especially in those of anthropophobiacs, whose main concern is with their appearance in the eyes of others, is what I would like to examine in this paper. I will attempt to eludicate the psychopathology of a large element in Japanese neurosis--that is, of anthropophobia--in relation to unconscious acting.