Japanese Ways of Psychotherapy

"While Western psychotherapists confront and discuss issues thoroughly, their Japanese counterparts simply wait for patients to spontaneously open up. Japanese psychotherapists may therefore seem relatively passive, yet we are nevertheless wholeheartedly committed in the constellation. The East-West difference may be attributed to differing relationships with nature. Japanese do not see themselves as distinct from nature. Eschewing causal thinking, that is without laying blame, we Japanese act as ‘rain-makers’, aiming to collaboratively restore harmony in the constellation. In this sense, the Japanese approach may be said to be based on a theory of synchronicity, which in turn may stem from our religious backdrop of Buddhism. We believe that ‘everything originates from the same source’ and we are therefore very tolerant. I believe that individuation is a process of dynamic dialogue between ego and Self, between conscious and unconscious, the union of the opposites. Taking the figure of Aion to correspond to this process in an ‘ego-centric’ way and ‘satori’ (represented by the Zen circle) to correspond in a ‘Self-centric’ way, then the former Western Way and the latter Japanese Way are not mutually exclusive but coexist sequentially. "Japanese Ways of Psychotherapyunion of oppositessatoriego-centricSelf-centri