Psychotherapy in Japan : Revitalizing Continuity from Traditional Tenets

This study suggests that psychotherapists need a new perspective that is appropriate for psychotherapeutic theories and skills based on differences in conversation style between Western and non-Western communities. In this context, the “conversation style” accurately reflects the language-culture complex concerned. In a study on the psychotherapeutic process, when a prospective psychotherapist was confronted with a difficult situation, she followed the traditional Japanese communication style, empathetic identification. This style, which minimizes or avoids highlighting differences in opinions or ideas, is not necessarily desirable for conversation with a Japanese client in psychotherapy. Nevertheless, psychotherapists who tend to stress verbal intervention are also not necessarily desirable. Despite the fact that the Japanese people have forsaken traditional psychotherapy treatment systems due to westernization, experienced psychotherapists are unwittingly revitalizing traditional theories and skills that are suitable for the Japanese language-community. Psychotherapists have to abandon the idea of global psychotherapeutic techniques, interventions, and theories. Psychotherapists will naturally have an inter-cultural perspective. This discussion suggests the introduction of relativism into the field of psychotherapy