Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Japan: An Interview with Dr. Luke S. Ogasawara (original) (raw)
Review : Kojin Karatani & The Return of the Thirties : Psychoanalysis in / of Japan
2003
Already in the 1950s some were proclaiming the twentieth century the " psychoanalytic century. " As it happened, they were right. But to which psychoanalysis were they referring? For clearly there has never been one psychoanalysis, as scholars of various persuasions have noted. Even during Freud's life as a psychoanalyst, from 1896-1939, we find a multitude of possible psychoanalyses at work. Freud himself is responsible for this situation, since he changed his views as often as he wished-with or without comment. As for Freud's most gifted followers, such as Otto Rank, Carl Jung, and Sandor Ferenczi, they quite naturally took this important lesson to heart: they made psychoanalysis their own. Of course, only Freud was permitted to do as he pleased without being judged a heretic or " wild " analyst. Only Freud could wander from the path of true psychoanalysis, even if there never was one. Debate among the many variants or, better, deviants of psychoanalysi...
Heisaku Kosawa upon his return to Japan decided to adapt psychoanalysis while still keeping Freud's main theories. Thus, Kosawa was inspired by a Buddhist story to formulate the Ajase complex which is an adaptation of the Oedipus complex The differences and similarities between these two theories allow us to compare the West and Japan thanks to psychoanalysis. The parent-child relationship is viewed differently in both cultures, therefore the Oedipus complex and the Ajase complex focus on different issues. The question of the importance of religion and language shaping a culture is also addressed, especially when it comes to the question of the self in Buddhism and its repercussions in psychoanalysis. The cultural gap between the Western world and Japan explains why psychoanalysis is treated differently in both parts of the world, but there could be a way to go beyond those differences through a new form of psychoanalysis. Alejandro Jodorowsky calls it psychomagic and claims that acts in order to heal the suffering are better than words.
Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 7, 187-204., 2009
There are two aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis that may be particularly appealing to those on the critical margins of social psychology. First, like discourse analysis and critical psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis incorporates a focus on language (Branney, 2008) and therefore the concerns of some critical psychologists and discourse analysts, such as with critiquing the social order or bringing the social within psychology, may be easily assimilated. Second, Lacanian psychoanalysis would seem to be incompatible with psychology (Parker, 2003) and therefore provides an alternative perspective from which to consider, and perhaps undermine, the assumptions of psychology. Attempts to utilise Lacanian psychoanalysis that could be brought together under a rubric of critical psychology and discourse analysis include analyses of the production of girls’ desire in comics (Walkerdine, 1987), of views of the self in long-term psychotherapy (Georgaca, 2001; 2003), and of understandings of domestic violence in government policy (Branney, 2006). We shall use ‘critical psychology’ (or ‘critical psychologist’) and ‘discourse analysis’ (or ‘discourse analyst’) as separate terms because, while many aspects of critical psychology do draw upon discourse analysis, a discourse analytic approach may be neither necessary nor sufficient to be critical of psychology. Hollway’s (1989) consideration of heterosexual subjectivity is perhaps the one most obviously aligned with attempts, from the margins, to use discourse analysis to be critical of psychology. Along with Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation, and Subjectivity (Henriques et al., 1984), Hollway’s Subjectivity and Method in Psychology: Gender, Meaning, and Science (1989) can be understood as an attempt to change the subject of psychology and the theory of subjectivity that psychology relied upon. Hollway (ibid.) drew upon a mixture of discourse analysis, and Kleinian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to examine material from interviews and her journal. But, as Hook so aptly puts it: the lack of engagement of critical social psychology with Lacanian psychoanalysis is an ‘oddity’ that is “striking inasmuch as Lacanian theory offers important insights into many of what we might consider the constituting problematics of social psychology” (Hook, 2008, p. 2), such as racism, ideology, and social identity. If we are to combine Hook’s work (ibid.) with Georgaca (2005) and Parker (2003; 2005), we have what can be understood as a small body of work on the margins of psychology that elucidates Lacanian psychoanalysis for critical psychologists and discourse analysts. Our focus is on Hook, Georgaca, and Parker, because they, whether explicitly or implicitly, explicate what Lacanian psychoanalysis would be if it were used in critical psychology and discourse analysis. This small body of work is steadily growing and includes, for example, Frosh and Baraitser’s (in press) examination of psychoanalysis in psychosocial studies, a special issue of the journal Subjectivities and other work in this volume. In this paper, our first aim is to turn to this body of work to put a bit more flesh on what Lacanian psychoanalysis offers those critical of psychology...