1. Far East

Abstract

According to B. KIMURA, a Japanese psychiatrist, transcultural psychiatry should reconsider old problems in the light of foreign concepts and ways of experiencing. By means of a brief semantic analysis of some fundamental Japanese words, he shows how interhuman relationships are experienced differently in Japan and how this influences the perception of mental disease and psychotherapeutic rela tions. J. R. AVERILL, E. M. OPTON, JR, and R. S. LAZARUS report on psychophysio logical differences found between Japanese and white American groups in their reactions to a silent film considered as highly threatening. According to Y. S. MATSUMOTO, the low rate of coronary disease observed in Japan, even in indus trialized regions, is related not only to low intake of dietary fat but also to such sociocultural factors as the continuing emphasis on group welfare, group consen sus, paternalistic enterprises, frequent opportunities for recreation among men, and a relatively weak sense of individuality. The most detailed description and analysis ever written in English of present-day Morita therapy and theory, by D. K. REYNOLDS, is reviewed. This study concludes with an analysis of Japanese national character in relation to the shinkeishitsu neurosis, for which Morita therapy was developed and in relation to some child-raising practices. W.-S. TSENG, after a brief description of shamanistic curing techniques in Taiwan, gives a good illustration of how a man can become a shaman. Shamanism is the subject of another study by B.-Y. RHI, who compares the therapeutic process of Jungian analytic psychology with that of shamanistic healing in Korea. A shamanistic ceremony called zinoki is described as an equivalent to making the unconscious conscious, to experiencing the archetypal complex for conflictual resolution, and to sending the purifled product of the archetype once again to the collective unconscious. This section ends with J. WESTERMEYER's descrip tion of a new form of amok, called grenade- amok, which recently appeared in Laos.