Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India

In this landmark collaboration, Osamu Kitayama and Jhuma Basak chronical their long-standing collaboration and cultural exchange to survey the importance of familial relationships in Japan and India, exploring primal relations through a cross-cultural psychoanalytic lens. Divided into three sections, Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India looks at each country's perception of parenthood and approach to raising children in turn before concluding in an illuminating dialogue between the two authors. Kitayama explores the maternal figure within the mother-child relationship, with a focus on the mother-son dyad, as well as relationships between parents. He considers, in depth, how Japanese culture can often exclude what is perceived as alien, delving into its rich tapestry of folklore to understand underlying 'mental scripts' which can shape collective perceptions, societal norms and expectations, each of which can pose an issue to healthy familial relationships. Basak's response draws from Indian socio-cultural and mythological contexts, as well as clinical applications, to provide psychoanalytic insight into the stark differences and similarities between attitudes in Japan, India and the eastern culture at large. Both authors join together to highlight different child rearing practises such as co-sleeping and how they can shape human sexuality-subjectivity. Challenging the standardisation of the Oedipal myth, the book draws from literary and clinical examples in Japan and India to invite the reader into another world of parenting style and another idiom of psychoanalysis. Uniquely positioned to develop understanding of how psychoanalysis has developed in non-Western countries, this book is an essential resource for psychoanalysts in training and in practice.

Osamu Kitayama is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Japan Psychoanalytic Society, Professor Emeritus at Kyushu University and President of Hakuoh University. He served as President of the Japan Psychoanalytic Society from 2016-2019 and continues to work with patients in private practice. He has authored numerous articles on culturally oriented psychoanalysis and books. Jhuma Basak is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Indian Psychoanalytical Society. She has published on culture and gender. Over the past 20 years, she has presented at IPA Congresses along with the first Keynote from Asia-Pacific, 4th IPA-region at the 53rd IPA Congress (International Journal of Psychoanalysis). A past Co-chair of COWAP Asia-Pacific, she co-edited Psychoanalytic and Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Women in India: Violence, Safety and Survival (2021).

Foreword Acknowledgement Content Introductions PART 1 The prohibition of 'Don't Look' in Mythology, Culture, & Clinical Contexts 1. Creating Bridges: Japanese 'resistance' and approaches 2. Depth-psychotherapy in Shame Culture 3. Re-weaving the story of the prohibition of 'Don't Look' 4. The Wounded Caretaker & Forced Guilt 5. Dependence and Transience: Beauty or Danger 6. Various Narratives Centring on "under the bridge" 7. Cultural Invocation of Maternal-fusion in Males - India and Japan 8. Vicissitudes of Transience in Covid Times - Reflection on 'Shame Culture', India PART 2 The Triadic Tryst 9. Being Drawn into a Primal scene 10. Music Heard When One jumps into a Swamp 11. Enthralled Infancy in a Bed of Parental Tryst PART 3 An Interface - 'Listening to Asian Female Voices' 12. Jhuma Basak to Osamu Kitayama 13. Osamu Kitayama to Jhuma Basak