On Becoming and Being a Psychoanalyst in Japan: What Was the Amsterdam Shock?

ABSTRACT

This is an account of a personal journey from a foreigner in Japan to a psychoanalyst. The complicated issues of my family and discrimination in my childhood made me need to think about myself and the human mind. Although I would become a psychoanalyst after psychiatric training, the training of psychoanalysis in Japan at that time was not so established that I had difficulties to find the way to get it. I describe a number of events through my trainings, which were psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Japan Psychoanalytical Association, psychoanalysis at the Menninger Clinic and in the Japan Psychoanalytic Society, and Amsterdam Shock. Especially, Amsterdam Shock was a turning point for the Society to change training systems. And also, that was the point I had to decide how I would reorganize my life; to become an analyst or not. They set me onto a long road toward becoming an analyst, but the experiences on this long way and in my childhood have become bases as an analyst. I mention the issues of psychoanalysis and working as a psychiatrist in private practice under the national health insurance system.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dr. Tetsuro Takahashi for his comments on this article. Dr. Rikihachiro Kano, my supervisor and mentor, passed away on April 11, 2015. I really appreciate him.

Notes

¹ Colonial government, Governor-General of Korea forced the Korean change first and family name just like Japanese name. My father had used other Japanese name in Korea before he came to Japan, but he changed from that name to Gonda because he was proud of the family name, which came from the name of his ancestors who were nobles. I am sure that this was his resistance to the colonial policy. The issue of my name is complicated. Actually, I have three different names. The first one is Seigen Gon, which is derived from a second one of real Korean name, Sung-Hyun Kwon. Both names are the same Chinese characters, but the pronunciation of two names is different. The former is Japanese pronunciation and the latter is Korean. I have to use those two names properly outside Japan. When I attend IPA congress, my name is Seigen Gon there. But I am Sung-Hyun Kwon in other places, for example, hotels and passport control. The third one is Shigeo Gonda which is my Japanese name. I had used this name before I entered medical school.

² Japan has two major academic societies that promote psychoanalysis. JPS is the Japanese Branch of IPA, but JPA is independent from IPA; as Kano (2010) explains, it is “an organization unique to Japan” (p. 223). Most of Japanese psychoanalysts belong to the both organizations. The relationship of them is like a concentric circle. The center one is JPS for psychoanalysts and the external one is JPA for psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Being not stipulated, candidates have to have been certified by JPA when they will apply to JPS.

³ In 1992 active members were seventeen, associate members were sixteen, and candidates were eighty-one (Kano, 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seigen Gon

Dr. Gon is a psychoanalyst in private practice; a Member of the Japan Psychoanalytic Society and President of Sophia Clinic, Minerva Medical Corporation; and a part-time lecturer at Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare. He was a Vice President of the International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization.