Becoming a Psychoanalyst: To Think About the Nature of Jealousy

ABSTRACT

The purpose of my article is to face up to, and to know more, about the depth-psychology of jealousy, which constitutes a part of my personal history of taking the path to becoming a psychiatrist and choosing to specialize in psychoanalysis. In other words, it is closely related to my experience of having achieved success, in a sense, in my early 20s, which made me the object of jealously, and experiencing the anxiety and fear that comes from being a total unknown who becomes one of “the Beatles of Japan.” I became something I wanted to be, but I was also scared of being scolded by God. I was expelled, at least psychologically, from Japan. I fled to London and underwent psychoanalysis. I desperately wanted to learn exactly what was happening to me, reading the story that was repeated in our hearts, in our fantasies, in my songs, and also in reality. In the course of both undergoing and studying psychoanalysis, I encountered something that was the last thing I wanted to recognize: my own sense of jealousy. I then concluded that my songs are created for you—that special someone who is there. They are not in any way created for someone to become just famous or just to please someone jealous.

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Osamu Kitayama

Dr. Kitayama is Vice President, Training and Supervising analyst, Japan Psychoanalytic Society. After retiring from being a professor at Kyushu University, he is now in private practice in Tokyo.