In this interview, the second in my new column, I am pleased to dialogue with Koichi Togashi. Dr. Togashi recently participated in the last IAPSP International Conference, held in Antalya, Turkey where he presented a paper entitled “Mutual Finding of Oneself and Not-Oneself in the Other as a Twinship Experience” on a panel that explored self-psychological concepts from four regions: Israel, Japan, Turkey, and the United States. In what follows I focus on his experience as a self-psychologically informed analyst in Japan, and as the leader of the new IAPSP Affiliate in his country.

I’m very interested in learning whom you would like me to feature in future columns. Please send your comments and suggestions to me at annetterichard@cooptel.qc.ca.

Interview with Koichi Togashi, PhD, LP

Annette: Thank you, Koichi, for accepting my invitation to be interviewed for this eForum column. Our last international IAPSP Conference in Turkey on the theme of “Self Psychology Across the World” convincingly showed those of us who live in North America that self psychology is alive and growing in many different countries, including in Japan. Could you first tell us how you became interested in Self Psychology and how you got your training?

Koichi: It is my great pleasure to participate in eForum. I really thank you, Annette, and the editors of eForum for giving me such a wonderful chance to talk about my own journey as a Japanese self psychologist trained in the US.

I became interested in self psychology through my own psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a Japanese analyst. I was in analysis on the couch for 6 years in all. I worked in a psychiatric hospital in Japan as a certified clinical psychologist and saw many kinds of in-patients and out-patients, most of whom suffered from self-pathology, trauma, or psychosis. As with all clinicians, working with these patients inevitably generated my self-reflection. Especially, I recognized how much I yearned for understanding and connection to someone whom I could trust.

My analyst was warm and empathic, but his way of working with his patients was basically classical. I was lucky, however, because when I began to have doubts about his way of treating me, I encountered several self psychological books and articles that had been translated into Japanese. My analyst tended to attribute any problems and feelings I brought into his office to my “distorted” mind. I often experienced his “interpretation” as harsh and unreasonable. I was immediately impressed with self-psychological and intersubjective ways of thinking in which the human mind is not seen as static or separated from the other’s and psychological phenomena emerging between an analyst and patient are not attributed to a patient’s pathological psyche.

Unfortunately, in my country, there are few psychoanalytic institutes that provide systematized psychoanalytic training. While the mainstream of Japanese psychoanalysis was once traditional ego psychology, it is now British object relations. Since not much self psychological literature has been translated, I had little access to the latest trends in self psychology. Nor were any self-psychologically informed discussion groups available. In the meantime, I came to read literature written in English. One day, I found an email address of an American self psychologist, my mentor, and dear friend, Dr. Doris Brothers, in a book or an article. I asked her to supervise me on my work with Japanese patients via email, and she willingly accepted my request. We worked by means of email supervision for several years, and eventually we came to work over the phone. I read English, but I did not write or speak at all. The only reason I learned English was that I was eager for fresh self psychological thinking.

The supervision with her was really wonderful. It was totally different from the psychoanalytic perspective I had learned in my country. Her way of understanding patients is empathic, warm, flexible and clinically effective. Finally I found myself not being able to stand being so far from the mainstream of self psychology, and I decided to go to the US to seek the full training. I first enrolled into the training institute of National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York, and then transferred to the Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology, from which I graduated and was certified as a member, training and supervising analyst.

Annette: What a touching and courageous story! I can imagine the loneliness and anxiety of your quest. Before talking about your recent return to Japan after training and about your life there, I’m curious to know more about your experience of coming to the US, living and being trained in America. I wonder if the self psychology community facilitated your adaptation when you found yourself in a very foreign land and culture?

Koichi: It is very difficult for me to describe my experience of living and training in New York because, over those five years I was there, I sometimes felt terrible, sometimes happy. But mostly, I felt very comfortable, happy and excited to be in New York. I had many wonderful colleagues, mentors and friends, and an analyst to help and sustain me. Going back to Japan in 2006 for some personal reasons was not a happy decision for me; I wished I could have stayed in New York.

Making the decision to go to New York was particularly motivated by my desire to live in a place where I could find cultural diversity. In Japan, although I was raised as a Japanese man by Japanese parents, I had felt isolated and alienated in my own country. My fellow Japanese tend to emphasize similarity with others and to fantasize that all Japanese are alike. Japanese society is also hierarchical. I could not tolerate that others would deny the difference between them and me, and that they regarded me as having the same thoughts and feelings as they had. That central experience in my life, I believe, has led me to develop the idea that we have a need to mutually finding oneself and not-oneself in the other.

Going to New York, I was hoping to experience people there as like me while being simultaneously different. This is a city where there are a diversity of cultures, races, sexual preferences, ages and so on. My hunch was indeed correct. I could find myself in other people in New York while finding them also different, and it was easier for me to feel that I was a human among human beings. As I proposed in another paper of mine published in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, the success and failure of immigration depends partly on how well an immigrant’s selfobject fantasy, which was disrupted in his original country, is experienced as being met in the new country. As all immigrants, I did not experience that one of my own selfobject needs – in my case, for twinship – was being fully met in my country and I expected it to be met in the new land.

Needless to say, my personal analysis was the most helpful for my adaptation. Other than that, the self psychology community was indeed helpful, but so were my friends from other communities. Some were traditional Freudians, some Modern psychoanalysts. Their school of thought did not really matter, but their friendship did. I had many good friends in whom I could find myself while being different from them, and who could find themselves in me too. To your question, I can say yes, I found myself in a foreign land, but I did not feel as much a foreigner as in Japan in a certain way.

Annette: Thank you so much Koichi for sharing with us this profound experience! It gives me a deeper understanding of the fine paper entitled Mutual Finding of Oneself and Not-Oneself in the Other as a Twinship Experience you presented at the last IAPSP Conference in Antalya. This concept of yours, described as a very delicate “dialectic between a sense of sameness and difference in a dyad” which unfolds in the intersubjective context from birth onward, gives Kohut’s selfobject twinship experience quite another dimension. Dare I ask you about your experience of returning to your native country, Japan, after this American experience and your acquired insight into your own experiential world ? How would you describe the changes in your experience if there were any ?

Koichi: Before answering your question, I would like to mention here that my Mutual Finding paper is dedicated to my twin daughters, born on February 2010. Since they are not identical, their appearances and temperaments are pretty different although they have many similarities as sisters coming from the same mother and father. They really helped me to articulate my ideas as to how two different people organize a twinship tie and how a sense of sameness and difference can be dialectically resolved in a dyad. I had a basic idea of my Mutual Finding paper before they were born, but I was unable to articulate it. It was not until a month after their birth that I turned on my pc to write up the paper. Without them, I would not have presented the paper in Turkey.

Annette: What a wonderful story! Congratulations Koichi! Another big change in your life!

Koichi: Yes. Thank you, Annette. Now for your last question: there are many changes in my personal world of experience through my psychoanalytic training. I would say that the way I see my fellow Japanese hasn’t changed much. I still experienced them to be different from me, even strange, and I often experience myself as alienated from them, so that I need to go to the US at least once a year in order to breathe the air. However, I believe that the way I approach the Japanese people, culture, language, and their customary ways of thinking is different from before. I find myself being more interested in them. Indeed, most of the papers I have published in Japan over the last 4 years are self-psychological considerations of self-experience embedded in Japanese culture and manifested through some traditional Japanese words, such as “Iji” and “Kakugo”. Iji is a Japanese noun that is equivalent in meaning to “stubbornness” and “pride”, and it is associated, I believe, to the adhering and relinquishing of an archaic narcissistic fantasy. Kakugo means “being resolutely ready or determined to face a fearful task,” and is related to the disillusionment of that fantasy. This mentality as manifested in “Kakugo” is close to a German concept, “Vorlaufende Entschlossenheit”, that is discussed by Heidegger. I had been interested in the same issues before going to the US, but it used to be very conflictual for me. Now, I am simply interested in and respect them, and I enjoy finding myself in the culture.

I am not sure why but I dare to say that I no longer experience myself as an isolated individual being among Japanese people in Japan. Instead I experience myself as a person being among diverse people in the world. I believe that all can find themselves in me and I can find myself in all. When I address myself as a Japanese among Japanese people, I experience myself neither connected to the world nor to Japan. But, interestingly enough, once I address myself as a unique person who is only a part of the diverse people in the world, I rather feel it is easy to find myself in my Japanese fellows.

Annette: This is fascinating, and it makes a lot of sense to me! Having also immersed myself in a culture different from the one I was born in helped me greatly to differentiate myself from others while feeling a stronger connection with them. Thank you so much, Koichi, for sharing that with us. Now, I would like to know more how you live and work in Japan. I believe you are attached to the Hiroshima International University, that you have published papers in Japan and in the IJPSP, and that you are also seeing patients in treatment. How does that work for you?

Koichi: Yes, that’s right. I am teaching clinical psychology and psychoanalysis at the master’s program in clinical psychology at the university and I am supervising master’s students in the University’s psychotherapy clinic. I am usually in my university office for three and half days a week. I also see psychoanalytic patients in my private practice for two and half days a week. I am lucky because there are few psychotherapists who conduct therapy sessions in English in Hiroshima. I have Japanese patients as well as immigrant patients whose first language is not Japanese but who can communicate in English. In my private office, besides seeing patients, I provide clinical supervision and a full-year introductory seminar course for Japanese clinicians who are interested in self psychology. Writing research papers is very significant for me. I have heard some Japanese colleagues speak out against clinicians who write papers, saying that “real clinicians” are not interested in writing papers. I disagree with them. In the process of finding and organizing a new perspective to understand the subjectivities of my patients and myself and the intersubjective process in our therapeutic relationship, I have found myself feeling connected to my patients more deeply than before and better able to break out of a therapeutic impasse. Clinical work, teaching and supervising, and writing papers make up a powerful triad for me in my professional work.

To be honest with you, however, the biggest reason why I work for the university is that they financially support my attending international conferences. I do really love teaching psychology and psychoanalysis, but I do not like general administrative jobs in the university very much. I am someone who likes to see and meet with many psychoanalysts in various countries. Indeed, in the year 2010, I have visited the US, Turkey and Taiwan to meet with my psychoanalytic colleagues. The financial support I get to do this is very important to me!

Annette: I see. These varied activities seem to work very well for you and do permit you to stay connected with people from many other countries, a connection which seems central for your personal and professional development. As a last question, I would like to know more about the new Japanese IAPSP affiliate which you initiated and is now leading. How did you come to decide forming an IAPSP affiliate and how is it working now?

Koichi: The Japanese affiliate is called “The Japanese Forum of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology,” (JFPSP), and was officially formed in December 2009. The nucleus of JFPSP is a private self psychology study group that two Japanese colleagues and I started in 2006, immediately after I came back to Japan. When I met Steven (Knoblauch – the chairman of the IAPSP Affilates committee) at the Chicago Conference in 2009, it was a natural step for us to launch the Japanese IAPSP affiliate. Doris Brothers, from New York, has graciously accepted to be our IAPSP mentor.

The Forum is an independent, professional organization for Japanese mental health workers and professionals who are interested in self psychology and other contemporary psychoanalytic theories. So far, the Forum provides four major educational opportunities, that is member-limited theoretical discussion groups, member-limited peer-supervision groups, self psychology open seminars, and intensive self psychology course work. The first three opportunities are usually arranged in Kobe and Hiroshima, and intensive course work will be organized at TRISP in New York. We are also affiliated with TRISP, and we plan to have intensive course work in New York once every three years for qualified members of the Forum.

In the open seminar we held in Kyoto in May 2010 entitled “Introduction to Contemporary Self Psychology: Theory and Practice III,” we discussed a few contemporary self psychological theories, such as complexity theory, motivational system theory, and specificity theory. In our next open seminar planned for June 2011, we plan to invite an American self psychologist as a guest speaker to discuss an analyst’s personal life and his or her theories.

There are many reasons why I decided to form the Forum, but I would say that there are two main ones. First and foremost, it is definitely for myself. I want to have a place where I can freely discuss self psychology and express my own views as I do with my American colleagues. The second is that I want to provide opportunities for Japanese clinicians to study current trends in self psychology – the very thing I wanted but was unavailable in Japan when I decided to go to the US for my training. Japanese clinicians are familiar with Kohut’s theory and intersubjectivity theories, but they tend to study a particular theory they like and do not have a chance to learn how the different theories in self psychology or contemporary psychoanalytic theories are related to one another. The JFPSP’s activities are only beginning and are not at the level I would like them to be, but yet, the members of our Forum have opportunities to study self psychological clinical theories systematically and in their historically emerging contexts. I had no hesitation about forming our group when I realized that offering this opportunity to my Japanese colleagues was simultaneously providing me the forum I have in the US and that I needed in Japan.

Annette: I wish you and your colleagues, much satisfaction and many rewards in working and developing together! And thank you so much Koichi for generously sharing your experience of living and working as a self-psychologically informed psychoanalyst in Japan. I’m looking forward to seing you at the next IAPSP conference in 2011.