Brian McVeigh – The Emergence of Psychotherapies in Modern Japan: A Jaynesian Interpretation

[Moderator]

The Emergence of Psychotherapies in Modern Japan: A Jaynesian Interpretation
Brian J. McVeigh, Invited address at The Julian Jaynes Society Conference on Consciousness and Bicameral Studies, Charleston, WV, June 2013.

Abstract: I examine the origins of psychotherapies in Japan by applying the theories developed by Julian Jaynes. I show how, as in other industrializing societies, Psychology developed in response to modernity as a scholarly attempt to explore the mental space within the individual. Though something like this imaginary space existed in pre-modern times, it was not until the nineteenth century that it was considered amenable to experimental investigation. Significantly, Psychology’s ascent to legitimacy followed a very similar trajectory in Japan, illustrating how despite local cultural inflections, psyche has responded to modernity in a familiar manner.

To delineate these similarities I first introduce the “socio-externalization/psycho-internalization dynamic” by examining several key aspects of interiorization that were enhanced by nineteenth-century modernization. Second, I treat a key aspect of Jaynesian psychology that interlinks the different parts of this essay: how we use metaphors to conceptualize the mind. Third, I historically contextualize the modernization of Japan’s psychotherapeutic tradition. Fourth, I examine how Japan’s modernizing view of the psyche dealt with hypnosis, a bicameral vestige. Fifth, I show how Japanese researchers attempted to disentangle the study of mind from mysticism and pseudosciences. Finally, I conclude with some observations about how alterations in psyche led to academic Psychology.



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