Collected Papers on Japanese Psychotherapies
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
2011
1989 Meaningful Life Therapy Lecture, Kurashiki
Meaningful Life Therapy Presentation
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Discovering positive elements
We tend to think only of the negative aspects of certain natural parts of our world. We think of pain and stress and anxiety and illness as absolutely bad. Now they certainly aren't pleasurable. They bring us discomfort. We try to avoid them, of course. What I want to point out here is that pain and stress and anxiety and illness cannot be absolutely avoided; they are built into human existence, and for some reasons. One of the ways to make them more endurable is to achieve a more balanced recognition of their natural and positive aspects.
Listen carefully. I am not saying we should learn to love pain or stress. I am not saying that we should stop working to minimize discomfort in our lives. No matter what I said no one (including myself) would come to desire discomfort. What I am saying is that the discomfort we feel sometimes spurs us to do important things in our lives, and, sometimes, there are more important things for us to do than fight against discomfort.
Pain, illness, stress, and anxiety get our attention. They signal us that something is wrong. They tell us that something needs to be done. You know, of course, that people who cannot feel pain suffer from all sorts of dangerous injuries because their bodies don't warn them that something is wrong. They can cut themselves and bleed to death or break a limb and continue to use it without noticing that anything is wrong. Similarly, the uncomfortable symptoms of an illness alert us to the presence of invading organisms or other unhealthy conditions. Anxiety and feelings of stress draw our attention to problems in ourselves and in our environments.
All of these unpleasant signs (illness, stress, anxiety, pain) point us toward conditions in our world that require our attention. Without these signs we wouldn't be able to respond appropriately to our Reality. The unfortunate thing is that sometimes these signals alert us, but we cannot find something appropriate to do in order to correct the situation. Anxiety may force us to notice a problem in our marriage or job, but we cannot think of anything to do to correct the problem. The symptoms of an illness may point us to the need for medical treatment, but there may be no effective therapy at this time and level of medical science. Pain may be inescapable unless there is some sacrifice of alertness and movement. Sometimes the signal is there, but we cannot find a proper way to respond to its message.
Action
I believe that in our lives there are more times when we know what needs doing and don't do it than there are times when we know there is a problem but cannot find anything to do about it. So the first priority of Constructive Living is to help people get on with sensitively and sensibly fixing what can be fixed in their lives, to respond to the pleasant and unpleasant messages that Reality sends their way, to live as fully as they can. The next priority is to develop an attitude of acceptance toward the parts of life than can't be fixed.
Again, please listen carefully. I am not talking here about giving up and accepting illness or pain or stress or anxiety as long as there is something that can be done about them. Meaningful Life Therapy teaches a wonderful attitude toward illness--challenging, active, positive. The more you involve yourself in living fully, the less attention you have to focus on and complain about your discomfort. On the simplest level, Meaningful Life Therapy and Constructive Living offer relief through distraction from misery. And, sometimes, while living actively, the source of our problem is solved, we get well. But there is another level, as well.
Acceptance
What cannot be changed must be accepted. That is the same important truth one finds in the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. Constructive Living suggests, further, that what can be changed must be accepted, too. Acceptance and action to change can go on at the same time. You don't need to choose one or the other. All of reality must be accepted. Here is the pain, yes, that's the way it is, now what can I do about it? Here is the cancer, yes, reality has brought me cancer, now what can I do about it?
It is terrible to be faced with a problem that seems to have no solution. It is even worse to torture oneself with ruminations about what you should have done, if only you hadn't, wishes about what might have been, criticism of yourself and others. Accepting the reality of a situation is an important step toward doing something about it. Denial, a long-term focus on feelings, and obsessing on the unfairness of it all simply work to make more misery.
"All right. Here I am. I don't like it. It hurts. But that's the way it is right now. What needs doing?" That chain of thinking is healthy. Reality will continue to present you with tasks, as we call them. We may call what Reality brings anything we like. We label the events in our lives "tragedies," "successes," "nightmares," "triumphs," "challenges," "defeats," and so forth. Reality doesn't mind, It just keeps on presenting us with information that deserves our attention and action. What we do about what Reality brings us is up to us.
Purpose and freedom
Nanto naku is a Japanese phrase meaning 'without reason' or 'without goal'. It is the phrase a Japanese person uses when he doesn't know the answer to someone's question, "Why did you do that?" Nanto naku is how non-human animals live all the time. We humans can live purposefully. Purposefully is not always naturally. It is in the interface between purpose and nature that our freedom and our misery are born. The illness of cancer is natural. Our distress, our pain, our fear of dying are all natural. But so is our desire to fight our illnesses, our desire to survive, to be useful to others in the midst of our afflictions. They are natural, too.
Our purposes make us human. Yet our natural circumstances may interfere with the accomplishment of our purposes. It is in the dynamic tension between our purposes and natural limits that we are challenged to live fully. Our purposes will help determine which parts of the natural world we focus on and which parts we set on a back shelf much of the time.
Again, I don't say that illness is wonderful. But it provides us with the occasion to notice our purposes, to make new, viable purposes, to struggle to achieve our purposes. It is another aspect of living, with its own limits and possibilities and new opportunities to develop constructive lives.
A letter
I wrote this letter to a young lady who entered formal Zen Buddhist training in order to discover the meaning of life and death. She had come close to killing herself in the past. She hoped to find meaning and answers to life by sitting in zazen day after day. But as the years passed she didn't find any clear answers to the puzzle of life. She spoke to me about her troubles with the feelings that death still called up from the depths of her psyche.
Dear M,
When you realize that the answers to your questions about life and death will never be answered for you (in fact, cannot be answered for anyone) please contact me for another approach to your dilemma.
Consideration of death brings with it fear and hope and resignation and peace and a lot of other feelings. It will continue to do so because it does. There is no way or need to change those feelings. Our focus shifts, the feelings change of themselves.
We all learn to live in spite of our knowledge that we shall die someday. Whatever fate has in store for us, the anticipatory anxiety cannot be so disabling that we cannot live fully now. Living fully now (in spite of doubts and fears about the future in spite of regrets and sorrows from the past) is the only positive prospect for us. And it is wonderfully satisfactory and sufficient.
With warm regards,
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
In closing
In the end, Meaningful Life Therapy and Constructive Living are about Living. We are all Living until we are dead. Let's go about doing that living well.
Appendix
Basic Principles of Meaningful Life Therapy have been translated into English in a variety of ways. In a recent issue of the Meaningful Life Therapy newsletter six principles were listed. Below I have listed the principles and some alternatives for consideration along with my reasons for suggesting the alterations.
1. To fight against illness with determination because we have primary responsibility for our own health. (Alternative)
1. To fight against your illness with the determination that one's main doctor is one's self. (Original)
1. I think that Meaningful Life Therapy recognizes that we aren't all doctors, but that we have major responsibility for our own bodies/health.
2. To live each day fully by doing what is possible to achieve goals for that day. (Alternative)
2. To live each day fully by trying to achieve one's goal for that day. (Original)
2. "Trying" has a bad reputation these days. It's "in," for example to ask someone to try to get up from their chair. If they get up you say, " No, that's actually getting up from the chair. I asked you to try to get up." And we may have more than one goal for the day.
3. To serve other people. (Alternative)
3. To serve other people as much as possible. (Original)
3. Every one of these principles implies "as much as possible."
4. To learn how to co-exist sensibly with our emotions. (Alternative)
4. To learn how to co-exist with our emotions. (Original)
4. We have no choice but to co-exist with our emotions; how to co-exist sensibly or positively or constructively is crucial.
5. To prepare for the joys and problems of life realistically. (No change)
5. To prepare for the joys and problems of life realistically. (Original)
5. Looks good to me as it is, given that Reality is our best teacher. Preparing realistically makes sense.
6. To avoid becoming a "sick person" even though we have an illness. (Alternative)
6. To not become a "sick person" even though one has an illness. (Original)
6. "To avoid" seems more positive somehow than "To not." And I changed the impersonal "one" to "we" in order to make the principle consistent with the "we" in principle 1.
What do you think? Please discuss, debate with other Meaningful Life Therapy folks and use or abandon or modify these principles as you see fit.
1990 International Conference on Meaningful Life Therapy, Hamamatsu, Japan
Meaningful Life Therapy
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
April 22, 1990
Greeting
I am pleased to be able to preside at this International Conference on Meaningful Life Therapy. It is springtime in Japan, and it is springtime in the development of Meaningful Life Therapy, too. New leaves and buds and shoots are appearing as MLT grows strong and shapely.
Some of the early members of MLT have died already. Their contributions to humanity proceed. The evergreen tree maintains its green beauty throughout the year by dropping its leaves/needles little by little all year long. Perhaps an evergreen tree should be the symbol of MLT. While parts of it are dying, the growth continues.
Putting life into life
I think it is important that we translated Ikigai Ryoho into Meaningful Life Therapy. It is not Meaningful Death Therapy. MLT is not about dying peacefully. It is about living fully until death occurs. The certainty of death forces us to look at how we are living and what we want to accomplish in this time- limited life.
In Constructive Living (inspired by Morita therapy and Naikan) we have an exercise in which we ask our students to think ahead until the time they might be expected to die and to write their own epitaph (the inscription on the tombstone), obituary (newspaper announcement of death), and eulogy (a speech at the funeral ceremony about the deceased person). Then we cover the student with a sheet and ask some of the following questions:
How old were you when you died?
Who was there with you? What were the ages of your children? Your grandchildren?
Were you alive when your mother/father died? What were their last words to you?
What was most satisfying to you during the last third of your life?
What did you want to do in life but never got around to do? What prevented your accomplishing some of these important goals?
What specific activities would you have had to change to achieve those unfulfilled goals?
What sorts of property, friends, health, life, hobbies, did you have in later life?
Can you give us advice from the grave--to women, men, your children, elderly, young?
What was the biggest challenge you faced? What was the most unpleasant event? What was your greatest joy? What was your greatest success?
This exercise is not about dying. It is about encouraging our students to think about how they will live the rest of their lives until they die. I think that a serious illness like cancer can encourage people to consider how they will live in much the same way as this exercise.
On New Years day try writing your epitaph, obituary, and eulogy as you might wish them to be if you were to die during the year. They should contain an account of your life accomplishments to date, and your plans for the coming year. It is a good way to remind yourself of the the limited time within which you must do what needs doing. The same exercise might be repeated on your birthday and the results compared each year. Again, this exercise is not about death itself, but about what you will accomplish before death.
Creating a new reality
One of the major contributions of MLT to Japan and to the rest of the world is to create new possibilities of life, new options for suffering humans. Whether a person suffers from cancer or some other life-threatening illness there is now a choice about responding to the situation. Until Meaningful Life Therapy it was pretty much assumed in Japan that upon learning of a diagnosis of cancer a patient would pretty much give up hope and die rapidly. Now there are many public examples of people who know of their cancer and yet live abundant lives within the physical limits of their condition. Some individuals found even more meaning in life after learning of their cancer.
This is a time of creating new roles, new lifestyles, new approaches to living. The elderly, too, are creating new ways to grow old actively, meaningfully. When I was a child most of the elderly women I knew sat all day in rocking chairs grumbling about their health and their inconsiderate children. Now most of the elderly women I know are active, vital participants in society. I am grateful that they have created new possibilities for when I, too, am old--if I live that long.
And so I am grateful to Dr. Itami and those others who have created and developed MLT with their thinking, their hard work, and their lives. Someday I, too, may suffer from some terrible disease. Because of their example, I know that illness is not a single path, but many paths; and some of the paths travel along high ridges and mountains with a marvelous view.
Doing courage
"Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)" (Heinlein, 1973, p. 247)
A human without fear is a fool, wrote the late Robert Heinlein, my favorite author of science fiction. Fear complements courage. There is no courage without fear. The members of Meaningful Life Therapy show us their courage by their actions. They do courage. Sometimes they feel fear. It is natural to feel fear in the face of AIDS or any serious illness. Sometimes fear, sometimes courage, sometimes despair, sometimes hope--our feelings change. The stability of life lies in our actions. We can do courage even while afraid.
Ivan Morris wrote about kamikaze pilots in World War II: "...the embattled hero is propelled by confidence in his own sincerity and by the knowledge that his cause, however hopeless, is a true one. Of his own free will he has assumed a task 'beyond the limits of human might,'..." (Morris, 1975, p. 315) Some people consider the courageous stories of MLT members to be "beyond the limits of human might." Knowing that the cancer may kill them in the end they continue to trust their own sincere living and they trust the MLT cause which gives their lives special meaning. No longer are they doing courage just for themselves. They do courage for their families, for their society, for humanity. What a wonderful opportunity to make payments on a debt that was contracted even before they were born.
References
1. Books in English for High School Students in Japan:
-Reynolds, David K. Modern Aesop's Fables. Tokyo:Nichieisha, 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Living Lessons. Tokyo:Asahi Shuppansha, 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living for Young People. Tokyo: Asahi, 1988.
-Reynolds, David K. Winning the Game of Life. Tokyo: Asahi, 1988.
2. Books in Japanese (Japanese translations of English books)
-Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 1984. (Nayamiwo Ikasu, Sogensha Publishers, Osaka)
-Reynolds, David K. Playing Ball on Running Water. New York:Morrow, 1984. (Kodotekina Ikikata, Sogensha Publishers, Osaka)
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. Berkeley, University of California Press. (Nihonjin to Morita Ryoho, Hakuyosha, Tokyo)
3. Books in English in U.S.
-Heinlein, Robert. Time Enough for Love. New York, Putnam's, 1973.
-Morris, Ivan. The Nobility of Failure. New York, New American Library, 1975.
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy, University of California, 1976.
-Reynolds, David K. The Quiet Therapies, University of Hawaii, 1980.
-Reynolds, David K. Naikan Psychotherapy, University of Chicago, 1983.
-Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living, University of Hawaii, 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Playing Ball on Running Water, Morrow, N.Y., 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt. Morrow, N.Y., 1986.
-Reynolds, David K. Water Bears No Scars, Morrow, N.Y., 1987.
-Reynolds, David K. Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters, SUNY Press, Albany, 1989.
-Reynolds, David K. Pools of Lodging for the Moon, Morrow, N.Y., 1989.
-Reynolds, David K. A Thousand Waves, Morrow, N.Y., in press, 1990.
4. Articles and Chapters in English or Japanese
-Reynolds, David K. Meaningful life therapy. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 13, 457-463, 1989.
-Reynolds, David K. Morita therapy and reality-centered living. Int. Bull. of Morita Therapy, 1(1), 3-5, 1988.
-Reynolds, David K. On Being Natural: Two Japanese Approaches to Healing. In Sheikh, A. A. and Sheikh, K. S., eds. Eastern and Western Approaches to Healing. New York:Wiley, 1989.
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Ohara, K., ed. Morita Therapy: Theory and Practice. Tokyo:Kongen, 1987. (In Japanese)
-Reynolds, David K. Japanese Models of Psychotherapy. In Norbeck, E. and Lock, M., eds. Health, Illness, and Medical Care in Japan. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley,l98l.
-Reynolds, David K. Naikan Therapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley, l98l.
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Kora, T. and Ohara, K., eds. Modern Morita Therapy. Tokyo:Hakuyosha, l977.
1990 National Naikan Meetings Lecture
Is a Theory of Naikan Necessary?
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Naikan is basically not about creating feelings or having a religious experience or curing neurosis or alcoholism or rehabilitating criminals. Naikan may help accomplish those goals. But it is basically about seeing reality, about seeing more and more clearly the way things have been and the way things are. That recognition of the reality we ordinarily ignore produces the changes listed above.
There are two purposes to theories, it seems to me. One is to allow people to investigate the truthfulness of explanations about why things work as they do. The second purpose is to make something look scientific so that scholars and researchers can justify their time and interest in the topic and so that therapists can cite some scientific studies. In other words, one purpose is to allow scientific study and the other purpose is to claim scientific respectability.
My personal inclination at first was to say that Naikan needs no theory. Just do it and see. The results are worth the effort. Even if we never have scientific talk about reasons for Naikan's success it will continue to be successful as long as people practice it. Furthermore, I doubt the ability of social science or psychological science to give a reasonable explanation of Naikan at this stage of the development of these sciences.
However, theory may actually be necessary for two reasons: to justify Naikan's existence in a scientifically-oriented world and to allow us to make guesses and experiments in modifying Naikan in minor ways to meet changes in differences among Naikan participants.
Do we need theories of eating? sleeping? driving a car? cutting the grass? Some would say we do need theories of at least some of these activities.
But I think we must be wary of getting caught up in words about words about words. Theoretical talk has the danger of pulling people into philosophical and semantic discussions that stray further and further from the grounded relistic practice of Naikan. We are tempted to play word games comparing Naikan with a variety of therapy forms and religious practices. If there is to be theory and discussion about theory we must keep asking ourselves these questions, "How is this talk practically contributing to the practice of Naikan?" "How can Naikansha sitting in Naikan reflection today benefit from this theoretical talk?" If we have no answers to these questions then we would be better spending our time in our own Naikan reflection than in talking about it.
1991 National Naikan Meetings Lecture
21st Century Naikan--An American Perspective
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
ToDo Institute and Center for Constructive Living
Abstract
Constructive Living embodies the practice of an extension and adaptation of the ideas of Yoshimoto and Morita. Naikan's gratitude must be based on and sustained by a realistic perspective and appropriate action. Some of the characteristics of Constructive Living Naikan include omitting the theme of "lies and stealing" and the progression of daily Naikan themes from named, familiar people to strangers and, subsequently, to objects. Morita Masatake gave advice which sounds very much like Yoshimoto Ishin's advice. It is easy for Westerners to consider such advice to be "culture-bound" or old-fashioned. However, a realistic perspective is most likely to provide real-world satisfaction over the long run.
Constructive Living
Naikan is a powerful and valuable tool for personal change. In the United States we practice an extension of Naikan and Morita therapy practice called Constructive Living. The methods of Yoshimoto and Morita have been adapted to meet the needs of Westerners. That adaptation was made possible by the depth of thought and the common human elements of the Morita and Naikan lifeways. Our Constructive Living has already had some influence on the practice of Morita therapy in Japan. You will find some Naikan-like elements in Morita therapy in Japan today. Before Yoshimoto Sensei died it was my pleasure to introduce to him several of the leaders of Morita therapy in Japan and of Constructive Living in the West. Similarly, I have been introducing Moritist ideas to Naikan groups in Japan. Anyone who looks carefully and straightforwardly at reality will necessarily come up with a response of gratitude. It takes energy and effort to ignore the realistic contributions of others to our lives. In other words, we can only keep gratitude and the desire to repay others out of our minds by walking about with our eyes closed to the myriads of concrete and specific instances of the supporting care of others in our lives. The idea that nobody ever cared about me or nobody ever understood me is based on self-centeredness and stupidity. Some Americans, when they first come to practice Naikan, mistakenly believe that Naikan aims at turning their memories of parents from all bad to all good. But Naikan aims at presenting nothing more or less than reality, at turning cardboard paper doll images of parents into more rounded, realistic images.
Essentials of Naikan
The essence of Naikan is the clear view of reality. Naikan isn't wonderful because people feel it deeply. It is wonderful because it is about Reality, about Truth. Feelings change; Truth doesn't. At a Naikan Conference in 1988 one presenter talked about a girl who came to see her mother as a lonely and unappreciated human. She came to see Reality. In other words she was freed from her misperceptions to see the reality of her mother as a human with needs, frustrations, and pain, too, like the girl herself. She was no longer so bound by the false image created by her mind. However, I must state my belief that the sustaining heart of Naikan is behavior, not only realistic thinking or feeling gratitude. In classic form the Naikan therapist moves from client to client, bowing, listening to the client's report, offering advice when necessary, serving food, preserving the opportunity for the Naikansha to reflect on the Naikan themes. These actions by the Naikan guide are models of service for the Naikansha. Whatever the Naikansha recall, no matter how moved they are by their self reflection; if their Naikan isn't reflected in their words to the guide, in the eating of their food and their bathing and dressing and laying out of their bedding, if their actions when they leave the Naikan setting aren't changed in ways that reflect service to people and proper use of objects and energy in the world, then they haven't done proper Naikan. There are dangers in too much emphasis on the emotional aspects of Naikan. There are hazards in too much talk about gratitude and guilt and other feelings that accompany Naikan. There are risks when there is too much concern with changed attitudes and inspiration and mystical experiences. Of course, these changes in the psyche may occur during Naikan. But they are ephemeral and uncontrollable directly by the will. We cannot make ourselves feel grateful or guilty or desiring to serve others directly by our will or directly by means of any other technique. Even when we do Naikan the feelings come and go in some rhythm and pace that we cannot dictate or even understand. What I am saying is that feelings-however striking they may be in our experience and observation of Naikan-are not satisfactorily solid bases for building a lifeway or a therapy. Only by changed behavior can we feel certain about evaluating the success or depth of Naikan. As you may know. Yoshimoto Sensei and his staff used to assign numerical evaluations of Naikan depth to Naikansha at the Nara Naikan Center. From the beginning Yoshimoto Sensei realized how difficult it is to evaluate a person's Naikan depth. I would suggest that the reason why evaluation is so difficult is that the sample of behavior one can observe is too small and constrained by the setting to make a judgment of Naikan depth. I would feel more comfortable with an evaluation of Naikan depth based on a person's daily life in the month following intensive Naikan.
A Chance to Win, Even Though We Fail
In our practice of Naikan within Constructive Living in the United States I don't ask my students to reflect only on past "lies and stealing" as is sometimes done in Japanese Naikan practice because there is no chance to win the game, no possible balance as in received-returned. Troubles caused is part of a balance, i.e. the troubles caused us. We are righting the misremembered balance by Naikan. But the theme of lies and stealing is a straightforward attack on the self. I don't believe such an approach is necessary or valuable in promoting the wide practice of Naikan. It is likely that the power of Naikan lies in the chance of winning, the chance of finding a balance, but the practical impossibility of it. We can evaluate ourselves by our own standards with the chance of finding some balance, but we always, inevitably, come up short. The contrast between the possibility and the actuality creates the dynamic tension of Naikan.
The Order of Naikan
In our Constructive Living practice we often begin daily Naikan on people whose names and faces we know. Then we move to daily Naikan on people we don't know but whose faces we have seen (for example, the clerk in the store or the driver who stopped for us at a crosswalk). Next we do daily Naikan on people whose names we don't know and whose faces we have never seen (for example, the carpenter who built the chair we sit on). We move next to other living creatures, both animals and plants. Naikan continues with nonliving objects (what our shoes do for us, for example, and what we have done in return for our shoes, and the troubles we have caused our shoes). Finally, we consider energy (such as electricity) from a Naikan perspective.
Morita and Naikan
Morita's thinking paralleled Yoshimoto's in many ways. Morita recommended proper appreciation and proper use of what reality presents to us. Morita's advice to those who held grudges against their parents was to work on themselves, not their parents. At first glance, his suggestions seem alien and difficult to understand for Westerners.
"Look for the faults within yourself that made you unlovable; then go apologize to your father and mother." "Abandon your resistance to your parents." "Stop the fighting unilaterally and begin serving them." What a strange prescription to read in these modern times!
Certainly, it is easy to dismiss such advice on the grounds that times have changed and that Japanese culture is different from Euro-American culture. Calling his counsel "culture-bound" is a convenient way to avoid looking at the deeper, human wisdom within which it is framed. There are few who see the difficulties and sacrifices of parenthood until they become parents themselves.
Morita noted that one young man recognized the love of his parents only after overcoming his neurotic lifestyle. Our own misery and self-centeredness interfere with our ability to see our parents' and others' efforts in our behalf. Both Naikan and Morita therapy offer release from narrow self-interest to a broader perspective on the world.
1991 Morita Therapy Meetings Lecture
WHO DOES MORITA THERAPY IN JAPAN?
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
ToDo Institute, Wash D.C.and Constructive Living Center, Oregon
Abstract
In the June issue of Asahi Life Professor Ohara wrote a fine essay on "The Modern Significance of Morita Therapy." He defined six special qualities of Morita therapy: no emphasis on the past, symptoms as extremes of normal alterations of mood, working directly on behavior and not feelings, cure through everyday living, making the most of character, and modeling by the therapist. Perhaps other Moritists would add to this list, but few would disagree with it.
In this brief paper I wish to consider who in Japan actually practices Morita therapy according to Ohara's six definitional criteria. In Morita settings, what is the purpose of taking a detailed family and medical history? If symptoms are poor habits of thought and behavior why are they treated in medical settings? How is isolated bedrest related to everyday life? What is the value of the concept of "character" in Morita therapy? Who actually lives with patients day and night in Morita settings?
In the past thirty years some Japanese Moritists have written about an imaginary ideal Morita therapy. Sometimes a foreigner can offer a different perspective on observed reality.
Special Characteristics
Much interest is being paid to the identifying characteristics of Morita therapy as it becomes better known in Japan and around the world. Dr. Kora, Dr. Fujita, Dr. Aizawa, Dr. Suzuki, Dr. Usa and others have written on the subject. Professor Ohara made a thoughtful contribution to this matter in an essay titled "The Modern Significance of Morita Therapy," published in Japanese in the magazine Asahi Life.
In his essay Dr. Ohara offers six special characteristics of Morita therapy. The first characteristic is a de-emphasis on the past. When patients dwell on the past they are reminded to live constructively and realistically in the present. The second characteristic is a recognition that neurotic symptoms are an extension of normal psychological characteristics. Therapy consists of redirection of poor habits of thought and behavior. The third characteristic recognizes that the mind cannot be directly influenced. It may be left as it is while controllable behavior is corrected. Ohara writes that when the behavior is corrected the mind will also be remedied. The fourth characteristic is that change is engendered through the daily life of the patient either within or outside the hospital. The fifth characteristic is that neurotic character can be changed gradually through encouraging certain aspects of it and limiting the expression of other aspects. The sixth characteristic is the modeling of a healthy life style by therapists so that patients don't have merely intellectual knowledge of Moritist principles.
The practice of Morita therapy in Japan
During presentations at the National Morita meetings and in the Moritist literature information about family history and onset and progress of neurotic symptoms is not rare. Clearly, some Moritists are exploring the history of their patients. Such history-taking is an integral part of medical practice. It is not surprising to find psychiatrists following accepted medical procedure.
Morita called his method "re-education." Suzuki has long used the terms "school," "student," "graduation" in his practice of Morita therapy. Many years ago I suggested the use of "poor habits" to replace "symptoms" and "instructors" to replace "therapists" in keeping with Morita's educational model. Such educational terms are commonly used in Constructive Living in the U.S. However, medical terminology continues to dominate in Japan despite claims that the psychology of shinkeishitsu neurotics is not diseased or medically abnormal.
Some Moritists seem to promise healthy minds, minimized anxiety, and even success in business and social life when their clients behave in a healthy, constructive manner. If the purpose of Morita therapy is the acceptance of reality, including any feeling, then such promises are unnecessary. Healthy, constructive behavior is its own reward whatever the results of such behavior.
Morita therapy emphasizes proper daily life action as the road to an improved life. Ohara points out that isolated bedrest and hospitalization are not part of everyday life for most people. When a person enters a Moritist hospital, however, bedrest and the hospital life do become the everyday life of the person for a period of time.
I do not know what "character" is. It seems to be some sort of explanatory concept abstracted from observed behavior, like "personality" or "sei no yokubo." The emphasis on character entered Morita therapy with Dr. Kora. It served to house fleeting medical neurotic symptoms in a more academically accepted structure--character. The usefulness of this approach is debated by Moritists.
Finally, Ohara writes that a key element of Morita therapy is that therapists live alongside patients day and night to provide a model of healthy living. Certainly over the past 23 years I have visited and observed more Morita therapy settings in Japan than all but a few Morita therapists. There are very few places where Moritists actually live alongside patients day and night. Those who do live alongside patients are almost all nurses or nursing assistants or others in similar occupations. Medical doctors go home at night or stay in duty rooms or work in shifts. If sharing everyday life as Morita himself did is a necessary feature of Morita therapy then, at most, only a handful of people actually practice Morita therapy in Japan.
The leaders of Seikatsu no Hakkenkai who live alongside Hakkenkai members at Ashigara Ryo come closer to the ideal Morita model than what I see in most Morita hospitals. Of course, the Hakkenkai leaders are supposed to be teaching Morita theory and not practicing Morita therapy. It is a very interesting accommodation to medical power.
The degree to which Morita therapists themselves model a healthy and constructive lifestyle for their patients is worthy of future research. I would like to see research on the everyday lives of Morita therapists in Morita settings. To what extent and in what ways do they exhibit arugamama, jijitsu hon'i, and other Moritist principles. This research would not be on the therapist-patient relationship. It would be on the therapists themselves. In the U.S. we find it much more difficult to conduct research on people who have power than on people who do not. So, in medical settings, we have much more research on patients than on therapists. Perhaps Japan is not so different.
Conclusion
I see some discrepancies between the ideal Morita therapy as presented by a prominent Morita therapist (recipient of the first Morita Prize) and the actual practice of Morita therapy in Japan. How will those discrepancies be resolved? Will the actual practice ce of Morita therapy change to fit more closely with the ideal? Or will thinking about "proper" and "fundamental" Morita therapy change to fit the reality? Or will the discrepancies continue ignored by Morita therapists and those they serve?
Note: My research in Japan was supported, in part, by the Mental Health Okamoto Memorial Foundation.
1992 Morita Therapy Meetings Lecture
Morita Therapy and a Constructive Life
Memorial Lecture
National Congress of Morita Therapy
Kochi, Japan, October, 1992
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Abstract
There is no need to be hesitant to introduce Morita's ideas to the rest of the world. The problems with Western psychodynamic psychotherapy. New Moritist movements in the U.S., New Zealand, Europe, Thailand, China, Japan, and elsewhere.
My interpretation of the philosophical parallels of Morita therapy. Parallels with Zen Buddhist, Taoist, and Western philosophical traditions.
The revitalizing basis for broadening Morita's ideas beyond the narrow shinkeishitsu diagnostic category. The reasons why it has already happened. What are the new directions?
New applications of Morita's ideas to Constructive Living. The success of these applications in the West and in Japan.
The advantages of a broadened practice for Morita therapists in Japan: leading a new wave in psychiatry and Moritist education. Going beyond psychopharmacology in psychiatry to rescue psychotherapy.
The differences between professional commitment and adopting a personal lifeway. Attracting young people and specialized professionals to Moritist practice.
My views about the future of Morita's ideas in the world.
Introduction
Morita therapy in Japan is a medical practice. I am not a physician, so I cannot practice Morita therapy. I am an educator, so I teach Morita's ideas as part of a total program called Constructive Living. I have been a faculty member at some of the most respected universities in the world--UCLA, USC Medical School, the University of Houston. I taught Morita's ideas at each of these institutions, and the students found them stimulating and practical. There is no need to be hesitant and timid about bringing Moritist thought to the rest of the world. It is solid, human, useful, correct.
The extension of Morita's thought beyond therapy
Some Morita therapists in Japan and in the West seem to think that Moritist thought and practice offer only a way to handle neurotic symptoms more reasonably. Certainly, Morita therapy does provide such a benefit. But that is like thinking that Buddhism or Christianity are merely elaborate ways to collect money to build temples. Morita offered his patients a new view of their place in the world, a new relationship not only with symptoms or feelings but also with things and people. To use Morita's ideas only as a treatment for neurosis is like using an airplane propeller for a fan.
Morita was a physician, but he was concerned with teaching a view of life to his patients. "I took responsibility and continued my efforts. I think that in life both joy and discomfort, the whole of it, is incorporated. That I achieved this value system was the greatest treasure of my Morita experience." Thus wrote Mr. Hatano of his experience as one of Morita's own patients in the 1920's (Ima ni Ikiru #104, June, 1991, p. 11). Suzuki Tomonori holds that Morita didn't distinguish between treating mind and body because he was a physician/educator.
The extension of Morita's thought beyond normalcy
The application of Morita's ideas to normal people as well as to shinkeishitsu people was based on the following elements in Morita's writings: everyone has some shinkeishitsu aspects in thought and behavior, when anyone becomes sick the shinkeishitsu tendencies are magnified, shinkeishitsu neurosis obeys normal psychological laws.
Many Morita therapists in Japan have extended the practice of Morita therapy beyond shinkeishitsu neurotics. Although Morita said his treatment was for shinkeishitsu people, he, in fact, used it with at least one case of hysteria with good effect (Ohara, in Hakkenshi, 4/88 p. 46). Mittomo Shonosuke recognized the importance of arugamama for healthy people, too (Mittomo, p.29). He quotes Mizutani: "Anata ha mou kanjade ha nainda, seikatsujin to shite Morita seikatsudoni haitte yukun dakara... (You're no longer a patient, you are a citizen who is walking the Morita lifeway.)"
Itami has extended the principles of Morita therapy to the treatment of the chronically ill including cancer patients. Others have extended Morita's ideas to couples counseling, adjunct treatment of schizophrenics and borderline patients, delinquency, and other problems.
The implications, extensions of Morita's thought seem obvious to me now. Toraware, obsession, can apply to any fixation (love, success, finding a lost pencil, self improvement) as well as to fixation on neurotic anxiety or other mental states. I first heard such an idea in Hasegawa Yozo's lecture many years ago. Accepting anxiety, or "just anxiety" is a subset of the larger acceptance of all of Reality.
Suzuki finds that "shinky" neurotic students think of themselves as special. But all humans think that way at times. It is the source of much of our suffering to consider ourselves set apart or above Reality.
Morita's lifeway
We are told that Morita therapists provide models of a healthy lifestyle for the patients. I doubt that many young or experienced psychiatrists are such appropriate models for patients in Morita hospitals. Psychiatrists may (occasionally play and (rarely work alongside patients, but they participate primarily at their own convenience. To think that they are everyday living models indicates how far the medical arm of Morita therapy has drifted from reality.
The teacher-student relationship in therapy is clearly a subset of the larger notion that Reality is our teacher. A human teacher is only one way that we get information about our ideas and actions. Constructive Living and Morita therapy in Japan differs in our perceptions of the relative importance of therapist in process. At almost any Congress of Morita therapy in Japan one can hear papers about the importance of the therapist-patient relationship. Constructive Living holds that it is reality which teaches therefore emphasis is less on the social relationship and more on the content of the assignments. I believe that a deemphasis of the importance of the therapist in the teaching of Moritist principles results in less dependency in the students, and less arrogance in the therapists. When we look at the therapist-patient relationship in Japan we find that the relationships are very different for patients and therapists of, for example, Suzuki, Usa, Kora, Maruyama. If the relationship is so important why is it that some people are cured of their neuroses only by reading books, with no outpatient or inpatient experience?
Some Difficulties with Western psychotherapy
Why haven't the Japanese Morita therapists reported on these larger implications for Moritist thought? Why didn't the Japanese Morita theorists realize what a revolutionary system of mental health Morita offered? Perhaps because Morita's method was within the medical establishment. For a long time Japanese physicians thought that American medicine was so advanced in every field that any Japanese medical practice (including Morita's) was inferior. There is still an undeserved aura of superiority around Western psychotherapeutic practices in the minds of Japanese professionals. I suspect that such respect for American psychotherapy is due in large part to the need for professionals (Japanese or American) to study difficult and arcane knowledge in order to sustain their professional image of status and power. Certainly the exaggerated respect for Western psychotherapy isn't earned because of its effectiveness or benefits to patients. Western psychotherapy is not particularly effective in relieving neurotic suffering; in fact, it can be argued that Western psychotherapy is actually harmful to clients, causing unnecessary suffering.
Here is a recent letter I received from an anonymous reader of one of my books about Constructive Living with it's Morita therapy emphasis:
July 6, 1992
Dear Dr. Reynolds,
I have just finished reading a few of your books on Constructive Living and Morita's psychotherapeutic methods, and I want to thank you for writing them. They make more sense to me than any "self-help" material I have read in quite some time.
Over the past several years I've also read various books about Zen Buddhism, which I enjoyed very much, but understanding the practical application of such ideas has been difficult. I've known for a long time that deciding to do something and trying to do it are not the same as DOING IT, but knowing that's true and acting on the knowledge are very different things.
My direct experience with psychotherapy has been limited to a few sessions with a therapist, which I did not find very helpful. It's nice to have someone listen to one's problems, I suppose, but the therapist did not have much to offer in the way of practical advice. One 12-step meeting was all I could bear; the self-blaming religious overtones were pretty offensive, and I didn't really believe I was powerless to control my actions unless I surrendered to a "higher power."
I've also read many so-called self-help books, most of which advised reliving the pain of the past to a great degree, while concentrating on "inner child" and "adult child" problems. I don't want to be an adult child forever, or stuck with one label after another, a survivor of this or a victim of that. Constantly redefining the source of my troubles has not helped me cope with life any better, nor has rehashing my unhappy childhood.
Trying to decipher the practical value of books like "A Course in Miracles" has not been very productive for me either -- I could swear there are more emotions to be felt than just love and fear, and wading through volumes of repetitive religious psycho-babble is not a rewarding pastime.
But alas, here I am, still neurotic (isn't everyone?), and still spending too much time imagining disastrous outcomes and intellectualizing my excuses for not doing what needs to be done. At forty, I fear my life may be more than half over and I know I don't want to spend the rest of it worrying and obsessing, but not DOING all the things I say I want to do.
So I'm writing to you because I would like to know if there are any Constructive Living group programs in San Francisco in which I could participate. My financial resources are somewhat limited (finding a new job is one of those things that needs doing), so a group would probably be more practical for me right now. I believe I'm ready to learn to accept my feelings, define my purpose and do what needs to be done, and having some direct guidance would be most welcome.
Thanks again for writing the books, and I'll appreciate any information you can send about groups in San Francisco.
JW from SF
The problems with traditional Western psychotherapy are so great that sometimes I wonder whether doing Western therapy causes more harm that good. Recently, I wrote the following article criticizing Western psychotherapy:
A Tall Tale
Once upon a time there was a land where people went to specialists to work on their stature. Short or tall they spent hours exploring their past heights. They considered themselves to possess hidden squatness which only the specialists could see and measure. They got in touch with their shortness. They sought some standard elevation which they believed their specialists to exemplify.
Unfortunately, the more they worked on their height, the more they expressed the short and tall of themselves, the more obsessed they became with size. Helplessness and hopelessness ran rampant because no one was skillful at changing the stature Nature had endowed. More and more desperately the people implored their lanky specialists to help them. More and more deeply they examined their dwarfish tendencies. They confirmed and affirmed and empowered themselves to grow taller. They struggled with their unconscious resistance to upraise themselves. But it was all for naught, expensive naught.
In time the people learned that no matter how tall or short they were, no matter how uncomfortable they were with their height, they could climb. They began to take climbing lessons. They discovered that the views from the high mountains are worth the climb. Eventually they learned that growing tall isn't the same as growing up.
Commentary:
"How do you feel about that?" is one of the most common verbal ploys in contemporary psychotherapy. It throws the conversational ball into the client's court. The therapist can lean back and relax until some client statement triggers a similar question. Theoretical justification for the question lies in the belief that clients are not in touch with their feelings, that such a question stimulates a genuine search for feelings which are causing the client trouble because they have been unrecognized in the unconscious and unexpressed.
Here are some alternate ideas about feelings for your consideration:
When we aren't aware of a feeling, it's because we aren't feeling anything.
There are many moments in which we don't feel anything at all.
We are the experts on our own feelings.
No one knows what anyone else is feeling. No professional training offers expertise in anyone else's feelings.
Feelings need not be expressed so long as they are acknowledged.
Many feelings are complex and cannot be accurately described, particularly in the simple choices available in psychotherapy.
Feelings are natural phenomena; like weather, they happen to us.
Feelings don't need to be fixed. Nothing needs to be done about them except to feel them.
Feelings need not hinder us from doing what we need to do.
Being happy or comfortable or anxiety-free should be relatively low priority goals.
As long as feeling good is the top priority in our culture we can expect difficulties with drugs, psychotherapy, crime, and other social problems.
If these notions about feelings sound strange you might benefit from Constructive Living or a switch from talk shows and textbooks to observation of the real world. You have been taught that in order to go about your daily life effectively it is necessary to first fine- tune your feelings. You have been taught that you need more self- esteem, more confidence, less anxiety, fewer doubts, a positive attitude, a more comfortable approach to life, and so forth. Frankly, you don't. After you start doing the things you need to do in life these feeling concerns will cease to be so important to you.
It's a good thing we don't need to fix our feelings to get on with life because no one has any idea how to fix feelings. The best method for gaining self esteem and self confidence is to do something and succeed at it, and even that doesn't work all the time.
I am afraid to fly (as the story goes, it's not that I'm afraid to fly, I'm really afraid to crash). Yet I fly all the time--to Japan each spring and fall, around the U.S. lecturing. Twenty-five times around the world in all, or thereabouts, in the past thirty years. Trembling, sweating, uncomfortable, I fly. When people tell you they don't fly because they are afraid of flying, you need not believe them. They don't fly because they don't buy airline tickets.
If you are working on your feelings in psychotherapy you are wasting your time in a most expensive manner. Read the story above once again. Get off the couch and climb your mountains. Scared to death or not, climb.
Attracting Japanese medical students to Morita therapy
Morita therapy is firmly established in the U.S. and Canada. It has been introduced to China and Thailand. There are certified Constructive Living instructors with Morita training in England, Germany, New Zealand, and Mexico. Books on Morita therapy have been published in English by university presses (California, Chicago, Hawaii, SUNY). Over 100,000 books on Morita therapy and Constructive Living have been printed in English. Articles on Morita therapy have appeared in academic journals, major magazines (Cosmopolitan, Self, Fitness, American Health, New Woman, Yoga Journal, Bottom Line, New Dimensions, Your Personal Best, Vogue, and others), and newspapers (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, and others).
It is surprising that Morita therapy is not growing in popularity so quickly in Japan. There are some signs of new interest in Morita therapy rising in Japan. The membership of the Morita Therapy Association has been growing. Membership in Hakkenkai continues to grow, albeit slowly. The Okamoto Foundation has sponsored research and development activities and a library to stimulate interest in Morita therapy. How can we attract more medical students to the practice of Morita therapy?
Firstly, the broader application of Moritist practice will make it more attractive to young psychiatrists. Applying Morita therapy to non-shinkeishitsu patients, even to non-neurotic patients, even to the lives of the medical students themselves provides a wider scope and usefulness to the practice. Secondly, it is time to rediscover the depth and practicality of Morita's methods. It is absurd to consider Western feeling-focused, self-centered therapies to be superior just because they come from the West. I am not considering here some cultural differences, but basic human qualities that are ignored and suppressed by traditional Western psychotherapies. Thirdly, young medical students are attracted to the forefront of research and theory in psychiatry. Psychiatry can take the exclusive route of bio- pharmacology or it can retain its educational-guidance thrust, too. If psychiatrists are to teach their patients about coping with life then they need to use the most effective methods with the most helpful
contents. Fourthly, I believe that we are moving from an era with a narrow focus on professional commitment and economic gain to one of a broader view of occupations. People are looking for life work that is meaningful and pertinent to their whole lives. Morita therapy offers the health professional a seamless lifeway as worthwhile to professional career as to private life.
Morita therapy in the future
Morita therapy in Japan has already entered a period of development and change. Here is a list of further changes I believe will benefit Morita therapy and the people we serve.
1. Increased use of Morita therapy not only for people with many shinkeishitsu moments (there are no shinkeishitsu people; we are all changeable), but for others as well.
2. Increased recognition that people change, and so Moritists can provide leadership in decreased use of static diagnostic categories in neurosis.
3. Increased acceptance of non-medical instructors in Morita therapy.
4. Increased study of the advantages and disadvantages of using Morita therapy along with other therapy modes.
5. A broader interpretation of the phrase "nasubeki koto" to include tasks other than work tasks.
6. Adoption of formal training and certification procedures for becoming a Morita therapist.
7. Incorporation of the insights of Naikan therapy into Moritist practice.
8. Decrease the amount of limiting talk about the connection between Japanese culture and Morita therapy. Morita therapy is not limited to Japanese people or Japanese culture or Japanese thinking. It is useful for people around the world. A narrow association with Japan will have a negative effect on the adoption of Morita's ideas in other countries in the long run.
1992 Morita Therapy Meetings Lecture
My Hopes for Morita Therapy in Japan
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
ToDo Institute
Morita therapy in Japan has already entered a period of development and change. Here is a list of further changes I believe will benefit Morita therapy and the troubled people it serves. Perhaps these suggestions seem extreme. Further details about this list may be found in an article I am writing for Dr. Ohara's forthcoming book.
1. Increased use of Morita therapy for not only shinkeishitsu people, but other disgnostic categories, as well.
2. Increased use of Morita therapy for not only treatment of neurosis, but for personal development in normal people, as well.
3. Increased recognition that people change, and so decreased use of static diagnostic categories in neurosis.
4. Increased acceptance of non-medical instructors in Morita therapy.
5. Changing the name of Morita therapy to Experiential therapy or Life therapy or Realistic Living therapy.
6. Increased study of the advantages and disadvantages of using Morita therapy along with other therapy modes.
7. A broader interpretation of the phrase "nasubeki koto" to include tasks other than work tasks.
8. Adoption of formal training and certification procedures for becoming a Morita therapist.
9. Incorporation of the insights of Naikan therapy into Moritist practice.
10. Decrease the amount of limiting talk about the connection between Japanese culture and Morita therapy. Morita therapy is not limited to Japanese people or Japanese culture or Japanese thinking. There are more than seventy Morita instructors in the West with more than 50,000 books on the subject sold.
I cannot expect these changes to take place quickly in Japan. But I expect that gradually Morita therapy in Japan will come to look more like Constructive Living in the West.
Suppose your grandfather invented something which your family put on a shelf to gather dust. Someone from a foreign country came along and found an important and broad use for it. In the minds of consumers around the world that person's name became associated with the invention instead of your family's name. You might reassess your grandfather's invention and resent the foreigner. When Morita's thought was brought to the West there was something saved, not lost, in the translation.
1993 International Morita Therapy Meetings Paper
THE STATUS OF MORITA THERAPY IN THE UNITED STATES
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center
Introduction
As Morita Therapy crossed the Pacific it became broader and better known, it opened to new applications and extensions of the basic principles.
1. From the narrow application focused on shinkeishitsu neurosis to the broader application to mental health.
2. From exclusive practice by professionals to recognized practice by laypeople, as well.
3. From a medical focus to a wider educational focus.
4. From emphasis on Japanese thought and problems to human thought and problems.
5. From exclusive use as a therapy mode to use in concert with other therapy modes such as the use with Naikan in Constructive Living.
6. From application to psychiatry alone to application to schools, business, AIDS treatment, childrearing, and so forth.
7. From narrowly-defined terms such as toraware and nasubeki koto to broader interpretations of such concepts.
8. From individual apprenticeship to formal certification training of individuals in groups.
Developments
The extension of Morita's ideas has taken place largely within the context of Constructive Living (CL) in the United States.
By the end of 1992 Constructive Living certification training courses had been held in Los Angeles, Hawaii, Florida, New York, San Francisco, Virginia/Washington D.C., Chicago, Cleveland, New Zealand, and Japan. About two hundred individuals were trained during these courses, with nearly one hundred of them certified as instructors.
Quality control is very important in a movement of this sort. Certification involves an intensive ten-day course during which trainers are able to observe the everyday lives of the trainees (and vice versa). Most of the training is devoted to CL interpretations of Morita Therapy. Certification is awarded to those who demonstrate an intellectual and experiential understanding of CL principles. Certified instructors can be found in Canada, England, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, and Mexico as well as in most sections of the United States.
Beginning in 1988 annual meetings of the International Association for Constructive Living were held alternating on the East and West Coasts. Only certified instructors were invited to attend. Those very active in the CL movement could keep up with the latest methods and ideas during these meetings. In addition to reports from participants and a chance to exchange information and conduct business, an advanced training course was offered at each meeting. About a third of those certified at the time attended any given meeting.
By the end of 1992 our updated mailing list of people interested in Constructive Living contained nearly ten thousand names. A large number of those who wrote or telephoned us reported Moritist principles useful in their lives and in the lives of those with whom they lived and worked. Even without face-to-face individual instruction or correspondence or telephone instruction they could get enough information from books and articles to begin living more constructively. CL groups were operating in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Ottawa, Washington, D.C.
Named Rolling Mist, a newsletter of Constructive Living was begun in the 1980's under the editorship of Mel Clark. It was renamed nothing special when the editorship passed to Robert Addleton for a few years. This year Gregg and Linda Krech took over the editorship at the T?ᄋInstitute. Because of the difficulty getting CL-related articles published in the International Bulletin of Morita Therapy the newsletter provides a forum for presenting new developments in Moritist thought.
Academia
As I reported at earlier meetings my books on CL understandings of Morita Therapy have been published by prestigious university presses (University of California Press, University of Hawaii Press, State University of New York Press, for example). Articles about Morita Therapy have appeared in academic journals and encyclopedias and textbooks thanks to the work of Japanese Morita therapists, Constructive Living instructors, and Dr. Ishiyama and his colleagues.
Published this spring, Plunging Through the Clouds is the most recent book from an academic press (SUNY Press). It is an edited collection of CL writings on current applications of Moritist and Naikan thought in the West. It contains chapters on the Morita lifeway for non-neurotics, Moritist applications to childrearing and school settings, Morita's principles and HIV infection, Moritist group work, the application of Morita's ideas to businesses and office work, and other topics.
However, it is not sufficient to present Morita Therapy only to academics and mental health professionals. It is also important to spread these ideas as widely as possible so that many people can benefit from them.
The media
Throughout the late 1980's and early 1990's a stream of articles about Morita Therapy in Constructive Living appeared in the media. The May, 1990, Silver Anniversary issue of Cosmopolitan carried a thought-provoking article about Constructive Living prompting more than five thousand readers from every state and a number of foreign countries to write to our Constructive Living Center in Coos Bay, Oregon, asking for more information. During our busiest periods in 1992 more than one hundred calls and letters arrived each day at the Constructive Living Center in Oregon. Articles also appeared in Vogue, (December 1984 and April, 1988), The New York Times (June 3, 1986), Psychology Today (February, 1987), The Los Angeles Times (September 21, 1987), East West (June 1988), Yoga Journal (May/June, 1988), Today's Man (Fall, 1989), USA Today (August 23, 1990), Bottom Line (December 11, 1990), Your Personal Best (Charter issue), New Dimensions (May, 1990 and June, 1992), New Woman (November, 1991),and American Health (March, 1991), Fitness (October, 1992), Self (November, 1992), and elsewhere. These articles sometimes contained erroneous information, but they gave Morita Therapy name recognition in the West and stirred interest in Morita's thought and practice.
Beyond national borders
Our work in the U.S. extended beyond our national borders. In 1988 I was invited by the World Health Organization to conduct a National Training Course in Constructive Living for the Peoples Republic of China. Psychiatrists from throughout that country attended and expressed enthusiasm for Morita's methods. In some respects I was reintroducing Chinese thought back into China. Within a few years, thanks to the work of the Okamoto Foundation, Seikatsu no Hakkenkai, and Professor Kenshiro Ohara, Morita Therapy was firmly fixed as a subspecialty in Chinese psychiatric practice.
Workshops and certification training took place in New Zealand and Japan. Gregg Krech conducted workshops in Thailand and Cambodia. Preparations are being made for certification training in Canada.
CL Instructors
Instructors in the U.S. used CL in their daily lives, offered lectures and workshops, provided individual instruction, and sponsored trainings. By the early 1990's certification training and/or IACL meetings had been sponsored by Perri Ardman, Crilly Butler, Jr., Said Hassanzadeh, Paul Jones, Susan and Henry Kahn, Gregg and Linda Krech, Ron and Patricia Madson, Marilyn Murray, Brian Ogawa, Diana Peterson, Mary J. Puckett, Philip and Sheila Saperstein, Barbara Sarah, Rami Shapiro, Mary Ann Thomas, X. Udaya, Gregory Willms, and Yen Lu Wong. Other workshops and group instruction had been offered by many of the above individuals as well as by Trudy Boyle, Richard Casavant, Cindy and Ron Green, Juliet Guroff, Daniel Hoppe, David Hudson, Gottfried Mitteregger, Annette Moy, Haruyo Ogi, Frederic Paterno, Daniel Rybold, Patricia Stewart, Mihoko Tohma, Joan Woodward, Jesus Zamora, and others.
Looking forward
The 1980's and 1990's saw a blossoming of Morita's ideas in the West. Constructive Living books sold over 100,000 copies. Millions of readers were exposed to Morita's ideas through magazine and newspaper articles. Some members of the professional community were slower to pick up these methods, probably because of CL's inherent challenges to traditional Western psychodynamic approaches to the treatment of behavior disorders. The broad-based educational approach of our methods to what had previously been seen as medical-clinical problems disputed the authority and expertise of established psychiatric and psychological interests. But the trend appears to be unstoppable and the effectiveness indisputable.
1993 Second International Conference Meaningful Life Therapy
Opening Remarks
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Welcome to the Second International Conference of Meaningful Life Therapy sponsored by Meaningful Life Therapy in Japan and the T?ᄋInstitute in the United States. Our special thanks is due Dr. Jinroh Itami and the staff members of MLT and Shibata Hospital and the members of MLT, patients and families and supporters.
It has been three years since the First International Conference of MLT held in Hamamatsu, Japan. MLT continues to grow and to develop improved methods for helping people live constructively in spite of disease.
Dr. Itami was one of the pioneers in applying Morita's ideas and methods outside of the narrow diagnostic category of shinkeishitsu neurosis. The first time I heard him present a paper at the National Morita Therapy meetings he gave me great hope for the future of Morita Therapy. Dr. Itami shared with Morita the idea that doctors can give assistance and resources to patients, but patients must act constructively to achieve cure. No doctor and no medicine alone can save a patient. Patients have an important role in their own cure.
Some 24 years ago I became a patient in a mental hospital in the U.S. in order to conduct research on suicide. I lived in the mental hospital as a patient; the staff members and patients didn't know I was a researcher. So I could live the ordinary life of a patient. One thing I learned was how important the other patients are in hospital life. The other patients gave me information and social support and small gifts. Sometimes we patients even secretly traded medication. We saw ourselves as different, separated from the healthy staff. The staff went home after working for eight hours; we continued to live in the hospital.
When my research was over one of the suggestions I made to hospital staff was to train patients to be mental health caregivers, not just passive recipients of mental health care. I would like to see all mental patients trained as mental health providers. They could spot the problems of their fellow patients faster and more surely than the overworked professional staff. I could see many similarities between staff and patients. There is a joke that the only difference between mental health professionals and neurotic patients is that patients sometimes get better, become well.
MLT has a similar function, I think, in mental health related to illness. In the area of cancer and other long-term diseases MLT teaches its members not to be passive recipients of medical care, but to offer support and information to each other. MLT members learn to seek helpful information and use that information for their own health and for helping others, too. The world is not clearly divided between healthy, happy people and ill, suffering people. We are all sometimes feeling good, sometimes feeling bad, sometimes happy, sometimes suffering. MLT reminds us of how similar we all are--doctors and patients, Japanese and Chinese and Canadians and Americans and others.
So I think it is appropriate for this meeting to be an International Conference.
Supplemental Remarks
Recently I have been suffering from months of intestinal pains. The doctors gave me many tests to determine the cause of the illness. They looked into my colon and into my stomach, they prescribed x-rays and medicines that made me nauseous for weeks. Some tests required that I take a laxative and an enema. Some nights I said awake for long hours in pain. So I have had some of the experiences you have had with chronic diseases.
One day after taking the prescribed laxative and suffering from diarrhea for hours as I flushed the toilet it became stuck and overflowed. "This isn't fair," I thought, "Life has brought me all this suffering and now this extra suffering, too?" As I cleaned up the bathroom floor I felt terrible. As the weeks passed sometimes I felt despair and sometimes I felt hope. Sometimes my body felt well and sometimes it felt very ill.
Reality changes, feelings change, our bodies change. With every change comes information about what we need to do. With each change comes the chance to develop our skill at accepting Reality as it is, not necessarily liking it, sometimes working to change it, but always paying attention to it without ruminating about shoulds and oughts and might have beens.
1994 Article for Dr. Shinfuku's Journal
Adaptations of Morita Therapy
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Morita therapy has changed over the years. It has changed within Japan. It has also changed as it moved across the oceans to other cultures. The Morita therapy of Japan today retains the fundamental principles of the Morita therapy of the early twentieth century, but modern Morita therapy in Japan has been modified by the changing needs of the Japanese people. In Morita Psychotherapy (Reynolds, 1976) are described some of the adaptations that have become necessary to fit Morita's methods to the needs of the modern Japanese people. Such changes include more
intellectual explanation and less authoritarian command during therapy, increased
professionalization and compartmentalization of therapy, the introduction of educational self-help groups and correspondence as a therapy mode. So adaptation is natural for Morita therapy.
In this article I shall point out some changes that have taken place as Morita therapy moved across the Pacific to the United States and is utilized within the practice of Constructive Living. Although these adaptations have resulted from the sanding and polishing of actual patient-therapist interactions in the West, they have been adopted with an awareness and attention to the process of modification that is probably quite unusual. In other words, I mean to communicate here that the modifications to this therapy were inserted purposefully to fit Western values and
concerns. I was fortunate to be in a unique situation which allowed my background in cultural and psychological anthropology to be utilized in the purposeful, directed change of this therapy to fit Western cultures. It is interesting to note that as Japan becomes more Westernized these Western modifications are being fed back into the
Japanese system with success. We have here a case study in the customization of psychotherapy to meet changing situations and changing needs of culture
members. There are modifications necessary to meet changing situations and changing needs of individual clients within a single cultural system, too, but consideration of such precise customization of therapy goes beyond the scope of
this article.
In general, Morita Masatake was quite perceptive in uncovering basic human issues in the treatment of neurosis. He creatively pointed out the direction in which helpful guidance can be offered. Sometimes his treatment methods appear to
modern therapists to be overly narrow, confined to the needs of the patients he saw in early-twentieth-century Japan. It was necessary for Western Morita therapists and Constructive Living instructors to sort out the principles woven through Morita's practice and modify the technique to fit the needs of Western clients.
Shinkeishitsu neurosis
One of the basic changes necessary to make Morita instruction amply applicable to Western neurotic clients was to broaden the definition of
shinkeishitsu neurosis-the specific disorder for which Morita therapy was developed. Although Morita himself recognized that everyone exhibited shinkeishitsu traits to one degree or another and that everyone becomes more shinkeishitsu when
physically ill, the clinical term itself had a precise and limited definition.
In a recent edited collection of Morita's writings on psychotherapy (Morita, Seishin Ryoho Kogi, 1983), the characteristics of shinkeishitsu neurosis are set forth clearly. The shinkeishitsu neurotic is introverted, hypochondriacal, sensitive, attentive to details, self-focused (but not as selfish as hysterics), rational and worried
much of the time. As shinkeishitsu persons focus attention on their problem areas they become more sensitive to their difficulties. As a result they focus more attention on their limitations and problems in a vicious cycle. They tend to be intelligent and able to understand their own psychological functioning when explained Moritist
principles. They have a strong desire to be cured and will put forth effort to achieve cure.
Morita contrasted shinkeishitsu and hysteric people--the former being introverted, oversensitive, hypochondriacal, asocial, constantly troubled, intellectual person; and the latter being extroverted, emotional, highly changeable, and less
rational. The classic shinkeishitsu person can be found in the novels of the famous Japanese author, Natsume Soseki. These two neurotic types almost fit the American stereotypes of certain academic males and socialite females, respectively, although, of course, in reality both sexes are represented in both types.
I suspect that even in Morita's day it was sometimes difficult to make an absolute differential diagnosis when confronted by an individual client responding to changing situations. We are nothing if not changeable. As noted above Morita himself pointed out that the shinkeishitsu characteristics which everyone
possesses to some degree become exaggerated when we become physically ill. Although it may be true that Morita instruction is more effective and works
more quickly the more shinkeishitsu characteristics the client displays, nevertheless, Moritist principles can be considered helpful to hysterics, and non-neurotics, too, for that matter. American Moritists are less concerned with diagnostic pigeonholing, a concern of the severe German medical system used by the Japanese of Morita's
day. The attempt to categorize into static diagnostic domains may seem ,'scientific" to many today. However, when we try to distort our situationally changing natures into rigid categorizations, the data become meaningless. In other words, we are only shinkeishitsu at certain times and certain places. One adaptation of Morita therapy as practiced in Constructive Living is to shorten the term "shinkeishitsu" to the noun
"shink" and the adjective "shinky," easier to pronounce for Western speakers.
As noted above, American Morita therapists are concerned with whether the client can understand the educational component of therapy. That is, we cannot practice Morita instruction with someone who is hallucinating and unable to hear or
understand what we are teaching. We cannot practice Morita instruction with a young child or an extremely senile or brain-damaged individual or someone with a very low intelligence capacity. We cannot practice Morita instruction with someone unwilling to give the principles a trial in daily life. But, following the postulate that some
shinkeishitsu traits are found in everyone to some degree, we do not require our clients to display all shinkeishitsu and only shinkeishitsu characteristics. It turns out that in modern Japan, too, classic shinkeishitsu patients are becoming rare, and types mixed with depression, for example, are becoming common.
More and more, both in the United States and in Japan, we see these shinkeishitsu traits mixed with neurotic depression, complaints, selfishness, impulsiveness and poor habits of living. In order to make the Moritist lifeway
available as widely as possible we have eliminated any stringent requirements about treating only pure shinkeishitsu clients.
The definition of "task"
Another modification has been the broadening of the definition of "what needs to be done." In Morita's day it was thought that work had some particular benefit to the patient. The task that is before one's eyes was narrowly defined in terms of a work task. Of course, the boundary between work and other pursuits (hobbies, for
example) is not all that clear-cut. Nowadays, we see that what needs to be done can be play or planning or sleeping or any other constructive activity. In modern Japan, too, we can now find ping-pong tables and guitars and television sets in Morita therapy hospitals. Still, some Japanese therapists tend to think of these pursuits as
recreational activities appended to the basic work therapy.
Work is important in human life. Work needs to be done for several reasons: 1. To provide material necessities for social groups, family, and self, 2. To sustain an active and constructive life, 3. To repay the world for its constant support. But "nasubeki koto" (task) has a broader meaning than physical labor.
It is American Morita therapy that has given the consistently broad definition to the word "task' which encompasses any constructive goal directed activity. If Moritist principles are to be applied by severely ill and bedfast patients how can we expect physical labor from them? In this era of increasing leisure time we found it necessary to look at the essence of Morita's interest in work. It is not the qualities of unpleasantness or prescription by society or necessity to make a living that were essential to the concern with work as part of therapy. Rather it is the constructive
nature of the activity and the quality of effort and attention involved in the task that makes it valuable to the patient. American Moritists agree that some work must be done even though it is difficult and unpleasant, simply because it needs to be done. Enjoyment (a sort of valued feeling associated with some task) is not the criterion by
which we decide whether or not something needs to done.
By the same token, just because what needs to be done is enjoyable we need not eliminate it from consideration. Again, the essence lies in the constructive purposefulness.
Isolated bedrest
A third development has come in the way we look at the physical aspect of treatment. Morita clearly saw his method as having a physical and an educational component. Like the physician, Weir Mitchell, who practiced during the same period in the United States, Morita believed that physical rest provided many benefits to the neurotic patient. Particularly the shinkeishitsu neurotics with their excessive bodily concern and hypersensitivity could benefit from the decreased stimulation and isolation of extended bedrest (usually for a period of one week). This period of
isolated, absolute bedrest stood out as a characteristic feature of Morita therapy at the
time of its introduction into the United States following World War II. There are still uninformed American therapists who equate Morita therapy with isolated or absolute bedrest. In fact, absolute bedrest is almost never practiced in America, and it has become less commonly practiced in Japan, as well, although other aspects of Morita therapy continue to flourish there.
Typically, the Japanese patients who are severely troubled as to require inpatient treatment begin the hospital stay with a week of isolated bedrest. It involves lying down without reading, writing, radio, television, smoking or conversing with others. Nothing is permitted which allows the patients to distract themselves from that flow of awareness which is their Reality. Only three meals and simple toilet functions are permitted.
For the severely neurotic person isolated, absolute bedrest offers some important benefits. There is no escaping from one's self during the period of isolation. Feelings and thoughts are seen to come and go regardless of external stimulation. The lack of control over them is understood experientially. There is a short period of joy and desire to be active at the end of the week of bedrest.
But there are disadvantages to bedrest, also. Physical facilities and the logistics of daily supervision and meals are required. For some depressed and some psychotic patients bedrest can be dangerous. The patient's physical and mental
condition must be monitored. The patients are pulled away from the everyday reality to which they must adapt and put into the constructed reality of bedrest--a rather anti-Moritist practice in itself. The week's bedrest within a medical institution is expensive; the total hospitalization may last two or three months.
Among our Western clients, most aren't in need of temporary withdrawal from their social world-they have been allowed to withdraw too much already. Many respond to increased physical activity rather than to rest. Walking, jogging and
other physical exercises are regularly assigned after consultation with a physician. Particularly with the numbers of clients exhibiting depressed affect we find that inactivity provokes rumination, but increased activity actually produces more
energy and constructive action. Once more, it appears that Morita was correct in his recognition of the intimate interaction between mind and body. But, again, his application of this insight was somewhat narrow in that he emphasized bedrest,
probably assuming that the people of his time and culture would get enough physical activity in the course of everyday living. We do assign quiet sitting to hyperactive and "flighty" clients as an aid in stilling their bodies and minds, but more often than not these days our students/clients are in need of more physical activity and not less.
Recent studies at Jikei University's Morita therapy facility measured the physiological and psychological effects of isolated bedrest.
Instructional techniques
Yet another development in Western Morita instruction is the increased variety of teaching devices employed to get the principles across to our students. In Morita's day books and lectures were available to those interested in this therapy
mode. Maxims such as "Effort is good fortune" (Doryoku sunawachi kofuku) and "Cling to Reality" (Jijitsu hon'i) and ("Accept Reality) as it is" (Arugamama) provided the patients with mnemonic aids in teaming and recalling the basic ideas (Reynolds, 1976). In the West we use maxims, both Japanese maxims in translation and English maxims developed for Western clients (see Reynolds, 1984a). We also have a number of simple tales illustrating the principles (see Reynolds, 1984b). These fairy tales for grownups give the Western client some distance from the characters in the
stories and allow a relatively objective view of their own habits and ways of thinking. In addition, we employ selected Zen koans (puzzles with no superficially logical solutions) to stimulate the clients' thinking along Moritist lines (Reynolds, 1984b). These Buddhist-based koans have a somewhat different purpose when applied within a Zen context, but some of them are sufficiently related to Moritist practice to be
useful to our clients. This usefulness is understandable because of the fundamentally Zen-like approach of the Moritist method. I must emphasize here that Morita therapy is not a religion at all, but it does draw much of its basic outlook from psychological Buddhism, a practical, phenomenological approach to mental functioning.
I suspect that Morita would approve of our broad use of these teaching methods. We retain Morita's skepticism that intellectual understanding in and of itself is insufficient to produce lasting changes in neurotic behavior. Experience based
upon behavior is necessary for "cure." But some intellectual grasp of the principles is necessary, too. And modern clients are less willing to give their assignments an experiential trial without some understanding of why the assignments are made,
what their purposes are. So we do, perhaps, more explaining than Morita did in his day. In order to hold the clients' attention and facilitate their teaching we utilize audio and video tapes, readings and the other aids described elsewhere (Reynolds 1989b, 1991, 1992b). They provide support for the mind while the body is teaching important lessons. Just as in learning how to drive a car, driver education isn't of much worth if confined only to the classroom.
Finally, American Morita therapists are quite willing to use other therapy modalities as adjuncts to Morita therapy. Moritist principles provide the basic framework for our work with clients, but to solve particular problems we may
turn to, behavior shaping from behavior therapy, non-directive listening, autogenic training, biofeedback, Naikan and other methods. The Japanese Moritists have become somewhat more flexible in this regard, as well. There was a time when use of techniques from other therapies seemed like betrayal, and there were even disputes in
Japan about who was practicing "pure" Morita therapy in Japan.
Behavior therapy techniques may be helpful in weight reduction or a circumscribed phobia (for example, an extreme fear of dirt). Naikan, another
Japanese therapeutic method, is helpful in developing a recognition of the debt we owe others for supporting us and our need to begin to repay them. And so on. We have little hesitation in using an appropriate technique from another therapy to accomplish our immediate Moritist purpose.
The uncritical use of other therapy methods within Morita guidance is dangerous, however. Many Western methods of psychotherapy tend to be
feeling-focused. They may reduce anxiety, for example, but that very temporary success contains the danger of refocusing the students' attention on feelings. "Feeling good" is a welcome change from suffering, but when the focus is on feelings the
students remain feeling-centered. The pleasant feelings won't last forever. Suffering is built into the human condition. The purpose of Morita instruction is to help the students to become purpose-centered or Reality-centered; the purpose of Morita therapy is NOT to produce an anxiety-free life.
Special needs of Westerners
Morita therapy provides the basis for meeting particular needs of Americans.
Unfortunately, American culture has become feeling-focused and excuse-focused. Too many Americans base their behaviors on temporary feelings. They fail to take responsibility for their behavior. They aim for constant happiness, the lack of any
sort of discomfort. They immediately flee into chemicals, medicine, psychotherapy to escape from any suffering. They have been taught to excuse their behavior because of unhappy childhood experiences.
Americans have been taught such foolishness by psychotherapists who follow Freudian psychoanalytic theories superficially, by the media which treats all issues superficially, and by advertisers who wish to sell medication and other "Instant" cures. Morita's ideas provide a healthy balance to correct the current American misunderstandings about the mind. Along with Yoshimoto Ishin's ideas Morita's thought can heal the particular malady of the modern American psyche. It is my task to present Morita's ideas in such a way that Americans can understand them and
benefit from them.
Challenges to Morita therapy in Japan
Our experience in America causes us to challenge some of the assumptions of Morita therapists in Japan today. Morita therapists have uncritically accepted some Western ideas about the human mind and neurosis that must be examined in order to be consistent with the ideas underlying Morita therapy.
For example, rather than talking as though we can understand the motives underlying behavior it is more honest and more straightforward to admit that no one understands why people do what they do. Let us focus on doing what needs doing rather than creating elaborate theories to explain others' actions.
Terms like personality, and even diagnostic categories like "shinkeishitsu" and "depression" are static concepts. People change. No static concept can adequately describe the changeable nature of humans. Morita therapy invites us to look at the changeable nature and possibilities of people rather than at some artificial medical concepts. The human psyche must be considered within the context of the ever-changing situation, not as a fixed concept or construct.
For example, Moritist theory allows a wider view of the client or patient than other psychotherapies. Even contradictory aspects of the client can be seen, such as moments of warmth and kindness as well as moments of hostility and anger, moments of clear attention and noticing as well as moments of self focus and lack of awareness.
Positive potential is thus confirmed even for the suffering shinkeishitsu patient.
Similarly, in the West many scholars and laypeople reify terms such as personality, society, culture, schizophrenia, and so forth. We treat them as though they were "things" out there in the world. No one has ever seen a personality or a
society or a schizophrenia. Reified terms are then used as explanations. For example, the term "personality" is used to describe regularities in behavior over time. Then the same term "personality" is used to explain those regularities. It is like noticing that the ocean rises and falls over time and calling this rise and fall "tides." Then saying that the ocean rises and falls because of "tides" without any reference to the moon's gravitational pull. It is the moon that causes the tides to rise and fall. Morita asks us
to look at REALITY, not at some conceptual world created by academics.
Some Moritists talk as though there were hidden, unconscious feelings and thoughts. Such an idea is a myth perpetuated by psychoanalytic theory. It is unrealistic and unnecessary within the Moritist perspective. Each thought and feeling
arises fresh with each moment; no thought or feeling is the same as a thought or feeling from childhood. An unfelt feeling has no meaning. No one has special powers or training to see another person's "hidden" feelings. Such ideas are useful
only in providing therapists with an income.
Moritist thought allows us to challenge some of the Western notions about the human mind, neurosis, and therapy. That special value of Morita therapy is lost when Morita therapists in Japan uncritically accept Western psychoanalytic theory as truth.
Summary
In sum, the Morita therapy trend in the West through Constructive Living has been to broaden the interpretation of Moritist definitions and principles so that they are meaningful outside their original Japanese context. Western practitioners have added to both Moritist theory and application. We have adapted Morita theory and
practice to meet special needs of Westerners. And those Western interpretations and applications which are meaningful to modern Japanese are being reintroduced back into the practice of Morita therapy in Japan.
References
Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. (English, Japanese, and Spanish editions) Berkeley: University of California Press, l976.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Kora, T. and Ohara, K., eds. Modern Morita Therapy. Tokyo:Hakuyosha, l977.
Reynolds, David K. Psychodynamic insight and Morita psychotherapy. Japanese Journal of Psychotherapy Research, 5(4), 5860, l979.
Reynolds, David K. The Quiet Therapies. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, l980. (English and German versions)
Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley,l98la.
Reynolds, David K. Naikan Therapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley, l98lb.
Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984a. (In Japanese Nayamiwo Ikasu, Sogensha)
Reynolds, David K. Playing Ball on Running Water. New York: Morrow, 1984b. (In Japanese Kodotekina Ikikata, Sogensha)
Reynolds, David K. Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt. New York: Morrow, 1986.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Ohara, K., ed. Morita Therapy: Theory and Practice. Tokyo:Kongen, 1987a. (In Japanese)
Reynolds, David K. Japanese Models of Psychotherapy. In Norbeck, E. and Lock, M., eds. Health, Illness, and Medical Care in Japan. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1987b.
Reynolds, David K. Water Bears No Scars. New York: Morrow, 1987c.
Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living for Young People. Tokyo: Asahi Publishers, 1988.
Reynolds, David K. Pools of Lodging for the Moon. New York: Morrow, 1989a.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989b.
Reynolds, David K. A Thousand Waves. New York: Morrow, 1990. (In Japanese Isshun de Seikakuga Kawaru, Sanno Daigaku Shuppansha)
Reynolds, David K. Thirsty, Swimming in the Lake. New York: Morrow, 1991.
Reynolds, David K. Rainbow Rising from a Stream. New York: Morrow, 1992a.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Plunging Through the Clouds. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992b.
Reynolds, David K., Reflections on the Tao te Ching. New York: Morrow, 1993.
1994 Journal article
Morita Therapy and Me
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
When I was in the Navy my ship visited several Japanese ports. I became fascinated with the psychology of the Japanese people because I could see many similarities between the Japanese mind and my own mind. If I could understand the Japanese mind then I could understand my own mind better. I entered UCLA with the goal of understanding the Japanese mind. But Japanese people sometimes speak tatemae, not honne. To understand the Japanese mind I must learn what the Japanese people are really thinking. I became interested in Morita therapy because I thought that perhaps Japanese neurotic patients would speak honne in therapy in order to become cured. So Morita therapy provided the chance for me to learn at least what neurotic Japanese think but not what normal Japanese think.
At that time, while I was a graduate student at UCLA, Dr. Kenshiro Ohara came to the Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles to study. I met him, and we collaborated on translating a few of his suicide articles into English. When Dr. Ohara returned to Japan he kindly invited me to Japan. He introduced me to the Department of Psychiatry at Jikei University, Kora Koseiin, Japan's National Institute of Mental Health, and many Morita therapists. I came to Japan to do research on Morita therapy for my doctoral dissertation in anthropology.
I began my study of Morita therapy as an outside observer, a young scholar with intellectual interest only. But soon I discovered that Morita therapy included a useful way to live for everyone, including me. As a stranger in Japan with no skill in the Japanese language and little understanding of Japanese customs my shinkeishitsu tendencies became magnified. I suffered from taijinkyofusho and fear of flying and many psychosomatic complaints. Dr. Takehisa Kora told me I must study Morita therapy not only as an outside scholar but also as a patient and as a therapist. With those three perspectives I could really understand Morita therapy. So I went to Dr. Tomonori (Chijun) Suzuki's Clinic for absolute bedrest and studied at Kora Koseiin and Jikei University's inpatient wards and visited many Morita therapists and their patients. Around 1967-1968 there was not much contact among Morita therapists. At that time perhaps I was the only person to visit and compare so many Morita hospitals and clinics.
At Japan's NIMH (at that time it was called Kokuritsu Seishin Eisei KenkyuJo) Dr. Masaaki Kato was director. He suggested that I study other Japanese therapies such as Naikan, Seiza, Shadan, and others to compare them with Morita therapy. So my research broadened. But the base for my comparison of therapies and the core of my understanding came from Morita therapy. It was (and is) important for me to live Morita's ideas, not merely to study and report about them and use them in reeducation (saikyoiku) of students/patients and therapists and society. I returned to the U.S. and wrote my dissertation at UCLA about Morita therapy. The dissertation became a book in English, Morita Psychotherapy (University of California Press), and a book in Japanese, Nihonjin to Morita Ryoho (Hakuyosha). I began to teach Morita's theory and practice as Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Public Health and at the University of Southern California School of Medicine Department of Human Behavior and Psychiatry.
The students in medical school found Morita's ideas useful in their medical education. For example, one student came to my office because he felt shy and embarrassed giving his first pelvic examination to a young woman. We talked about the naturalness of feelings. His task was not to fight against his feelings but to give the best pelvic examination while being embarrassed. His attention was directed toward doing the examination well. At the medical school when shinkeishitsu students came to my office for a series of individual sessions they didn't pay me with money. Instead, I asked them to bring me something they made with their own hands while feeling anxious or fearful. They baked cookies and made handicrafts and planted small potted plants, and brought them to our outpatient sessions. They discovered that when they became involved in (focused attention on) the work with their hands they had moments of relief from their anxiety and fear. It was a Morita lesson for them and some payment for me.
In 1981 I became director of the ToDo Institute in Los Angeles. There I could spend full time teaching Morita's methods to therapists and suffering students. I incorporated Morita and Naikan into what I call "Constructive Living." The words "Constructive Living" have a broad educational flavor in contrast to the Japanese medical flavor of the words "Morita therapy." However, the base of Constructive Living is Moritist theory and practice, of course. There are some human problems for which a Naikan-like approach is useful, however. Morita therapy is most effective with shinkeishitsu students and with the shinkeishitsu elements in all of us. But Morita therapy is a jiriki approach and is not so effective with people who don't know what needs to be done (nasubeki koto), who have no meaning in life, who are unwilling to work hard (doryoku) at life. And Morita therapy carries the danger of shifting the self-centeredness of neurosis from symptoms to self -centeredness in private goals. You can find many Japanese Morita therapists who are self-centered because of their pride in Morita's jiriki approach.
Intensive Naikan (shuchu Naikan) is not part of Constructive Living, but the ideas of Ishin Yoshimoto are a valuable part of Constructive Living theory. The tariki approach of Naikan balances Morita's jiriki, allowing students to see both truths: 1)that they must make effort to do what needs doing (Morita) and 2)that they benefit from others' efforts, too (ikasarete iru, Naikan). Shinkeishitsu symptoms are less troublesome when we accept reality as it is. Both Morita therapy and Naikan are about accepting reality as it is. For example, our Constructive Living assignment to write letters of thanks (controllable action) not letters of gratitude (uncontrollable feeling) to parents have both Moritist and Naikan elements. Morita himself told one patient who complained that his parents didn't love him to go apologize to his parents for being so unlovable.
Constructive Living is strongly based on extensions and adaptations of Morita's thought. For more details on this matter please read Kono Isshunni Jibunwo Kaeru published by Sanno Daigaku Shuppanbu in 1994. It is a translation of the book, A Thousand Waves. There is no space in this short article for a detailed comparison of Morita theory and Constructive Living theory.
Each year I attended the national and international Morita therapy meetings. It has been interesting to watch the broadening application of Morita's ideas outside of the narrow shinkeishitsu diagnostic category. Morita therapy is not merely a tool for treating neurosis; it offers the chance to reassess the purpose of all psychotherapy. Dr. Naotake Shinfuku is a psychiatrist who is deeply interested in the fundamental philosophical premises and values underlying psychiatry and psychotherapy. Morita therapy challenges Western psychotherapy by considering feelings (even anxiety and shyness and rettokan) as natural phenomena. Morita therapy supports personal responsibility for behavior, whatever feelings are felt. We live in an age in which Western psychotherapy provides moral and legal excuses for dysfunctional and irresponsible behavior. The result is that America has many social problems. Morita therapy provides an alternative therapy that supports the individual and protects the society. Sometimes I think that Japanese Morita therapists don't realize what a gem Morita therapy is. Some Japanese Moritists try to measure and evaluate Morita's methods by the standards of Western psychotherapies (such as psychoanalysis or behavior therapy). But Morita therapy cannot be compared with Western therapies. It is much more practical and realistic. Any attempt to make Morita therapy look like Western counseling psychotherapy weakens it and dilutes its value. Western psychotherapy needs to become more like Morita therapy. For more than twenty-five years I have worked to present Morita's valuable psychotherapy and lifeway to the West. The West, too, needs Morita's wisdom.
There are now more than one hundred thirty certified Constructive Living instructors around the world, including three instructors in Japan and twenty other Japanese finishing certification training in May, 1995. More than three hundred people have taken certification training during the past fifteen years. More than three-fourths of the ten days' certification training time is devoted to teaching Morita therapy. Certainly that is more time than is spent on teaching Morita therapy in nearly all of Japan's medical schools.
As part of my efforts to make Morita's ideas known around the world I have written fifteen books in this area for Americans and three books for Japanese young people. Japanese and Americans need to know that there is Morita's alternative way to deal with emotions and behavior. Some of the English-language books have been translated into German, Thai, Spanish, and Japanese. Morita's ideas make sense to people around the world. Our instructors live in Japan, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, England, Germany, and elsewhere.
There are many new applications of Morita's ideas in the West. Recently, Riverside School in Massachusetts (a residential school for disturbed youth) has changed from a psychodynamic orientation to a reality orientation based on Morita therapy and Constructive Living. Psychotherapists, social workers, physicians, counselors, nurses, and others have incorporated Morita's methods into their practice. Little by little, knowledge of Morita therapy expands around the world because the methods are understandable and effective. So my work is made easier because of Morita's broad human approach. Morita therapy is not just a therapy for the Japanese, it is a therapy for the world.
And it is a therapy and lifeway for me, individually. I continue to fear flying. Nevertheless, thanks to Morita, I fly every year, twice a year to Japan, and elsewhere around the U.S. to lecture. I am sometimes shy, sometimes lacking in confidence, sometimes suffering from psychosomatic problems, sometimes frustrated by the gap between my ideals and goals and reality. Morita's theory and practice keep my feet on the ground when my head is in the clouds. Applying Moritist principles to my daily life gives me information for writing books and instructing students. There is no gap between my everyday life and my educational practice of Morita therapy with others. I know psychoanalysts who are only psychoanalysts in their offices, not in everyday life. I know Morita therapists who are only Morita therapists in their offices, not in everyday life. But it is possible and valuable to live Moritist principles inside and outside the office. Then the true depth of Morita therapy becomes understandable.
When I first went to Japan I couldn't understand the Japanese language well. Many sounds I heard made no sense to me; they were meaningless noise to my foreign ears. However, when I learned to speak Japanese the sounds became understandable. I couldn't turn the sounds back into meaningless noise, even if I wanted to do so. Morita's principles for living are like that. Once we learn them well we cannot go back to old feeling-based excuses and irresponsible behavior. Morita therapy offers us all our natural, basic, human language of life.
1995 International Morita Therapy Meetings Paper
Morita Therapy, Constructive Living, and China
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center
Coos Bay, Oregon, USA
Abstract
In 1988 as a temporary advisor for the World Health Organization I introduced Morita Therapy and Constructive Living to psychiatrists from throughout the People's Republic of China. Thanks to the work of Dr. Ohara and Mr. Okamoto and other Japanese pioneers Morita's ideas have gained acceptance within Chinese psychiatry. Many of the ideas underlying Morita Therapy and Constructive Living can be traced to Chinese thought. In this paper I consider some of the features prominent in traditional Chinese medicine and their application to Constructive Living with it's grounding in Morita Therapy.
1) Traditional Chinese medicine has a strong preventative element.
2) The concept of equilibrium is important in Chinese medicine.
3) Chinese medicine is holistic.
4) Chinese medicine is experience-based.
5) Chinese medical practitioners did not blindly adopt Western medical theory and practice.
6) Humans operate in Reality. Reality includes surroundings, other humans, the condition of the mind/body, and personal history. A psychotherapy in China must be Realistic, in this sense.
Introduction
Here I present a chronicle of the adapting of a psychotherapy to fit the cultural values and needs of a people. In the spring of 1988 I was invited by Dr. Naotaka Shinfuku of the World Health Organization and the Government of the People's Republic of China to present a series of workshops in that same year in the fall. I had already undertaken the task of adapting ideas from two Japanese psychotherapies (Morita and Naikan) to fit the tastes and needs of Westerners (Reynolds, 1984, 1989, 1993, 1995). What I called Constructive Living found increasing acceptance in the West. It was profiled in the New York Times, Vogue, East/West Magazine, the Yoga Journal, and elsewhere in newspapers and magazines, on television and radio. By the spring of 1988 there were nearly fifty certified instructors of Constructive Living in the West. Now there are nearly one hundred fifty certified instructors in Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. By 1988 the best selling college psychology textbook contained a full page description of Constructive Living. Professional journals in psychiatry and psychology contained articles on the subject. A newsletter of Constructive Living was circulating to hundreds of readers.
With this successful modification of Japanese psychotherapeutic methods for Western peoples it seemed possible to make appropriate modifications for the Chinese people. To that end in 1988 I began perusing books about Chinese medicine. Although Constructive Living is based upon an educational model rather than a medical model my sponsors and the participants in the workshops would be coming from medical backgrounds. No essentials of Constructive Living would be changed, but the emphases and ways of presenting materials could be designed to make Constructive Living more useful to the Chinese.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
In a perceptive article, W.T. Jones (1976) contrasts two paradigms for science in the West. One paradigm configures science as abstract, static, discrete, and mediate. The other characterizes science as concrete, dynamic, continuous, and immediate. Jones argues that these models of science are derived from world views--the former representing emphases in the West and the latter in the East, specifically in traditional China. Of course, Jones recognizes that features of both paradigms are present in the East and in the West; he writes about preferences, tendencies, propensities.
Let us consider in more detail the elements of traditional Chinese medicine. 1) It is dynamic, change is taken for granted. Stasis (should it ever happen at all) is what needs explanation. 2) Continuity is accented; aspects are interrelated, interpenetrating. It is difficult to meaningfully pull out of context discrete variables. 3) Concrete individuality and the unique elements of individual cases are highlighted. Abstractions are tied tightly to examples, instances, and pragmatic concerns. 4) Personal experience and participation are featured rather than distanced observation. I might add to Jones' analysis a fifth element: 5) a valuing of the natural over the artificial and constructed.
Jones asserts that traditional Chinese practitioners of medicine cited particular episodes and cases more than abstract laws of nature. They refused to create artificial boundaries between humans and nature, between physiology and psychology and sociology and politics. The human relationship between practitioner and patient was an integral component of the treatment process.
There is a sort of humility and recognition of limits in this Eastern attitude toward science. Jones quotes Joseph Needham's citation of the Chinese vignette:
"Penumbra said to Shadow, 'At one moment you move, at another you are at rest. At one moment you sit down, at another you get up. Why this instability of purpose?'
"'Do I have to depend,' replied Shadow, 'upon something which causes me to do as I do?...And does that something have to depend in turn upon something else, which causes it do as it does?...Is not my dependence more like the unconscious movements of the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada?'" (p. 397)
Jones ends his essay with the following advice:
"We must make explicit the assumptions underlying Western medicine and its practice, and free ourselves from the illusion that Western medical science is true, and that other views, to the extent that they deviate from ours, are false." (p. 403)
One of the functions of Constructive Living has been to make clear some of the assumptions underlying Western psychotherapies. To what degree psychotherapy, Western or Eastern, should be considered medicine or science is still an open question. Perhaps psychotherapy should be considered a form of education. Morita called his method saikyoiku (re-education). I believe that an understanding of the Morita-therapy-based Constructive Living principles will, at the least, give a new perspective on the purposes and methods of psychotherapies. Much more, Constructive Living offers an effective method of dealing with human suffering on a level that cuts through cultural boundaries. It is based on a fundamentally human experiential level that appeals to individuals in the East and in the West. The challenge lies in presenting the principles of Constructive Living in terms understandable and palatable to therapists and their clientele (more accurately, to instructors and their students).
Another useful resource as I worked to adapt the description of Constructive Living to meet the needs of China was Margaret Lock's book, East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan. Professor Lock had drawn together information on the importation of a Chinese therapeutic system into Japan. In Lock's book the following Chinese traditional medical principles were reported:
1. A state of social, psychological, and/or physiological disharmony or imbalance causes disease. (pp. 29,38)
2. Humans are part of Nature, subject to natural forces. As part of the whole of Nature we cannot separate parts from the whole without ignoring the vital dynamic interaction with the ever-changing environment. (p. 33)
3. Diagnosis involves more than discovering some specific disease; it involves finding the relation between the body and society and other aspects of Nature. (p. 40)
4. The aim of treatment is to achieve the best adaptation to the total environment, including society. (p. 43)
5. Health and illness are both natural parts of the flux, the change, of natural events. They are part of a dynamic continuum, not dichotomous or static. Changes in our health occur through the day, over the course of an illness, as we age. (pp. 43, 44)
6. Chinese traditional medicine is concerned with achieving balance in order to prevent illness. (p. 44)
7. The method of attaining balance is through producing harmony, not through fighting or direct assault. (p. 46)
8. Proper education is intimately involved in healing. (p.48)
Morita Therapy, Constructive Living and Chinese Thought
Humans operate in Reality. Reality includes physical surroundings, other humans, the condition of the mind/body, and personal history. A psychotherapy in China must be Realistic, in this sense. From a variety of sources I could summarize some of the values that seemed consonant with Constructive Living's Moritist principles:
1) Traditional Chinese medicine has a strong preventative element. The ability of Morita Therapy and Constructive Living to forestall neurotic suffering through education needs more emphasis.
2) The concept of equilibrium is important in Chinese medicine (yin and yang are examples of this concern with equilibrium). Constructive Living presents the possibility of an equilibrium between individual and society, between desires and accomplishments, between behavior and feelings.
3) Chinese medicine is holistic. The notion of sharpshooting at individual symptoms without attention to their fit within the total picture of the patient's life is repugnant. Constructive Living, too, is holistic. Like Morita therapy it aims not at eliminating specific symptoms but at building character.
4) Chinese medicine is experience-based. It is based on observation of actual results in the real world, not on wishes or dreams of what ought to be. Morita saw the foundation of neurosis to be the discrepancy between the idealistic, unrealistic thinking of shinkeishitsu neurotics and the real world. The observation of Reality and life experience are important elements of Constructive Living, as well.
5) The Chinese people are committed to validating their cultural basics. They have a sensible commitment to preserving what is Chinese, avoiding an unthinking adoption of Western ways and values. Moritist and Constructive Living owes much to Chinese thought. The famous Chinese book, Tao te Ching, has been interpreted in Constructive Living terms (Reynolds, 1993). It is easy to find links between Moritist thought and Taoism and Ch'an Buddhism.
My goal in presenting Moritist and Constructive Living material to Chinese mental health professionals is to reduce unnecessary neurotic suffering in China. One side effect of presenting this material is to show the clear connections between Chinese thought and Constructive Living through Morita therapy. In a sense, Chinese thought is returning to China, having traveled through Japan and America.
References
Jones, W. T. "World Views and Asian Medical Systems: Some Suggestions for Further Study" in Asian Medical Systems, Charles Leslie, ed. Berkeley: University of California, 1976
Lock, Margaret. East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. (English, Japanese, and Spanish editions) Berkeley: University of California Press, l976.
Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Plunging Through the Clouds. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.
Reynolds, David K., Reflections on the Tao te Ching. New York: Morrow, 1993.
Reynolds, David K., A Handbook for Constructive Living. New York: Morrow, 1995 (September).
1995 Morita Therapy Association Meetings Lecture
Using Tales in Morita Therapy and Constructive Living
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Tales can be used to teach Moritist principles of living to neurotic students. The tales can come from Morita therapy books or Constructive Living books, or the tales can be created individually for each student. Tales are non-threatening; the student feels some distance from the characters in the tales. The student may be given the tale to study as homework. Then the student and instructor discuss the meaning of the tale in the next session. Some examples of tales are given.
A Tall Tale
Once upon a time there was a land where people went to specialists to work on their stature. Short or tall they spent hours exploring their past heights. They considered themselves to possess hidden squatness which only the specialists could see and measure. They got in touch with their shortness. They sought some standard elevation which they believed their specialists to exemplify.
Unfortunately, the more they worked on their height, the more they expressed the short and tall of themselves, the more obsessed they became with size. Helplessness and hopelessness ran rampant because no one was skillful at changing the stature Nature had endowed. More and more desperately the people implored their lanky specialists to help them. More and more deeply they examined their dwarfish tendencies. They confirmed and affirmed and empowered themselves to grow taller. They struggled with their unconscious resistance to upraise themselves. But it was all for naught, expensive naught.
In time the people learned that no matter how tall or short they were, no matter how uncomfortable they were with their height, they could climb. They began to take climbing lessons. They discovered that the views from the high mountains are worth the climb. Eventually they learned that growing tall isn't the same as growing up.
Commentary: "How do you feel about that?" is one of the most common verbal ploys in contemporary psychotherapy. It throws the conversational ball into the client's court. The therapist can lean back and relax until some client statement triggers a similar question. Theoretical justification for the question lies in the belief that clients are not in touch with their feelings, that such a question stimulates a genuine search for feelings which are causing the client trouble because they have been unrecognized in the unconscious and unexpressed.
Here are some alternate ideas about feelings for your consideration:
When we aren't aware of a feeling, it's because we aren't feeling anything.
There are many moments in which we don't feel anything at all.
We are the experts on our own feelings.
No one knows what anyone else is feeling. No professional training offers expertise in anyone else's feelings.
Feelings need not be expressed so long as they are acknowledged.
Many feelings are complex and cannot be accurately described, particularly in the simple choices available in psychotherapy.
Feelings are natural phenomena; like weather, they happen to us.
Feelings don't need to be fixed. Nothing needs to be done about them except to feel them.
Feelings need not hinder us from doing what we need to do.
Being happy or comfortable or anxiety-free should be relatively low priority goals.
As long as feeling good is the top priority in our culture we can expect difficulties with drugs, psychotherapy, crime, and other social problems.
Some Rocks Don't Roll
"Watch for Falling Rocks" the sign on the road said. One day a rock fell. It was more of a boulder. It blocked the only road from C's house into town, C's private driveway. C tried pushing the boulder off the road, even used the pickup, but it was no use. C then tried drilling and chipping and a sledge hammer. Ineffective. C became angry and threw fists at the boulder pounding and shouting and sobbing in frustration. The obstacle remained firmly oblivious to C's outpouring of emotion. Rocks are maddeningly implacable.
Eventually C built a detour around the boulder. The bypass was never as smooth and easy as the original road. It was bumpy, and sometimes it washed out in rainy weather. But boulders are boulders. And C needed to get to town.
Some rocks are teachers. Teaching rocks are those with students who notice them. C's rock was a teacher.
Physiological Psyche
Imagine a country in which many people believe that they can build muscles by sitting down with a professional trainer and TALKING about muscle building. Rather than working out in gyms they try to develop terrific physiques by reflecting on their childhood experiences of exercise. Within their legal system they can go to court and get disability rulings that underscore their right to muscles and excuse all sorts of criminal acts because a perpetrator isn't sufficiently well developed. In this strange world the public blames the manufacturers and distributors of food for their body shapes and simply ignores the possibility that their EATING certain foods has any effect on their bodies. Somehow they find that educating the amorphous fantasy called "society" has more effect on individual body strength than workouts by individuals. Citizens can easily go to human dispensers of small pills to temporarily beef up their bodies. Furthermore they buy all sorts of chemical and fabric aids which are believed to bulk up their brawn.
People in this country seek to build their strength through mystical activities (including reveries of past lives and psychic explorations) and group discussion and identification with their own sex or with the opposite sex.
They will try almost anything to avoid the hard work of lifting weights and exercising in order to build their bodies.
It's an odd and foolish country, don't you think?
Distended Heart
Once upon a forgiving time there was a woman who grew large enough in spirit to forgive her parents for all the sins they had committed in raising her. Then she grew even more spiritually so that she was able to forgive God or Reality for allowing her to be born to such imperfect parents and for allowing them to treat her so abominably. Then, with the long passage of time, she shrank spiritually so that she could forgive God or Reality for allowing her to be so unappreciative of the few positive things her parents actually did for her. Then her spirit deflated still more and she sought forgiveness for the few troubles she had caused her parents as she grew up. Finally her soul became so minuscule that she could see the need to be forgiven for the trouble she continually caused her parents and others in the world, both as a child and as an adult. With that realization came gratitude that others kindly kept putting up with her own imperfection.
The woman found that holding gratitude was much more pleasant than holding a grudge. She also discovered that it isn't a large soul which leads us to forgive others but an enlarged ego.
1997 Morita Therapy Meetings Lecture
Morita Therapy and Constructive Living
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center, USA
Abstract
My study of Morita Therapy began in the early 1960's. After many years I could summarize much of Morita's theory in three statements: 1) acknowledge reality, 2) have a purpose, 3) act as necessary. I believe Morita's lifeway aims at producing realistic, natural humans who don't waste much energy or time trying to control what cannot be controlled , but they efficiently act to influence what can be controlled.
Some recent problems have appeared in Morita therapy theory and practice that need to be addressed critically. The problems include attention deficit disorder, the degree of sei no yokubo in modern clients, the danger of trying to guarantee results, and the proper placement of attention and confidence. I think that reality-confidence is preferable to self-confidence.
I shall emphasize the fundamental differences between the thinking beneath Western psychotherapy theory and Morita therapy theory. People change; they are sometimes shinkeishitsu and sometimes not. Symptoms are not added or subtracted from the mind. Patients' judgment is highly valued. The therapist is only one representative of many teachers of reality.
Constructive Living is a modern extension of Morita therapy with Naikan therapy and other related methods. Constructive Living (CL) is based on an educational model, not a medical model. It has broader applicability than Morita therapy. There are more than 150 CL instructors around the world. We have introduced Morita therapy to more than 100,000 people in more than 25 countries during the twenty years of CL history.
I close with some basic questions for Morita therapists to consider:
What is cure?
What action is necessary to become a Morita therapist?
Why is it important to live in a Moritist way?
Is it possible to graduate from this Moritist lifestyle?
Is it possible to prevent shinkeishitsu moments?
Three Key Themes
Acknowledge reality
In a sense it can be said that Morita considered neurosis to be an excess of self attention, too much focus on the self. His emphasis on careful observation of surroundings and attention to work refocused the patient's attention away from the excessive self concern of the shinkeishitsu neurotic. Attention to concrete, specific realistic detail rather than abstract, theoretical, conceptual discussion is another trademark of Morita's method. Again, the patients were encouraged to immerse themselves in external reality while accepting the reality of their inner experiences such as feelings. When Morita's patients became lost in their work or lost in observation of their surroundings their symptoms disappeared during those moments. This loss of self in Morita's method is one of the features which ties Moritist thought to Zen Buddhist psychology.
Have a purpose
As you may already know, I am afraid to travel by air. While fearing to fly, I travel frequently by air, a total mileage of over 25 times around the world. I fly to Japan in the spring and again in the fall each year. One Moritist tool that helps me considerably is to remember my purpose in flying. Where am I headed? Why is it important to go there? Who is waiting for me there? Keeping in mind both immediate purposes and long-term goals and objectives is important for a directed, constructive life.
Purposes, too, must be realistic. The purposes of feeling free of anxiety all the time and feeling constantly happy are unrealistic.
Act as necessary
Many aspects of our lives cannot be controlled directly and perfectly by our wills: the national economic situation, our health, other people, our feelings, and so forth. Our behavior, however, is relatively controllable. Effort is most efficiently directed toward the area of personal behavior. We must be careful to separate the effort from the results of our behavior. Results are relatively uncontrollable. We'll consider that problem in more detail below.
Action, too, must be realistic. Preferable assignments in Constructive Living involve actions that are feasible and specific and verifiable.
Recent Problems
Attention deficit disorder
The modern term "ADD" or "attention deficit disorder" is mis-named. This problem is not a deficit or lack of attention. Rather, the attention is misplaced. Morita stated that the healthy mind flows from topic to topic, and the shinkeishitsu mind becomes obsessed and fixates on certain topics. In ADD moments the patients' minds may be flowing from topic to topic. They may be unable to focus on a single topic for any length of time. There is a time and place for focused attention, and there is a time and place for flowing attention.
Sei no yokubo
Sei no yokubo is not an explanatory concept, but rather a circular definition, like the concept of personality. You may see a person with a strong desire to succeed. That person must have a high degree of sei no yokubo, you decide. Then, if you try to explain that strong desire to succeed in terms of a high degree of sei no yokubo, you have explained nothing. In the same way, when we see a person who flees difficult situations often we may say he has a weak character or inadequate personality. We cannot then attempt to explain the cause of that person's fleeing from difficult situations in terms of a weak character or inadequate personality. To do so would be merely circular. The concept of sei no yokubo may be useful in helping people with many shinkeishitsu moments to see the positive side of their tendencies. It is not an explanation. So it cannot be used to explain the different symptoms of modern patients.
Guaranteeing results
In modern Japanese Moritist literature I sometimes read authors promising patients that if they follow the Morita therapy principles their symptoms will diminish and they will succeed in their families or in business or in other aspects of life. However, we cannot offer guarantees about the outcome of Morita practice. Morita said "Doryoku sunawachi kofuku (Effort is good fortune)". He didn't promise that effort would lead to good fortune in the future. Morita's saying is much in the same spirit of the Zen master Dogen who said that zazen doesn't lead to satori or enlightenment, zazen is already enlightenment. It is the process of behaving constructively and purposefully that is itself already cure of neurosis and the definition of a meaningful life.
There is a dangerous trend in some modern Morita therapy settings to guarantee good results if the client behaves positively and actively. This trend is similar to the unfortunate trend in some Moritist settings that offers advice about reducing symptoms and feeling better. Although many clients want to hear such advice and many clients hope for relief from suffering, Morita's approach offers something much greater than mere temporary relief of symptoms.
Self confidence vs. reality confidence
It can be said that the core of neurosis is a self-centeredness. The person who fears flying knows that the airline flies that same route day after day without crashing. But in shinkeishitsu moments the person believes that because he or she is on that plane it is special, it will deviate from the ordinary and crash. Similarly, the person in shy moments feels the eyes of everyone on him or her. It is as though everyone were watching for that person's slightest mistake. However, we are not the center of everyone else's universe.
Shinkeishitsu moments ("shinkiness" in CL terms) is filled with self-concern--what will happen to me? How terrible they make me feel! Why must I suffer so much? During "shinky" moments there is very little concern with the inconvenience of others. In "shinky" moments the client will corner anyone who shows some compassion and will complain endlessly. When the listener finally begs to be relieved of the burden of offering a shoulder to cry on the momentary "shink" will only be disappointed that the person wasn't there for him or her longer. There was so much more to complain about.
Ideas introduced from the West into Japan emphasize developing more self confidence and self esteem. Beware such ideas. In order to sustain such simplified notions of self confidence and self esteem we learn to ignore or discount the moments in which we are selfish, greedy, petty, cruel, and stupid. We are all sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes successful, sometimes failing. In our good moments and bad moments reality supports us with creatures who die so we can eat, air for us to breathe, clients who come to us and pay us and listen to our advice. Our confidence is more appropriately placed in reality. As simply members of reality, our confidence in self is placed in perspective.
Western Psychotherapy and Morita Therapy
Diagnostic Problems
For all the talk about psychodynamic therapies in the West there are no dynamic Western psychotherapies. They are all static. None recognizes the moment-to-moment changes in the mind that we all experience. When diagnostic categories are used (for medical or insurance purposes), the diagnoses are static, unchanging. A client is seen as suffering from a particular defined disorder or some complex of disorders. In fact, a person with a shinkeishitsu (or any other diagnosis) is sometimes shinkeishitsu and sometimes not. For example, let us consider my airplane phobia. In fact, sometimes while flying I am terrified and sometimes not. When I am lost in eating a tasty meal or when my mind is on some other topic I am not afraid. But my diagnosis of phobia doesn't change.
I knew a schizophrenic patient in a Western hospital who played the best game of chess in the hospital. He could beat other patients and nurses and doctors at chess. When he played chess he planned ahead, played by the rules, anticipated his opponents' moves, and won. When he played chess he was not schizophrenic. Rather, he was a person with schizophrenic moments and non-schizophrenic moments.
Valuing the client's judgment
An essential part of Morita's thought is the valuing of the judgment of the individual. Each person must decide for himself or herself what needs to be done. The therapist or instructor may make suggestions about what needs doing by offering assignments, but the patient or student decides to do the assignments or not.
In the West, psychotherapists may be thought to have some arcane ability to know what their clients are feeling even when the clients themselves don't know. Therapists may be thought to have special knowledge about how minds work, what causes specific symptoms, why people do what they do, and what medications will cure neuroses. The belief is that therapists can help clients "get in touch" with feelings and "get them out" so that the client is no longer bothered by them. This superstition is rather like a modern version of exorcising devils through religious rituals.
In Morita's era the command of the therapist mostly went unquestioned and unexplained. What the doctor said the patient did. However, even then the patients were left free at Morita's home/clinic to find work for themselves. Of course, no therapist can live alongside the patient all day every day to give assignments about what needs to be done.
Therapist as a representative of reality
In Morita therapy the therapist is a sort of experiential guide. The Morita therapist or Constructive Living instructor who has no personal experience with the usefulness of Morita's methods is in no position to instruct others. No matter how many hours the therapist has studied the material, no matter how many books on the subject the instructor has read or written, no one is qualified to teach others without a personal experience base to educate and offer assignments.
Morita's emphasis of reality as truth is carried on in the Constructive Living tradition. We have extended the concept in its natural direction to clarify that the main teacher of Moritist or CL principles is reality. Psychiatrists or other therapists or CL instructors are merely single representative forms of the larger reality which teaches. The attempt to make the therapist-patient relationship crucial to Morita therapy is dangerous, overemphasizing only one means by which we learn from reality. It is the student doing the assignments and the natural tasks of everyday life which produces therapeutic results. It is not the therapist or instructor who is responsible for the patient's or student's improvement.
Remaking Western psychotherapy
In describing the contribution of D.T.Suzuki, who was the main figure in introducing Zen Buddhism to the West, Shimomura (1986) makes a couple of points that are relevant to the introduction of Japanese psychotherapies to the West. First, he holds that where there are fundamental differences within some Eastern system, any attempt to restructure the system in Western terms will inevitably result in distortion and misunderstanding.
I believe that his point applies equally well to the understanding of Morita therapy and Naikan as it does to Zen Buddhism. Attempts to fit Morita therapy and Naikan within a Western psychotherapy framework are unlikely to be successful because there are fundamental differences between these Eastern and Western systems of therapy. For example, unlike Western psychotherapies Morita therapy is not about reducing anxiety or phobias; it is about living fully with them as part of one's momentary existence. The Western idea that anxiety, shyness, fears, lack of confidence and other feeling states are accretions, auxiliary to one's momentary awareness is strange to the Moritist. When I am afraid, that fear IS me in that moment. It is not something extraneous that can be lopped off with clever words or even chemicals. When that feeling goes away (for whatever reason) I am not the same me less only that feeling. The whole gestalt of who I am changes. What I tried to do about the feeling continues to affect me after the feeling has passed.
The second point here that Shimomura makes is that Suzuki's insistence and examples showing that Zen thought is different helped clarify some of the restrictions and limitations of Western philosophy. As long as we keep trying to explain Eastern therapies in Western terms we miss the lessons Eastern therapies hold for Western therapists. We miss recognition of the Western narrow vision and narrow approaches to overcoming neurotic habits. I specifically avoided using the phrase "narrow approaches to cure" in the previous sentence because the term "cure", too, represents the confined medical model within which much of Western therapy is practiced. Neurotic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not merely symptoms of some illness called "neurosis." They are the person who suffers. So they can't be dealt with as though they were isolated tokens of illness, like fevers or muscle spasms.
Those who try to fit Moritist ideas into the model of Western psychotherapy may hope to make these ideas more palatable to Westerners. But, in their attempts to make Morita therapy look like Western therapies, they must distort Morita's ideas. Constructive Living sharpens the distinctions, pointing out the unrealistic elements in Western ways of counseling and psychotherapy. There is danger in the Western therapy emphasis on unconscious feelings, self focus, and domination of the past. The potential contribution of Morita therapy and other Japanese psychotherapies is far greater than merely offering some alternate methods to Western therapists. A fundamental restructuring of Western theory and methods may emerge.
Constructive Living and Morita Therapy
Beyond therapy to education
It is well known that Morita therapy forms the base of Constructive Living. However, we have extended the implications of Moritist thought in certain directions and emphasized certain elements.
The development of Morita theory and practice beyond that of a narrow attention to the treatment of patients with a shinkeishitsu diagnosis allows worldwide recognition of Morita's major contribution to human mental health. Constructive Living (CL) is one direction in which Morita's method has been expanded and implemented. Other complementary expansions include the Seikatsu no Hakkenkai group movement and the Meaningful Life Therapy application to patients with long term and serious illnesses.
Constructive Living instructors actively promote and interpret Morita's theory and practice around the world. Much of the popular knowledge of Morita therapy in the West is due to the efforts of our CL instructors. Our current mailing list exceeds ten thousand names, including correspondents from more than twenty-five countries. Constructive Living books in English, Japanese, Spanish, and German have introduced Morita's ideas to more than 100,000 readers. It is thanks to our Japanese teachers and sponsors that all these efforts are possible.
Morita therapy and Naikan therapy
Intensive Naikan is not part of Constructive Living. But we have borrowed from the ideas of Ishin Yoshimoto because they nicely complement Morita's ideas. In Constructive Living some of our assignments are based on Naikan thought. For example, we may ask a student who complains about his parents to calculate the amount of money his parents spent on him during the first twenty years of his life and then to calculate the amount of money he spent on them during that same period. Naikan practice invites the student to reflect on what was received from others, what was returned to others, and what troubles the student caused others. Just as in Morita therapy, Naikan asks the student to be realistic, to look at the past and the present realistically. We tend to misremember the past, ignoring or forgetting what others have done for us, remembering well what we have done for others, ignoring or forgetting the troubles we have caused others, and remembering well the troubles others have caused us. Such tendencies result in a false self-image, overloaded with a jiriki view of ourselves created for our own convenience. Naikan-based assignments help our students to balance the surface jiriki perspective of Morita therapy with a more tariki perspective acknowledging the contributions of others to our lives. Morita called his method "tariki," but, like Zen, the student of Morita therapy must go very deeply to find the tariki depth of it.
As noted above, Morita therapy values the student's judgment to decide what needs to be done. Naikan similarly values the student's judgment to decide what was received from others, returned to others, and what troubles were caused others. No instructor defines these elements in a particular student's life. The student reflects and reports his or her own conclusions.
Both Morita therapy and Naikan therapy require consideration of concrete, specific detail. Neither Morita nor Yoshimoto allowed their clients to dwell in abstract, general, theoretical thinking or talking. Logic and intellectual learning have their place in the world, but reality appears to us in concrete, specific detail. Both Morita therapy and Naikan require the clients to recognize this detail. Reality, again, is the theme.
Basic Questions
Morita therapy is based on some assumptions and values about human life. These assumptions and values should be explored in the training of Morita therapists. Here are some questions for that exploration:
What is suffering?
What causes suffering?
What cures suffering?
Is it possible or necessary to prevent shinkeishitsu moments?
Is intellectual understanding of shinkeishitsu important?
What are feelings for?
Why work?
What is life's purpose?
Why is it important to live in a Moritist way?
Is it possible to graduate from this Moritist lifestyle?
What does it mean to be "realistic"?
What action is necessary to become a Morita therapist?
What is the duty of a Morita therapist?
What qualifies a Morita therapist?
References
Books
Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. (English, Japanese, and Spanish editions) Berkeley: University of California Press, l976.
Reynolds, David K. The Quiet Therapies. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, l980.
Reynolds, David K. The Heart of the Japanese People. Tokyo: Nichieisha, l980.
Reynolds, David K. Naikan Psychotherapy: Meditation for Self Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l983.
Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
Reynolds, David K. Living Lessons. Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 1984.
Reynolds, David K. Playing Ball on Running Water. New York: Morrow, 1984.
Reynolds, David K. Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt. New York: Morrow, 1986.
Reynolds, David K. Water Bears No Scars. New York: Morrow, 1987.
Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living for Young People. Tokyo: Asahi, 1988.
Reynolds, David K. Pools of Lodging for the Moon. New York: Morrow, 1989.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.
Reynolds, David K. A Thousand Waves. New York: Morrow, 1990. Reynolds, David K. Thirsty, Swimming in the Lake. New York: Morrow, 1991.
Reynolds, David K. Rainbow Rising from a Stream. New York: Morrow, 1992.
Reynolds, David K., ed. Plunging Through the Clouds. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.
Reynolds, David K., Reflections on the Tao te Ching. New York: Morrow, 1993.
Book Chapters
Reynolds, David K. On Being Natural: Two Japanese Approaches to Healing. In Sheikh, A. A. and Sheikh, K. S., eds. Eastern and Western Approaches to Healing. New York:Wiley, 1989.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Ohara, K., ed. Morita Therapy: Theory and Practice. Tokyo:Kongen, 1987. (In Japanese)
Reynolds, David K. Japanese Models of Psychotherapy. In Norbeck, E. and Lock, M., eds. Health, Illness, and Medical Care in Japan. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley,l98l.
Reynolds, David K. Naikan Therapy. In Corsini, R., ed. Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies. New York:Wiley, l98l.
Reynolds, David K. Morita Therapy in America. In Kora, T. and Ohara, K., eds. Modern Morita Therapy. Tokyo:Hakuyosha, l977.
Reynolds, David K. and Yamamoto, Joe. Morita Psychotherapy in Japan. In Masserman, Jules, ed., Current Psychiatric Therapies, 13, 219227, l973.
Articles
Reynolds, David K. Meaningful life therapy. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 13, 457463, 1989.
Reynolds, David K. Morita therapy and reality centered living. Int. Bull. of Morita Therapy, 1(1), 35, 1988.
Reynolds, David K. Psychodynamic insight and Morita psychotherapy. Japanese Journal of Psychotherapy Research, 5(4), 5860, l979.
Reynolds, David K. Naikan therapy: An experiential view. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 23(4), 252264, l977.
Reynolds, David K. and Kiefer, C.W. Cultural adaptability as an attribute of therapies: the case of Morita psychotherapy. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, l, 3954l2, l977.
Reynolds, David K. and Moacanin, Radmila. Eastern therapy: Western patient. Japanese Journal of Psychotherapy Research, 3, 305316, l976.
Shimomura, Torataro. D.T.Suzuki's place in the history of human thought. In Abe, Masao, ed. A Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki Remembered. New York, Weatherhill, 1986.
1997 Morita Therapy and Me
Morita Prize Acceptance Speech
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
When I was in the Navy my ship visited several Japanese ports. I became fascinated with the psychology of the Japanese people because I could see many similarities between the Japanese mind and my own mind. If I could understand the Japanese mind then I could understand my own mind better. I entered UCLA with the goal of understanding the Japanese mind. But Japanese people sometimes speak tatemae, not honne. To understand the Japanese mind I must learn what the Japanese people are really thinking. I became interested in Morita therapy because I thought that perhaps Japanese neurotic patients would speak honne in therapy in order to become cured. So Morita therapy provided the chance for me to learn at least what neurotic Japanese think but not what normal Japanese think.
At that time, while I was a graduate student at UCLA, Dr. Kenshiro Ohara came to the Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles to study. I met him, and we collaborated on translating a few of his suicide articles into English. When Dr. Ohara returned to Japan he kindly invited me to Japan. He introduced me to the Department of Psychiatry at Jikei University, Kora Koseiin, Japan's National Institute of Mental Health, and many Morita therapists. I came to Japan to do research on Morita therapy for my doctoral dissertation in anthropology.
I began my study of Morita therapy as an outside observer, a young scholar with intellectual interest only. But soon I discovered that Morita therapy included a useful way to live for everyone, including me. As a stranger in Japan with no skill in the Japanese language and little understanding of Japanese customs my shinkeishitsu tendencies became magnified. I suffered from taijinkyofusho and fear of flying and many psychosomatic complaints. Dr. Takehisa Kora told me I must study Morita therapy not only as an outside scholar but also as a patient and as a therapist. With those three perspectives I could really understand Morita therapy. So I went to Dr. Tomonori (Chijun) Suzuki's Clinic for absolute bedrest and studied at Kora Koseiin and Jikei University's inpatient wards and visited many Morita therapists and their patients. Around 1967-1968 there was not much contact among Morita therapists. At that time perhaps I was the only person to visit and compare so many Morita hospitals and clinics.
At Japan's NIMH (at that time it was called Kokuritsu Seishin Eisei KenkyuJo) Dr. Masaaki Kato was director. He suggested that I study other Japanese therapies such as Naikan, Seiza, Shadan, and others to compare them with Morita therapy. So my research broadened. But the base for my comparison of therapies and the core of my understanding came from Morita therapy. It was (and is) important for me to live Morita's ideas, not merely to study and report about them and use them in reeducation (saikyoiku) of students/patients and therapists and society. I returned to the U.S. and wrote my dissertation at UCLA about Morita therapy. The dissertation became a book in English, Morita Psychotherapy (University of California Press), and a book in Japanese, Nihonjin to Morita Ryoho (Hakuyosha). I began to teach Morita's theory and practice as Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Public Health and at the University of Southern California School of Medicine Department of Human Behavior and Psychiatry.
The students in medical school found Morita's ideas useful in their medical education. For example, one student came to my office because he felt shy and embarrassed giving his first pelvic examination to a young woman. We talked about the naturalness of feelings. His task was not to fight against his feelings but to give the best pelvic examination while being embarrassed. His attention was directed toward doing the examination well. At the medical school when shinkeishitsu students came to my office for a series of individual sessions they didn't pay me with money. Instead, I asked them to bring me something they made with their own hands while feeling anxious or fearful. They baked cookies and made handicrafts and planted small potted plants, and brought them to our outpatient sessions. They discovered that when they became involved in (focused attention on) the work with their hands they had moments of relief from their anxiety and fear. It was a Morita lesson for them and some payment for me.
In 1981 I became director of the TôDô Institute in Los Angeles. There I could spend full time teaching Morita's methods to therapists and suffering students. I incorporated Morita and Naikan into what I call "Constructive Living." The words "Constructive Living" have a broad educational flavor in contrast to the Japanese medical flavor of the words "Morita therapy." However, the base of Constructive Living is Moritist theory and practice, of course. There are some human problems for which a Naikan-like approach is useful, however. Morita therapy is most effective with shinkeishitsu students and with the shinkeishitsu elements in all of us. But Morita therapy is a jiriki approach and is not so effective with people who don't know what needs to be done (nasubeki koto), who have no meaning in life, who are unwilling to work hard (doryoku) at life. And Morita therapy carries the danger of shifting the self-centeredness of neurosis from symptoms to self -centeredness in private goals. You can find many Japanese Morita therapists who are self-centered because of their pride in Morita's jiriki approach.
Intensive Naikan (shuchu Naikan) is not part of Constructive Living, but the ideas of Ishin Yoshimoto are a valuable part of Constructive Living theory. The tariki approach of Naikan balances Morita's jiriki, allowing students to see both truths: 1)that they must make effort to do what needs doing (Morita) and 2)that they benefit from others' efforts, too (ikasarete iru, Naikan). Shinkeishitsu symptoms are less troublesome when we accept reality as it is. Both Morita therapy and Naikan are about accepting reality as it is. For example, our Constructive Living assignment to write letters of thanks (controllable action) not letters of gratitude (uncontrollable feeling) to parents have both Moritist and Naikan elements. Morita himself told one patient who complained that his parents didn't love him to go apologize to his parents for being so unlovable.
Constructive Living is strongly based on extensions and adaptations of Morita's thought. For more details on this matter please read Kono Isshunni Jibunwo Kaeru published by Sanno Daigaku Shuppanbu in 1994. It is a translation of the book, A Thousand Waves. There is no space in this short article for a detailed comparison of Morita theory and Constructive Living theory.
Each year I attended the national and international Morita therapy meetings. It has been interesting to watch the broadening application of Morita's ideas outside of the narrow shinkeishitsu diagnostic category. Morita therapy is not merely a tool for treating neurosis; it offers the chance to reassess the purpose of all psychotherapy. Dr. Naotake Shinfuku is a psychiatrist who is deeply interested in the fundamental philosophical premises and values underlying psychiatry and psychotherapy. Morita therapy challenges Western psychotherapy by considering feelings (even anxiety and shyness and rettokan) as natural phenomena. Morita therapy supports personal responsibility for behavior, whatever feelings are felt. We live in an age in which Western psychotherapy provides moral and legal excuses for dysfunctional and irresponsible behavior. The result is that America has many social problems. Morita therapy provides an alternative therapy that supports the individual and protects the society. Sometimes I think that Japanese Morita therapists don't realize what a gem Morita therapy is. Some Japanese Moritists try to measure and evaluate Morita's methods by the standards of Western psychotherapies (such as psychoanalysis or behavior therapy). But Morita therapy cannot be compared with Western therapies. It is much more practical and realistic. Any attempt to make Morita therapy look like Western counseling psychotherapy weakens it and dilutes its value. Western psychotherapy needs to become more like Morita therapy. For more than twenty-five years I have worked to present Morita's valuable psychotherapy and lifeway to the West. The West, too, needs Morita's wisdom.
There are now more than one hundred thirty certified Constructive Living instructors around the world, including three instructors in Japan and twenty other Japanese finishing certification training in May, 1995. More than three hundred people have taken certification training during the past fifteen years. More than three-fourths of the ten days' certification training time is devoted to teaching Morita therapy. Certainly that is more time than is spent on teaching Morita therapy in nearly all of Japan's medical schools.
As part of my efforts to make Morita's ideas known around the world I have written fifteen books in this area for Americans and three books for Japanese young people. Japanese and Americans need to know that there is Morita's alternative way to deal with emotions and behavior. Some of the English-language books have been translated into German, Thai, Spanish, and Japanese. Morita's ideas make sense to people around the world. Our instructors live in Japan, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, England, Germany, and elsewhere.
There are many new applications of Morita's ideas in the West. Recently, Riverside School in Massachusetts (a residential school for disturbed youth) has changed from a psychodynamic orientation to a reality orientation based on Morita therapy and Constructive Living. Psychotherapists, social workers, physicians, counselors, nurses, and others have incorporated Morita's methods into their practice. Little by little, knowledge of Morita therapy expands around the world because the methods are understandable and effective. So my work is made easier because of Morita's broad human approach. Morita therapy is not just a therapy for the Japanese, it is a therapy for the world.
And it is a therapy and lifeway for me, individually. I continue to fear flying. Nevertheless, thanks to Morita, I fly every year, twice a year to Japan, and elsewhere around the U.S. to lecture. I am sometimes shy, sometimes lacking in confidence, sometimes suffering from psychosomatic problems, sometimes frustrated by the gap between my ideals and goals and reality. Morita's theory and practice keep my feet on the ground when my head is in the clouds. Applying Moritist principles to my daily life gives me information for writing books and instructing students. There is no gap between my everyday life and my educational practice of Morita therapy with others. I know psychoanalysts who are only psychoanalysts in their offices, not in everyday life. I know Morita therapists who are only Morita therapists in their offices, not in everyday life. But it is possible and valuable to live Moritist principles inside and outside the office. Then the true depth of Morita therapy becomes understandable.
When I first went to Japan I couldn't understand the Japanese language well. Many sounds I heard made no sense to me; they were meaningless noise to my foreign ears. However, when I learned to speak Japanese the sounds became understandable. I couldn't turn the sounds back into meaningless noise, even if I wanted to do so. Morita's principles for living are like that. Once we learn them well we cannot go back to old feeling-based excuses and irresponsible behavior. Morita therapy offers us all our natural, basic, human language of life.
1998 International Morita Therapy Meetings Paper
Morita Therapy, Constructive Living, and the Japanese Zeitgeist
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Abstract
The interests of Morita therapists in Japan have become broader over the years. The symposium today has members specializing in psychoanalysis, Naikan therapy, and Constructive Living, as well as Morita therapy. Yesterday there were training courses offered by the founder of Meaningful Life Therapy and a businessman as well as a Morita therapist. The interests of Japanese Morita therapists became broader because of the changes in the Japanese people. The needs of Japanese patients and therapists are now somewhat different from those of Morita's time. The success of Morita therapy in the future depends upon continued flexibility and adaptation to changing needs.
One kind of adaptation of Morita therapy is found in Constructive Living (CL). Constructive Living now has more than 150 certified instructors around the world including eighteen certified instructors in Japan. The principles and practice of Morita therapy are central to CL, however, some modifications and adaptations have been made to fit the needs of modern people. Some specific adaptations are discussed in this paper.
Furthermore, the principles of Morita therapy as adapted by CL help us to clarify the weakness and errors in traditional Western psychotherapy forms. Japanese psychiatrists and other psychotherapists should not blindly accept Western psychothera-pies without critically considering the dangers of focusing on supposed unconscious emotional processes.
Introduction
The development of Morita theory and practice beyond that of a narrow attention to the treatment of patients with a shinkeishitsu diagnosis allows worldwide recognition of Morita's major contribution to human mental health. Constructive Living (CL) is one direction in which Morita's method has been expanded and implemented. Other complementary expansions include the Seikatsu no Hakkenkai group movement and the Meaningful Life Therapy application to patients with long term and serious illnesses.
Morita therapy, CL, and the self
It is well known that Morita therapy forms the base of Constructive Living. However, we have extended the implications of Moritist thought in certain directions and emphasized certain elements. Let's begin with the implications of Morita's thought for the concept of the self. In a sense it can be said that Morita considered neurosis to be an excess of self attention, too much focus on the self. His emphasis on careful observation of surroundings and attention to work refocused the patient's attention away from the excessive self concern of the shinkeishitsu neurotic. Attention to concrete, specific realistic detail rather than abstract theoretical conceptual discussion is another trademark of Morita's method. Again, the patients were encouraged to immerse themselves in external reality while accepting the reality of their inner experiences such as feelings. When Morita's patients became lost in their work or lost in observation of their surroundings their symptoms disappeared during those moments. This loss of self in Morita's method is one of the features which ties Moritist thought to Zen Buddhist psychology.
Morita therapy, CL, and Zen
Morita wished his theory and method to be considered as science rather than religion, and so he denied any close connection to Zen Buddhist religion. However, both Zen Buddhist psychology (not religion) and Morita's psychotherapy are based on experience-based observation and introspection. Morita was clearly influenced by Zen considerations of the psyche. The writings of T. Suzuki and S. Usa clearly show these connections.
In Constructive Living we have adopted some of the Zen teaching methods--for example, we have borrowed Zen koans and have reworked them to teach Constructive Living principles. Morita did the same with Zen's fumon teaching method. He is also known to have invited Zen teachers to lecture to his patients.
Morita therapy, CL, and reality
Morita's emphasis of reality as truth is carried on in the Constructive Living tradition. We have extended the concept in its natural direction to clarify that the main teacher of Moritist or CL principles is reality. Psychiatrists or other therapists or CL instructors are merely single representative forms of the larger reality which teaches. The attempt to make the therapist-patient relationship crucial to Morita therapy is dangerous, overemphasizing only one means by which we learn from reality. It is the student doing the assignments in Constructive Living and the student doing the natural tasks of everyday life which produces therapeutic results. It is not the therapist who is responsible for the patient's or student's improvement.
Morita therapy, CL, and education
In Constructive Living we have carried on the educational model implied in Morita's choice of words that his method was "re-education." Our model is not medical. We are instructors, and our clients are students. For the most part we do not use medical diagnostic categories, but prefer to talk about behavioral habits or tendencies, feelings, and purposes which the students bring to the educational sessions. In Japanese psychiatry, too, as Morita therapy is increasingly used with a broader range of patients, the narrow shinkeishitsu diagnosis becomes less important.
As we learned from our Japanese Morita teachers CL education is experiential, not merely intellectual. Our students cannot merely read books or listen to lectures and learn the essence of Morita therapy in Constructive Living. The best experiential learning comes naturally in everyday life. However, in Japanese Moritist hospitals patients are sometimes given assigned tasks such as cleaning the garden or heating the bath. We give detailed assignments to our students in the same spirit. These assignments were once criticized by some Japanese Moritists as artificial, but I don't hear such criticism these days. These CL assignments are intermediate steps. We aim for our students to eventually make their own assignments for themselves. In other words, we aim for the students to observe their lives (including their surroundings) and discover what needs to be done and then to do it.
Morita therapy, CL, and personal judgment
An essential part of Morita's thought is the valuing of the judgment of the individual. Each person must decide for himself or herself what needs to be done. The therapist or instructor may make suggestions about what needs doing by offering assignments, but the patient or student decides to do the assignments or not. In Morita's era the command of the therapist mostly went unquestioned and unexplained. What the doctor said the patient did. However, even then the patients were left free at Morita's home/clinic to find work for themselves. Of course, the therapist cannot live alongside the patient all day every day to give assignments about what needs to be done.
A Sharper Image
Those who try to fit Moritist or Naikan ideas into the model of Western psychotherapy may hope to make these ideas more palatable to Westerners. But trying to fit Morita therapy into a Western therapy model is impossible. The ideas must be distorted in order to make them sound like Western psychotherapeutic thinking with its emphasis on eliminating unpleasant feelings. Constructive Living sharpens the distinctions, pointing out the unrealistic elements in Western ways of counseling and psychotherapy. There is danger in the Western therapy emphasis on unconscious feelings, self focus, and domination of the past. The potential contribution of Japanese therapies is far greater than merely offering some alternate techniques to Western therapists. A fundamental restructuring of Western theory and methods may emerge, thanks to the ideas of Morita and Yoshimoto.
2000 National Naikan Meetings Lecture
(English only portion)
David K. Reynolds
I. Abstract/Introduction
II. Gifts from Reality
There are very few truly humble and modest people in the world. We are plagued by egotism and pride. Even within the Naikan world, truly humble and modest individuals are rare. The wonderful thing about Naikan is that it forces us to face our self-centered pride again and again. We must admit that we have done nothing on our own, that we borrow the efforts of others and use the products created by others and seek the approval and applause of others. We may not conquer our pride and selfish behavior, but Naikan forces us to look at it again and again.
Here are some facts: Thousands of people worked to get me to Toyama from Saitama quickly and safely: train builders and operators, road construction designers and workers, those who planned and built cities, electricians and communications experts and government workers. Of course, those people didn't know me, and they were probably paid for their efforts. Nevertheless, their work allowed me to get here. The effect was as though all their efforts were designed just for my convenience. How kind of those people!
The people who make our cars are paid for their work, of course. They may not be thinking of us as they make the cars. Still, we benefit from their labor. Without them we have no cars. My hope is that when those strangers who make our cars receive their paychecks they think of the strangers who kindly buy their cars and allow them to earn an income. We may not be thinking of them as we buy the cars that they make, but they benefit from our buying cars. Without us they have no jobs.
One of the unfortunate elements of civilization is that we can forget and ignore the persons we owe. They are so many; they are so distant.
It doesn't matter whether epinephrine (adrenaline) works (indirectly) to release glucose into our blood on purpose or not. We benefit from it nevertheless. Similarly we benefit from the acts of others. The chair on which I sit not only "represents" the labor of others. It is the concrete result of their labor. Whether or not others made it with me in mind, whether they made it reluctantly, angrily, for wages, or thoughtlessly--however they made it; the result is that I benefit from this chair that they made.
"Winning a medal involves the support of many people. It's not just the athlete and the coach. It's also the guy who cleans the pool and the lady who cleans the showers. Everyone does their best so that we can win a medal. I consider myself at the tip of a gigantic pyramid of supporters who pushed me to win that medal." So said Filipe Munoz, an Olympic Swimming Champion.
"It's so hard to give up smoking on my own," "ナto stop drinking heavily on my own," "ナto get up in the morning and face that job on my own" are complaints you may hear. The fallacy is that no one ever did anything "on my own." We all receive the assistance and support of countless other people and things, whether we recognize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we believe it or not.
There is no way we can earn or deserve what we receive from others every day. There is no way we can satisfactorily pay them back for what we receive. Naikan teaches us that we are all saved by grace in the sense that there is no way we can do anything but make token payments for all
that people and things do for us. Naikan is not about give and take; it is about give and take and take and take and take. We don't have to be perfect; we don't have to (in fact, we cannot) earn the generosity we receive. There is great relief when we realize that "salvation" keeps coming, that we are cared for by others moment by moment, whether we deserve it or not.
It is useful to separate the Naikan perspective from an ecological perspective. In Naikan one doesn't preserve water or other resources because they are limited but because of one's personal relationship with them. Thus, it is my consideration of what was received from and what I owe to THIS piece of trash, THIS glass of water, THIS food, THIS electric switch. The process of preservation is personalized.
III. Naikan in Constructive Living
Constructive Living (CL) is an educational method for living well based mainly on the ideas of Masatake Morita and Ishin Yoshimoto adapted for modern people. There are nearly 200 CL instructors around the world-in Japan, the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, England, Germany, South Africa, Mexico and elsewhere. A week of formal Naikan reflection is not part of CL per se. We sometimes assign Naikan-like assignments such as writing letters of thanks or apology, cleaning out drawers and suitcases, secret services, picking up trash in public places and even daily Naikan reflection specifically on named people, unknown people, pets, objects, and so forth. Such assignments are specific CL exercises based on the three Naikan reflection themes. They all have an action component. To repeat, our Naikan-like assignments come from the three themes of formal Naikan.
Some CL instructors are also active in promoting shuchu Naikan through retreats. That activity is a genuine contribution to the world, but it is not CL. Formal Naikan meditation in the West carries with it an aura of the mystical and Oriental. Such a mystique attracts some Westerners to try Naikan, and so it can be useful. However, there is no mystery in CL Naikan-like assignments; for example, in a letter written to one's mother thanking her for specific services she performed during a specified period of the past.
In CL we have found that Naikan helps give us a new perspective on present reality, it helps us reinterpret our past using current adult values, and it helps us clarify our purposes. It gives us a useful perspective on what we have done in the past and what needs to be done next.
CL suggests that feelings are natural phenomena. We cannot control them directly by our will. Furthermore, there is no need to struggle with them. However, feelings may provide us with information about what needs to be done in our lives. The Naikan side of CL theory suggests that if you feel hatred or have a grudge against someone then those feelings are telling you to look at the ways in which you have hurt the person you hate and what kindness they have done for you. This investigation is useful because when you hate someone you usually search for the opposite (the troubles the hated person did for you and the unappreciated kindness you offered them.) So feelings can cause us to ignore some aspects of reality. The Naikan part of CL helps us to see some things we have overlooked. It helps us have a more realistic perspective on our lives.
The purpose of Naikan in CL is to make us more realistic, not more grateful. But one natural result of seeing the world realistically is to feel grateful, to feel remorse that we have overlooked so many ways we have been helped by others, and to desire to do our best to repay others for their kind
2003 International Naikan Meetings Lecture
Abstract
Naikan and Morita Therapies—A Practical Synthesis
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center, USA
Constructive Living is an educational system for promoting mental health. It is based on an extension and adaptation of Naikan Psychotherapy and Morita Psychotherapy. These two Japanese psychotherapies are complementary, sharing an approach aimed at generating clients/students who are realistic. Neurotic suffering is considered to be based on an unrealistic approach to life.
The Morita or action aspect of Constructive Living assigns practical activities while educating the student about the nature of feelings and behavior, what is controllable and uncontrollable in life, misconceptions about self-esteem and cure, and so forth. The goal is not superficial symptom removal but outgrowing habits of thinking and feeling.
The Naikan or reflection aspect of Constructive Living utilizes a variety of techniques to reduce the self-centeredness of students. A realistic appreciation of the support of people and things in the world is likely to lead to feelings of gratitude. Gratitude and a realistic approach to life reduce the self-focus that is essential to neurotic suffering.
Naikan Psychotherapy and Morita Psychotherapy share a concrete, specific, detailed perspective on reality, a goal of reduced self-centeredness, an experiential emphasis rather than a simple intellectual focus, a valuing of the student’s own judgment, and a clear understanding of what can and cannot be changed in the student’s life.
Constructive Living has been successfully applied inside and outside of Japan for more than twenty-five years. More than two hundred certified Constructive Living instructors practice in many countries around the world.
Naikan and Morita Therapies—A Practical Synthesis
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center, USA
About Constructive Living
Constructive Living (an extension and adaptation of the Japanese Naikan and Morita psychotherapies) is becoming increasingly well known in academic literature and the popular press in the West. Wiley's Encyclopedia of Psychology contains entries for Morita and Naikan therapies. The best-selling college introductory psychology textbook, Psychology and Life, written by Zimbardo at Stanford devotes nearly a page to Morita therapy. The Handbook of Innovative Psychotherapies contains chapters on Morita therapy and on Naikan therapy. Articles about Morita therapy have appeared in Psychiatric Quarterly, Psychotherapy, Journal of Counseling and Development, and other academic journals. Book reviews of Constructive Living books have appeared in JAMA, Psychology Today, Contemporary Psychology, and elsewhere.
As for the popular press, the May, 1990, Silver Anniversary issue of Cosmopolitan carried a long article about Constructive Living prompting more than 5,000 readers from every state and a number of foreign countries to write asking for more information. Articles also appeared in USA Today (August 23, 1990), Bottom Line (December 11, 1990, pp. 11-12), Your Personal Best (Charter issue), New Dimensions (May-June, 1990, pp. 29-30), and American Health (March, 1991, p. 12). The November, 1991 issue of New Woman magazine featured a lengthy article on Constructive Living. Fitness (October, 1992), Self (November, 1992), The Japan Times (October 31, 1993), The Sun (November, 1993), and "O" Magazine (March, 2001) carried articles about Constructive Living.
What is Constructive Living?
Constructive Living (CL) follows an educational, not a medical model. The goal of Constructive Living (CL) is to help students learn to become more "realistic." Neurotic problems have their roots and expression in a sort of unrealistic approach to life. Unfortunately, traditional psychodynamic Western psychotherapy offers little toward developing a broader perspective on reality. Historically, Western psychotherapy repeatedly focused attention on internal feeling states promoting little concern with observation of external reality and behavioral objectives prompted by that reality. Similarly, Western therapy tended to emphasize the negative aspects of parenting (thus conveniently excusing the client's responsibility for current problem behavior) while ignoring the sacrifices and service of parental figures. The action (Morita) and reflection (Naikan) aspects of Constructive Living redirect the students' attention toward those parts of reality that have been systematically ignored or dismissed in the West.
Morita and Naikan therapies are practiced separately for the most part by a variety of therapists in Japan. Morita psychotherapy is practiced primarily as a medical sub-specialty within the field of psychiatry. Naikan has a wider range of practitioners and settings and covers a broader range of client complaints. Both methods are based on careful observation and intense introspection by their founders--Morita Masatake (or Morita Shoma) and Yoshimoto Ishin. My role has been to contribute to the introduction of these methods into the West, to point out the philosophical and methodological complementarity of the two to Easterners and Westerners, and to extend the theories, methods and applications of these two therapies. Constructive Living is a thoroughly modern educational approach to everyday life. Its methods are increasingly reimported back into Japan as that country becomes more Westernized. Innovations in method are exchanged as I continue to lecture and present papers about CL in Japanese at the national and international Morita and Naikan meetings in Japan each year. We in CL are in the process of repaying our debt to our mentors. Meanwhile our debt keeps growing.
The practice of Constructive Living
Instruction in CL consists of individual or group sessions during which the student’s attention is directed toward the common reality upon which we all agree, toward realistic behavior based on individual circumstances, toward reforming existing patterns of behavior and thought. Homework assignments may include reading assignments, cleaning the garage, maintaining a journal of behavior, clipping want ads from the newspaper, writing letters of thanks (whether feeling gratitude or not) to others who served the student in the past, listing goals to be worked toward during the week or month, giving something away each day, observing neighborhood gardens, saying "thank you" ten different ways ten times a day, getting a specified amount of physical exercise, reflection on what was received from and returned to others and troubles caused others during the day, showing up for work regularly, and so forth.
Both Morita and Naikan approaches are used with every student in order to provide a well-rounded educational experience. Morita therapy alone produces an action-oriented client who accomplishes purposes in spite of fears and self- doubts. But the student may have non-social, self-centered purposes. Naikan therapy alone produces a student who has proper appreciation of existential support and the desire to live a meaningful life by serving others in repayment for a lifetime of accumulated sustenance. But the student may not have the realistic action-orientation to carry out these fine purposes.
The question, then, is which method should be applied first. Clinical experience indicates that people who present with difficulties in the area of social relations (trouble with spouse, neighbors, workmates, relatives) and people with substance abuse and anti-social problems benefit from Naikan elements of Constructive Living first. People who present with fears and phobias, anxiety, obsessions, and difficulties performing specific necessary tasks benefit from the Morita approach first. Again, given enough time each student is instructed in both methods for greatest benefit.
The first session begins with an evaluation of the student's purpose in coming for help. Usually, the student comes in order to feel better about some problem in life or for some self-improvement. Unless students are allowed to talk initially in some detail about their problems they aren't ready to listen to the instructor's guidance and the instructor doesn't know how best to tailor the teaching of the principles to the specific student's needs. But feeling-focused talking doesn't continue for long. Complaining about feelings merely turns more attention toward feelings and causes more misery for the student.
Action aspect based on Morita Psychotherapy The action aspect of CL involves teaching the student certain principles of living and inviting the student to give them a trial in the student’s everyday life. Whether the principles are fully understood or not, assignments are made to allow the student increasing experiential knowledge about the Constructive lifeway. For example, the student may be advised to get up at a particular time whether feeling like it or not, to make the bed, prepare breakfast and eat it regardless of anxieties or dreadful anticipation of what might happen during the day. The student may be prompted to notice that while attention is focused on making the bed or preparing a meal the symptomatic fear has been temporarily forgotten. At this initial stage of instruction constructive activities are used to help the students distract themselves from their symptoms. Of course, the basic problem of feeling-centeredness remains. In time, the student will learn to sweep the floor because the floor is dirty and not because sweeping provides a temporary escape from undesired feelings. But the immediate, temporary relief through activity is welcomed by the suffering student.
The student may be asked to report on activities and observations of external reality in great detail. This quizzing trains the student to focus attention on behavior and on the external world in contrast to the usual habits of introspection and focus on feelings. I will ask my students to close their eyes and describe my office in detail. Beginning students have great difficulty describing the room because their attention has been on their suffering and not on observing external reality. When they open their eyes they realize that reality is much more colorful and interesting than their coded memory of it. Our goal is to help them notice and appreciate this varied reality both because it is interesting and because it keeps presenting all of us with what-needs-to-be-done.
Utilizing a similar technique, I may ask the student to report on detailed behaviors such as which foot touched the floor first when arising from bed, what was done on that morning with the toothpaste cap while brushing the teeth, and so forth. Beginning students haven't noticed. They try to answer in generalizations and abstractions. They were preoccupied with feelings and ruminations while carrying out everyday tasks and didn't notice what they were doing in any concrete detail. In time they learn to do planning and reflecting and introspection at appropriate times. The focus in our sessions is on activities and external observations and not on complaints about mental anguish. They may begin to take more notice of their surroundings and their behavior because they will be quizzed regularly on the subjects. But, in time, they come to see the inherent value in doing so.
A journal may be assigned. The form of the Constructive Living journal is as follows: A sheet of paper is divided vertically into one narrow and two wide columns. The narrow column is headed "Time," and the wide columns are headed "Feelings" and "Behavior." The students are asked to write at least a page a day, selecting any times, and writing what they felt (or thought) in one column and what they did at that time in the other column. For each time selected the students should pick a time a couple of minutes earlier (if the students pick the exact time all that can be written in the behavior column is "Writing in the journal") while the feelings and behaviors are still fresh in memory.
Early students tend to write much in the feelings column and little in the behavior column, as though feelings are more important and worthy of description than behavior. This tendency will change during the course of instruction.
Maxims and tales are used to teach the principles in easily remembered form. For example, a Constructive Living maxim is "Run to the edge of the cliff and stop on a dime." It means "Do everything you can do to bring about the goal you seek, but leave up to Fate or God or Reality to determine the actual outcome of your actions." We can do all we can to achieve our purposes, but we cannot totally control the results of our actions. Still, we must keep trying. We must be clear about what is controllable and what isn't controllable in life and then direct our efforts to affect what is controllable while accepting the uncontrollable.
Reading assignments in books about Constructive Living and books related to the students' problems are given. Specific behavioral assignments are made and the results are discussed in each weekly session. In this Constructive Living approach we don't believe that some magical transformation takes place during the teaching hour each week. Rather, it is the hard work by the student during the week that brings about deserved and lasting change.
Teaching sessions may be held while walking (especially useful for depressed, inactive students), in the student's home (while cleaning it together), at the student's workplace, in a market, in a crowded building, or in an airplane depending on the student's problem. Constructive Living education can also be carried out by correspondence, telephone, and email.
Reflection aspect based on Naikan Psychotherapy The essential feature of Naikan therapy is a reflection on three themes--what was received, what was done in return, and what troubles and worries were caused during specific periods of the student's life. The student may be asked to do Naikan reflection each morning and evening for 30 minutes, keeping a journal of what was recalled.
For example, students may be asked to spend the first morning reflecting on the mother during their grammar school years. What did your mother do for you during that period? What did you do for her? What troubles and worries did you cause her during grammar school years? As always, specific and concrete details are sought. The students are to write a page about what was recalled. That evening the students are to reflect on what others did for them during the day, what they did for others, and what troubles they caused others. Again, a page is to be written. The second morning the students continue with Naikan reflection on the mother, but this time covering the next three years of their life. The second evening the students do Naikan reflection on others, covering the second day's events. And so on. When the students finish reflection on the mother they begin again with the father during their grammar school years. The Naikan reflection continues with other persons important to the students. The daily journal entries are brought to the weekly session where the students read them aloud to the instructor. The instructor makes no comment or evaluation or interpretation. The instructor only listens and thanks the students for their efforts, encouraging them to continue the Naikan as long as necessary.
Additional assignments include cleaning drawers, saying “thank-you” ten times each day, secret services, picking up trash in public places, gift giving, and thank-you letters. Cleaning drawers means taking everything from a drawer or chest, cleaning the empty drawer, then returning each item to the drawer after cleaning it while thanking it for some specific service it performed for the student. For example, "Thank you, ladle, for helping me serve the soup to my family last night." Clothing, office equipment, and books also serve us in ways that deserve proper care and appreciation.
Quarreling couples are assigned the task of saying "thank you" to each other ten times a day. They must keep a record of the ten times. They need not feel gratitude (uncontrollable directly by will), but they must say the words appropriately (controllable behavior). Similarly, quarreling persons may be assigned the doing of secret services for each other, the bringing of gifts to one another, or the writing of thank-you letters (for specific past acts). Cleaning up public litter is a chance to repay one's neighbors and fellow citizens for the services they perform daily for us.
Naikan reflection can be extended to people whose faces we have never seen and whose names we don't know (such as the people who made the chairs we sit in and those who make paper, computers, and pens), to objects (e.g., the appointment books or PDA’s that serve us well), and to energy (electricity, for example). We can learn to consider what we have done in return for water and electricity and copy machines and our shoes as well as what we have done in return to those people close to us.
Action and Reflection
The action and reciprocity or reflection aspects of Constructive Living fit together in wonderful complementarity. They offer a firm foundation for education in mental well-being.
We can trace the psychological lines of thinking in Morita therapy and Naikan therapy to Zen Buddhist psychological thought and Pure Land (Jodo Shinshu) Buddhist psychological thought, respectively. Of course Morita and Naikan therapies are not religions and require no commitment to Buddhist religious thought. Just as the lines of Freudian thought can be traced to the Judeo-Christian tradition so the ideas of these Japanese thinkers were influenced by the cultural/philosophical milieu of Japan. Although the streams of Zen Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism have diverged in Japan's history, there was a time in ancient China when these two forms of Buddhism were practiced together. The principles of jiriki (self power or salvation through works) and tariki (other power or salvation through grace) were thought to be complementary. Modern Buddhist scholars agree that, at the philosophical base, jiriki and tariki become one. This convergence is true in two senses. If tariki is like riding in a taxi and jiriki is like driving your own car, in both cases a car is involved. One has trouble finding a wholly self-sufficient self power. In another sense, too, the intellectual distinction between the two concepts may evaporate under certain conditions of enlightenment. At any rate, it is no coincidence we find the practice of Morita therapy with its jiriki orientation and Naikan therapy with its tariki orientation to be complementary.
From the action orientation of Constructive Living comes the perspective that reality keeps sending waves of moment after moment. Each moment brings with it something that needs doing. Each moment calls from us some fitting, appropriate action and natural mental state. From this point of view emphasizing reality's waves there is no good or bad, just reality flowing and presenting itself to us--or, more accurately, becoming us. From the reciprocity orientation of Constructive Living there is a moral element in this reality that presents itself to us. That moral element is inherent in each person's individual point of view. Not only is there necessary action, but the potential for good and bad behavior, right and wrong behavior in a moral sense. There are moral implications to even the least noticed behaviors. Under ordinary circumstances pajamas should be put away in the morning both because putting them away naturally needs to be done (CL action) but also because putting them away is a moral act (CL reciprocity) indicating appreciation for the services pajamas have provided during the night.
The action aspect of Constructive Living invites us to look coolly at our circumstances and respond by fitting ourselves as part of reality to the situation which reality presents to us. The reflective aspect of Constructive Living invites us to see the moral elements in reality's presentation to us and in our responses to it. It is almost as though the former sees reality pulling a response from us and the latter sees us guiding the response out into reality--a natural request and a moral imperative. And never in contradiction, though each aspect requires its own characteristic way of talking about what we are doing.
Both Morita and Yoshimoto held that accurately knowing one's own mind is a very difficult process, a task not willingly undertaken by most people. Both considered the task worth the effort, perhaps the most important task possible. Morita thought that looking solely at the basic corruption in humanity is too much for us to bear; we need not strive to be perfect, only clear and honest about the positive and negative within us. Yoshimoto considered looking in detail at the basic imperfection in humanity to be necessary for clarity and freedom.
Both Morita and Yoshimoto refused to be drawn into philosophical discussions of what is good and bad in some absolute sense. Morita rejected any notion of a philosophy of the good; he wouldn't even offer advice about being good or bad. Rather he sought a sort of objective observation of reality, like that of science, as he put it. It was almost as though he thought a value-free scientific perspective were possible. Of course, it is clear to us these days that science carries its own values, too. Yoshimoto turned decisions about good and bad back on the individual student. Defining good and evil became personalized and subjectivized. Threads from both these perspectives-- Morita's careful observation and Yoshimoto's personalization-- weave through Constructive Living thought.
As acknowledged above Morita's theory and method provide a basis for the action element of CL. Although similar approaches to Morita's can be found in Zen, Sufism, Taoism, and Alcoholics Anonymous (called Danshukai in Japan), Morita's writings clearly express the value of accepting feelings as part of reality and directing action toward purposeful goals. As noted above Naikan theory and practice provides the reciprocity aspect of Constructive Living with its focus on the evaluation of moral aspects of reality. Both Moritist and Naikan theory require CL students to pay increasing attention to specific, detailed, concrete reality. Attention to and action on reality are important for mental health. Philosophical rambling, logical gymnastics, and abstract discussions of ideals and generalities are discouraged in both systems. Too often troubled people seek to escape from their real-life difficulties by talk and cerebration.
One of the characteristics of troubled minds is rumination and obsession. The mind constantly returns to some unpleasant event in the past or some difficult possibility in the future. Both Morita therapy and Naikan offer alternative courses for thinking. Morita recommends attention to doing well the moment-by-moment activities that make up our daily lives. Naikan recommends moment-by-moment awareness of the ways in which others (people, things, energy--all aspects of our surroundings) make concrete contributions to our lives and the ways in which we repay them or fail to repay them. In both cases the attention is turned away from neurotic preoccupation and toward constructive, realistic thinking.
Certainly, some readers will take these prescriptions to be mere substitution of one set of fixations for another. In practice, however, both Morita and Naikan allow a flexibility and openness to one's surroundings not characteristic at all of introverted obsessive rumination. Thinking shifts away from the purely subjective and negative toward the realistic and practical.
Both Morita and Naikan emphasize looking at the way things really are. We all have wishes and hopes and dreams--they are fine. But we don't want to let our dreaming interfere with our driving. It is seductive to get lost in imagination and rumination and thus miss the interesting reality that plays itself before our senses. The more skillful we become at doing everyday life well the better chance we have of putting our fantasies in proper perspective. There is a sense in which Morita recommended accepting the world in a stark, black-gray-white perspective and Yoshimoto recommended accepting the world in more colored hues.
Both systems lead to the concept of no-self. From Morita's perspective the self becomes lost in attention to the panorama of reality. We forget ourselves as we become involved in a project or discussion or driving or an engrossing book. From Yoshimoto's perspective there is nothing we can call our own so nothing worth calling a self. Our bodies and ideas and words are all gifts from others we know or never met or some unknown Other. Both would substitute reality confidence for the hoped-for self confidence of the neurotic (read unrealistic) person.
Both Morita and Yoshimoto recognized the limited role of the instructor in teaching these lifeways. It is the students who must make effort to follow through with the programs. Instructors cannot do the exercises for the students. The Morita therapist points out progress and credits the patients for it; the Naikan guide thanks the students for their effortful reflection. Not only are the clients credited for their efforts, their judgments are also validated. No one defines for the Moritist patients what needs to be done. Although suggested assignments may be made by the Morita therapist, it is the patient who makes the final decisions for action. Similarly, no Naikan guide defines for the students what is to be defined as something received, something returned, or a trouble caused. The students evaluate themselves according to their own standards. Both systems require and support the clients' abilities, judgments, values.
Yoshimoto wrote in 1977 that (Naikan's) self reflection is itself enlightenment. He put himself in the tradition of the Zen master Dogen ("Zazen is enlightenment") and Morita ("Effort is good fortune") by defining enlightenment as a process, not an end result. Note that Dogen doesn't promise that zazen meditation leads to enlightenment and Morita doesn't warrant that effort results in good fortune. What counts is the doing itself.
One of my functions in Japan has been to bring Morita therapists and Naikan therapists together. Through personal meetings and literature and lectures some initial successes are already visible. Articles about Naikan and Naikan-like thinking have appeared in Moritist journals. Papers about Naikan Psychotherapy have been presented at Morita meetings, and papers about Morita Psychotherapy have been presented at Naikan meetings. Some Naikan specialists have adopted more action orientation in their practice. A few Japanese therapists have come to use an overt combination of Moritist and Naikan practices. The practice of Constructive Living has grown both inside and outside of Japan. At the end of 2002 there were 231 certified CL instructors around the world including 17 Canadians, 67 Japanese, and 135 Americans as well as representatives in South Africa, the Philippines, England, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Australia, and Mexico.
References
-Reynolds, David K. Morita Psychotherapy. Berkeley:University of California Press, l976.
-Reynolds, David K. The Quiet Therapies. Honolulu:University Press of Hawaii, l980.
-Reynolds, David K. Naikan Psychotherapy: Meditation for Self Development. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, l983.
-Reynolds, David K. Constructive Living. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Playing Ball on Running Water. New York:Morrow, 1984.
-Reynolds, David K. Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt. New York:Morrow, 1986.
-Reynolds, David K. Water Bears No Scars. New York: Morrow, 1987.
-Reynolds, David K. Pools of Lodging for the Moon. New York: Morrow, 1989.
-Reynolds, David K., ed. Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.
-Reynolds, David K. A Thousand Waves. New York: Morrow, 1990.
-Reynolds, David K. Thirsty, Swimming in the Lake. New York: Morrow, 1991.
-Reynolds, David K. Rainbow Rising from a Stream. New York: Morrow, 1992.
-Reynolds, David K., ed. Plunging Through the Clouds. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
-Reynolds, David K. Reflections on the Tao te Ching. New York: Morrow, 1993.
-Reynolds, David K. Light Waves, Fine Tuning the Mind. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 2001.
-Reynolds, David K. A Handbook for Constructive Living. New York: Morrow, 1996, and Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
In Japanese:
悩みを活かす 創元社 1986
行動的な生き方 創元社 1989
この一瞬に自分を変える 産能大学出版部 1994
自分を生かす行動革命 海竜社 1996
人生は行動を待っている KKベストセラーズ 1998
建設的に生きる 創元社 1999
生活オンチにならない 白揚社 2000
Note: The author reserves the right to reprint this paper in English and in Japanese in original and modified form.
Naikan in North America
Paper for International Naikan Psychotherapy Meetings
October 5, 2007
Okayama, Japan
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living Center
USA
Translated by Mihoko Tohma
Abstract
The history of Naikan Psychotherapy in North America from 1981 until the present is considered. What adaptations were necessary to make Naikan understandable and acceptable to North Americans? The basic universality of Naikan for all humans made the transition relatively easy.
How is Naikan especially useful to counteract the excesses of Western culture? I consider here the problems of economy-focus, feeling-focus, and self-focus. Naikan is valuable in correcting all three. However, these three cultural values have spread to Japan. Naikan must be kept free of these three problems within Japan, too.
Naikan is usefully incorporated within Constructive Living. The fit between Naikan and Morita therapy is discussed. The combination of jiriki and tariki results in well-rounded persons behaving purposefully and responsibly within their supportive environments.
Finally, I offer a Westerner's suggestions for the continued success of Naikan in the future.
History
In August, 1981, the first intensive Naikan retreat in the United States was conducted in San Luis Obispo, California. I did the mensetsu of eleven Naikansha-three Japanese, four Japanese-Americans, One Korean, one Chinese American, and two Anglo-Americans. There were seven men and four women, mostly in their twenties and thirties. The retreat was held in a Shinshu Buddhist church facility. Subsequently, in 1983, I led five American participants in a second intensive, which was held at the Zen Center in Los Angeles. And a year later in 1984 a five-day intensive was arranged for two participants at the Health Center Pacific on Maui, Hawaii.
My book, Naikan Psychotherapy, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1983. I later edited collections published by the State University of New York Press with detailed chapters on Naikan from a variety of authors (Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters, 1989 and Plunging Through the Clouds, 1993).
In March of 1989 Akira Ishii and his assistant, a young American Naikan enthusiast, Robert Butera, came to San Francisco to lead a seven-day intensive for four participants. Patricia Ryan-Madson organized and assisted at this intensive, which was held at the San Francisco Zen Center on Page Street. Her husband, Ronald Madson, was one of the participants.
Next, there were four full-time Naikansha at the January, 1990, intensive--one woman and three men. They were aged from 36 to 41. In addition, there was a member of the resident Zen community, who participated part-time, doing self-reflection around his work schedule at the Zen Center of San Francisco. Patricia Ryan-Madson conducted the mensetsu.
Gregg Krech and Linda Anderson have much experience leading Naikan intensives at the Todo Institute in Vermont. They continue to do so. Gregg Krech has also written Naikan-related pamphlets and a book, Naikan, published in 2002 by a popular press. Rev. Mari Sengoku has conducted Naikan retreats in Hawaii.
Usefulness of Naikan for the world
I consider Naikan to be useful in combating three of the major problems of cultural values currently found in the United States. The problems are economy-focus, feeling-focus, and self-focus. Firstly, economic matters have become over-emphasized in American culture with dire effects on the environment and on human relations. Bottom-line profits are seen to be crucially important for companies and individuals with long work hours and lost jobs and toxic waste a consequence. Secondly, feelings are valued above honor, purpose, and morality. Many problems are defined in terms of conquering or overcoming feelings. In current American perspective, feelings must be dealt with or created before action can take place. The feeling of self confidence, for example, is seen to be a prerequisite for proper action. Thirdly, self-focus and self-interest are supreme values. It is thought that one's own needs must be satisfied before others are considered. Broken families and political corruption exemplify the results of these values.
Of course, there are exceptional individuals who do not share the above American values, but these values may be considered to predominate. The above values very likely contribute to and cause neurotic suffering. Neurotic suffering comes from an unrealistic approach to life. Naikan provides the corrective realistic perspective to relieve some forms of neurotic suffering. Naikan insight shifts exclusive attention away from money and self-gain and monetary profit. Naikan generates purposes aimed at repaying personal and social debts to living creatures and non-living things.
To some degree, the Japanese people have adopted Western values, too. Emphasis on money and self-gain run rampant in Japan, especially among young people. So Naikan is a useful corrective for the existing values in Japan. However, in both the United States and in Japan I worry about the overemphasis on feelings. A strong emphasis on gratitude marks some manifestations of Naikan psychotherapy. Please be careful to discourage feeling-focus as part of therapeutic strategy. Any therapy built on feeling-focus will fail in the long run because feelings keep changing. Feelings decline over time unless they are restimulated. We know how difficult it is to consistently practice the restimulation of gratitude through daily Naikan. Naikan is not intended to merely generate gratitude; it aims to create a more realistic perspective on the world.
Naikan within Constructive Living
Naikan therapy is a powerful and valuable tool for personal change. In the United States we practice an extension of Naikan and Morita therapy practice called Constructive Living. The methods of Yoshimoto and Morita have been adapted to meet the needs of Westerners and non-Westerners. That adaptation was made possible by the depth of thought and the common human elements present in Naikan and Morita therapies. Both aim to create more realistic people.
As noted above, Naikan therapy has been introduced in the U.S. and Canada. Through Constructive Living publications and instructors it has been introduced to England, South Africa, Germany, New Zealand, Mexico, China, the Philippines, India, Singapore, and Thailand. Books with Naikan therapy content have been published in English by university presses (California, Chicago, Hawaii, SUNY). Over 100,000 books on Constructive Living with Naikan therapy content have been printed in English. Articles on Naikan therapy have appeared in academic journals, major magazines (Cosmopolitan, Self, Fitness, American Health, New Woman, Yoga Journal, Bottom Line, New Dimensions, Your Personal Best, Vogue, and others), and newspapers (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, and others).
Before Yoshimoto Sensei died it was my pleasure to introduce to him several of the leaders of Morita therapy in Japan and of Constructive Living in the West. In 1991 at the National Morita Psychotherapy Meetings I recommended to Morita therapists that they incorporate "the insights of Naikan therapy into Moritist practice." Similarly, I have been introducing Morita's ideas to Naikan groups in Japan. Morita therapy adds the purposeful action element to Naikan's reflection.
Anyone who looks carefully and straightforwardly at reality will necessarily come up with a response of gratitude. However, gratitude is only a side benefit of Naikan. It takes energy and effort to ignore the realistic contributions of others to our lives. In other words, we can only keep gratitude and the desire to repay others out of our minds by walking about with our eyes closed to the myriads of concrete and specific instances of the supporting care of others in our lives. Such an unrealistic attitude requires effort, effort lost to more constructive pursuits. The idea that nobody ever cared about me or nobody ever understood me is based on self-centeredness and ignorance. Some Americans, when they first come to practice Naikan, mistakenly believe that Naikan aims at turning their memories of parents from all bad to all good. But Naikan aims at presenting nothing more or less than reality, at turning cardboard paper doll images of parents into more rounded, realistic images. Given the realistic understanding provided by Naikan, Morita therapy asks "What needs to be done next?"
A chance to win, even though we fail
In our practice of Naikan within Constructive Living in North America I don't ask my students to reflect on past "lies and stealing" as is sometimes done in Japanese Naikan practice because there is no chance to win the game, no possible balance as in the received-returned first two themes of Naikan. The theme of troubles caused others is part of a possible pair, also, (though not an element of Naikan's three themes), i.e. the troubles caused us. We are righting the unrealistic, misremembered balance by means of Naikan. However, the theme of lies and stealing is a straightforward attack on the self. No consideration is given to the myriad benefits of what was received while we were causing troubles to others. Naikan is safe when the self-focused distress is surrounded by appreciation of the great bounty of what was received. I don't believe a strictly negative approach like the theme of lies and stealing is necessary or valuable in promoting the wide practice of Naikan. It is likely that the power of Naikan lies in the ephemeral chance of winning, the chance of finding a balance, but the practical impossibility of it. We can evaluate ourselves by our own standards with the chance of finding some balance, but we always, inevitably, come up short. The contrast between the possibility and the actuality creates the dynamic therapeutic tension of Naikan. Again, Naikan leads to more realism. Furthermore, the three themes of Naikan allow us to look at our wrongdoing within the same framework of being supported by others, deserving the support or not.
Also I don't believe Naikan on one's own body ('shintai Naikan' in Japanese) is Naikan at all. So I do not recommend its practice in North America. The concept of body and mind being one ('shin-shin doitsu' in Japanese) has a long history in Japan. Naikan on one's own body cannot be true Naikan ('gaikan' is the Japanese term for a practice outside the realm of Naikan).
The order of Naikan
In our Constructive Living practice we often begin daily Naikan on people whose names and faces we know. Then we move to daily Naikan on people we don't know but whose faces we have seen (for example, the clerk in the store or the driver who stopped for us at a crosswalk). Next we do daily Naikan on people whose names we don't know and whose faces we have never seen (for example, the carpenter who built the chair we sit on). We move next to other living creatures, both animals and plants. Naikan continues with nonliving objects (what our shoes do for us, for example, and what we have done in return for our shoes, and the troubles we have caused our shoes). Finally, we consider energy (such as electricity and sunlight) from a Naikan perspective. Moving along in this sequence seems to make Naikan easier for newcomers with little or no experience with Naikan. One must be careful to continue to pin down the Naikan insight to particular people and things. Naikan on energy can become abstract and unfocused unless specific, concrete situations are emphasized.
Attracting Japanese medical students to Naikan
Firstly, in Japan it is time to rediscover the depth and practicality of Naikan psychotherapy. It is absurd to consider Western feeling-focused, self-centered therapies to be superior just because they come from the West. I am not considering here cultural differences, but basic human qualities that are ignored and suppressed by traditional Western psychotherapies. Secondly, young medical students are attracted to the forefront of research and theory in psychiatry. Psychiatry can take the exclusive route of bio-pharmacology or it can retain its educational-guidance thrust, too. If psychiatrists are to teach their patients about coping with life then they need to use the most effective methods with the most helpful contents. Medication does not teach patients how to live. Thirdly, I believe that we are moving from an era with a narrow focus on professional commitment and economic gain to one of a broader view of occupations. People are looking for life work that is meaningful and pertinent to their whole lives. Naikan therapy offers the health professional a seamless lifeway as worthwhile to professional career as to private life.
Naikan therapy in the future
In 1992 I offered suggestions to Morita therapists aimed at the growth and development of Morita therapy in future years:. Naikan therapy in Japan has already entered a period of development and change. Here is a list of further changes I believe will benefit Naikan mental health professionals and clients:
1. Continued attention to diagnostic categories and careful research on effectiveness within diagnostic categories are necessary. In the broader world of Naikan some people make excessive, vague, and even miraculous claims about Naikan's effectiveness. Mental health professionals must maintain distance from such claims.
2. Increased attention to the conditions and definitions of "cure" of neurotic disorders. Naikan holds the promise of making psychological and psychiatric definitions of mental health (including Western definitions) more realistic and practical.
3. Increased study of the advantages and disadvantages of using Naikan therapy along with other therapy modes, particularly Morita therapy. Naikan therapists must consider what sorts of therapy should precede and follow intensive Naikan and what adaptations of Naikan are necessary for clients who are unsuitable for intensive Naikan.
4. Adoption of formal training and certification procedures for becoming a Naikan psychotherapist. A two-tiered system, one for physicians and one for other mental-health professionals such as psychologists and social workers, is possible, as in Morita therapy..
5. Less consideration limiting Naikan's connection to Japanese culture. Naikan psychotherapy is not limited in its effectiveness to Japanese people. Japanese culture or Japanese thought is not necessary in order for a client to benefit from Naikan's insights. Emphasis on the association with Japanese culture will have a negative effect on the adoption of Naikan psychotherapy around the world.
I hope you find these suggestions helpful in the continuing development of Naikan psychotherapy around the world.
Naikan Meetings Lecture, Japan, 2011
Naikan for Foreigners
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Naikan and Culture
Naikan is the practice of reflection on reality developed by Ishin Yoshimoto in twentieth-century Japan. The three themes of Naikan are 1. What did I receive from others? 2. What did I give to others? 3. What troubles did I cause others? Later I shall discuss some extensions of this reflection practice used in Constructive Living. Although Naikan was initially developed for Japanese, its fundamental questions are relevant for all humans in all cultures. The social costs for Japanese who are not responsive to these themes are particularly high. In Japan one must be careful to reciprocate and cause minimal trouble to others for fear of social ostracism and other social penalties. However, to some degree these social obligations exist in all cultures.
In particular, I find Naikan especially useful for Americans because American culture is so self-centered. It is typical for Americans to believe that their success is due to their individual efforts and their failures are due to the errors of others (improper parenting, for example). Naikan helps the Naikansha (the person doing Naikan) to see the broader picture of reality's support and our own failure to notice that support and respond properly. Interestingly, as Japan becomes more Americanized, the self-centered aspects of American culture become adopted, producing a further need for the insights of Naikan among the Japanese people, too.
American culture is also excessively feeling focused. The idea that Naikan produces feelings of gratitude is acceptable, but the possibility of producing guilt as well makes Naikan suspect. Unpleasant feelings should be avoided or "cured" somehow with psychotherapy or medication-such thinking seems to be common in the United States. That unpleasant feelings can be accepted and used as sources of important information seems less well understood by Americans. There are more important considerations than feeling comfortable all the time. Naikan teaches important lessons while a variety of feelings come and go.
Naikan and the Brain
Much research on brain function is being done these days using MRI and other methods of exploration. Naikan involves memory, recalling past persons and events in terms of the three themes listed above. Current thinking in brain research suggests that our memories of past events may have details wrong, but the general sense of the memories are usually fairly accurate. The memory area of the brain and the brain's ability to predict the future appear to be located in generally the same part of the brain (medial temporal lobe, hippocampus). So if injury to the memory area of the brain occurs, the person has both amnesia and lowered ability to imagine the future. As memory skills increase so does the size of the hippocampus. For example, London taxi drivers who must undergo extensive training in memorizing the layout of London's street patterns also show increased size in the hippocampus area of the brain after training. So it is entirely possible that doing Naikan actually increases the size of the hippocampus area of the brain.
The brain's ability to focus attention is limited to a narrow range. Most of us assume the environment is regular and unchanging, so our brains learn to ignore much of the environment much of the time. Blindness to change is a theme of many experiments in social psychology. For example, in studies where a person asks directions of a stranger, then some large object comes between them and a different person continues to ask the same directions of the stranger, the stranger does not usually notice that the person asking directions has changed. Similarly, college students filling out questionnaires do not notice that the interviewer facing them has changed. One of the purposes of Naikan is to train the brain to become aware of what is received, what is given, and what troubles are caused. Thus, the area of attention is expanded to these thematic areas.
Questions about Naikan from an American student
"1. Most people today are too busy trying to make ends meet. In such a situation why and how would anyone decide to do a therapy like Naikan which involves so much time and patience? Is it really practical?
2. Do you think such a therapy can be used with adolescents?
3. In a place like Japan with its collectivistic culture, a therapy like Naikan would be easier to propose. What about individualistic cultures like the U.S.? How would you convince an American to try Naikan? (After reading about Naikan I do understand that it is very useful to adopt the Naikan perspective, but someone who has never heard of it in detail may not see the sense in reflecting on those three themes.)
4. Do you think Naikan can or should be used with people who have low self-esteem? I think the guilt experienced by the client may make him/her feel even worse.
5. Don't you think Naikan therapy would be suitable for certain personalities and not others because it's not a conventional form of therapy?"
How would you respond to these typical student questions?
Naikan in Constructive Living
We often add a fourth theme in CL (Constructive Living) Naikan. Our fourth theme is "Knowing what you have learned from doing the first three themes of Naikan, what needs to be done?" We add this theme because some Naikansha seem to think that the end of Naikan is to produce feelings of gratitude. In fact, proper Naikan produces a variety of feelings including gratitude, guilt, happiness, sorrow, anger, and many others. If Naikan doesn't result in Naikan-appropriate behavior, it is a no more than a mental exercise. Constructive Living employs both the action aspect of Morita therapy and the reflection aspect of Naikan in combination to produce a well-rounded person. For our American students Naikan helps replace the typical ephemeral self-confidence with a wider confidence in reality's support. The third Naikan theme launches an attack on the self that cannot be defended adequately. The Naikansha discovers the possibility of giving up on efforts to sustain a grand self-image in spite of selfishness and thoughtlessness toward others. A broader base for the self is located in the matrix of realistic support by people and things.
As a child I wondered why I should feel self confidence all the time in spite of many moments of my imperfection, unkindness, and stupidity. While doing Naikan I also reflected upon why we forget the troubles we cause others, others' favors to us, and why we remember others' misdeeds and quickly forget our own. I realized that our minds are busy trying to sustain a positive ego image, an effort requiring selective attention. Naikan exposes that narrowness of attention and broadens it. I learned that all of my behavior causes trouble to others in some sense-my eating causes something to die, my letter of thanks is written on paper provided by a dying tree, my gift to one person prevents me from giving that same gift to someone else, and so forth. Even my not-doing something causes trouble to others. For example, my failure to greet a stranger, my failure to maintain proper health practices, my failure to give directions clearly, and so forth, cause trouble to others. It is not pleasant to see myself primarily as a taker from the world and not a giver, but it is realistic. There are no self-made men, no people who are only caregivers, no one who takes so little that they "burn out" from giving so much.
The power of Naikan lies in its emphasis on the judgment of the Naikansha. No Naikan instructor will tell the Naikansha what counts as something received, given, or a trouble caused. Decisions about what falls within the three themes are completely up to the Naikansha. Americans appreciate this independence. Just as Morita therapy emphasizes the individual's right to decide what needs to be done, so Naikan gives the individual the right to explore himself or herself without control by the instructor.
Naikan-based Assignments
'Just as we omit Morita therapy's absolute bedrest in CL, we also omit intensive week-long Naikan. Our instruction is office-based, without the facilities or restrictions of a long-term commitment by the student. Of course, intensive Naikan may be a very useful experience, but we do not include it in CL. Some of our exercises, based on Naikan, are listed below. The CL student is assigned specific exercises to develop Naikan insights. Then the student reports out the results of the exercises. You can look carefully and see which of the Naikan themes underlie each exercise.
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1. Offer ten thank you's each day to an assigned person using a variety of phrases. Offer ten words of praise or zero words of criticism to a specific person each day.
2. Walk barefoot to appreciate shoes. Do without something temporarily in order to appreciate its service..
3. Do a secret service for someone without telling them or being seen by anyone.
4. Write letters of thanks or apology to important people in your life identifying specific things received from or troubles caused to that person.
5. Clean a drawer or purse or some other container thanking each of the contents for a specific service rendered you. Thank your clothes as you put them in the washer.
6. Pick up trash, napkins, cups, paper towels as a service to unknown others.
7. Bow to your computer or dishwasher or car before using it.
8. Do daily Naikan. Do event Naikan on a party or birth or graduation or other event in the past.
9. Do situational Naikan. While working give thanks to those who hired you and cooperate in your work, while eating a meal to those who grew and transported and prepared the food, while driving to those who designed and fabricated your car, and so forth.
10. Consider, then put in to practice, what you can do in return to the service of your shoes, electricity, water.
11. Put into action your thoughts about repaying those who have died.
12. Compute the amount of money your parents spent on you from your birth until you turned 20 years old. Compute the amount of money you spent on them during that period.
13. Do the same two computations from the time you were 21 until the present or until your parents died.
14. List your accomplishments, then list those whose efforts allowed you to achieve those accomplishments.
15. Garbage Naikan is thanking an object for a specific service before throwing it away.
16. Nikushimi or Enemy Naikan is making the effort to do Naikan on persons you dislike.
.Misconceptions about Naikan
Some misunderstandings about Naikan expressed by American students include the following:
1. Naikan will make me realize how much I have received from my mother, so I will have to do everything she tells me to do. I will become a doormat. (Response: No, doormats are merely lazy, doing as they are told without thinking of what is best for the mother. Sometimes refusing to obey is the best thing we can do for someone.)
2. Naikan is about nostalgia, about looking on the bright side, a Pollyanna perspective. (Response: No, Naikan requires you to look at both the light and dark side of life in a realistic manner.)
3. Naikan will at last allow me to forgive my parents. (Response: You may be surprised to discover that Naikan will prompt you to ask for your parents' forgiveness.)
4. Naikan is a Buddhist practice requiring strong religious character. (Response: Naikan began as a Buddhist practice, but it has evolved into a practice available to anyone. It requires no particular character type.)
5. Naikan is not for me because it won't improve my self-esteem. (Response: You may find your self-esteem more solidly grounded within reality-esteem. Recognizing your imperfections you find you have been supported by others all along.)
6. I do Naikan all the time anyway; there is no special need to do the exercises. (Response: Let's see how much Naikan you do on a daily basis. Please give the assignments a try.)
Theoretical Points
Some Naikan leaders say that Naikan allows one to take on the perspective of another, a parent perhaps. But no one can really see one's childhood from the parents' viewpoint. At the base, we all see as we imagine others might see.
The results of our Naikan lie outside of our control. Indirect Naikan might be a smile that is passed on to others, a complaint that puts the boss in a bad mood causing troubles to others. But Oppositional Naikan is also possible. For example, when you give a gift to one person you cannot give the same gift to others, causing them trouble. A complaint to the boss may result in improved working conditions, something given to others. We cannot know with certainty the outcome of our behaviors.
When looked at closely, word labels both reveal and conceal the implications of our actions. Words reveal generalities but also hide details. For example, doing Naikan on named persons is preferable to doing Naikan on "farmers" or "factory workers" or "God". Such latter Naikan may be little more than Naikan on words. The best Naikan is not vague or abstract but concrete and specific.
Both Morita and Yoshimoto independently stated that their methods lead to the door of religion. Naikan prompts us to ask why we are taken care of so well in spite of our wrongdoing and in spite of our failure to notice the bounty we receive and in spite of our failure to return as much as we are receiving. From a religious perspective we are "blessed." A variety of religious doors are available if one chooses to enter.
Published in Anthro Newsletter
Observations on Anthropological Observation
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
Constructive Living
P.O. Box 85
Coos Bay, OR 97420
[email protected]
When I live in Japan for six months of each year I speak Japanese almost exclusively. However, I read and write some English
nearly every day. I live in a small Japanese apartment, eat as the Japanese do, sleep on a futon on a tatami mat floor, work with Japanese
colleagues and students using my adaptation of Japanese psychotherapies. I rarely see a Caucasian face except while commuting in Tokyo.
Essentially, I make my living in Japan lecturing and writing about Japanese psychotherapies to Japanese in Japanese.
Yet, of course, I have not "gone native." No one with formal professional anthropological training can "go native." We carry the
intellectual baggage that "natives" do not possess. We can never see the world as "natives" see it, at the very least because we have
alternative perspectives that both magnify and interfere with our vision. I can see well enough, however, to perceive that our academic
anthropological vision has its blind spots and distortions, too. It provides us with only one sort of "scientific truth."
One limitation of the traditional scientific method is its failure to admit personal experience as a valid data source. Twenty-five
years or so ago, the psychologist Norman Farberow and I attempted to work around this limitation by sending two experiential researchers
separately into the same U.S. psychiatric aftercare setting at the same time. We then compared the independently-written reports of the
researchers' experiences. We concluded that the influence of that psycho-socio-cultural setting was so strong as to produce similar
experiences in both researchers despite their differences in background and gender.
Back in 1965 the Japanese psychiatrists who allowed my initial research in their therapies insisted that I understand their theories
and methods not only as a participant observer, but also that I undergo the therapies as a patient and also employ them as a therapist. To
read about Morita therapy or Naikan therapy gives only the beginnings of an understanding of what they are about. There is important
information to be obtained through participation, at whatever level, as compared with outside reading or observation. Translating one's
experience into meaningful words is another important step in moving a representation of the private into the public domain. Too many
anthropologists seem to write only for other anthropologists. Broader writing skills create broader thinking.
Anthropological training has been invaluable in allowing the extended perspective which allowed me to make reasoned
adaptations to Japanese therapies so that they can be applied to Western clients. Back in the 1920's Morita made attempts to publish his
insights in Western psychiatric journals, but his writings weren't understandable to the German reviewers and so were rejected. Even today
excellent direct translations of Morita's original works into English make marginal sense and find minimal applicability unless background
explanations and interpretations and adaptations are offered. Anthropology allows the possibility of that combination of distanced
perspective and intimacy which is necessary for an adequate understanding psychotherapy or any other human endeavor.
References:
Reynolds, David K. and Farberow, Norman L., Endangered Hope, University of California Press, 1977;
Reynolds, David K. The Quiet Therapies, University of Hawaii Press, 1980;
Reynolds, David K. A Handbook for Constructive Living, Morrow, 1995.
The End