Book Announcement by Koichi Togashi (Japan)
This book is written from the unique perspective of a Western-trained Asian psychoanalyst and applies principles of Eastern philosophy to understand the psychoanalytic relationship, psychoanalytic processes, and their uses – and limitations – for alleviating human suffering.
Bringing a unique Eastern perspective to a previously Western-dominated discipline and framed within the current relational and ethical trends in psychoanalysis, this Routledge title enables readers to develop a language for understanding an Eastern ethical viewpoint and to explore how this language can change our awareness of psychoanalytic practice and human suffering.
Chapters are devoted to the Eastern concepts of nothingness, emptiness, surrender, sincerity, silence and narrative, and issues includes existential “guilt of being,” trauma, contingency, informed consent, the sense of being human and uncertainty. Discussions are illustrated and illuminated through vivid recreations and careful elaboration of therapeutic case studies with traumatized patients. The studies demonstrate the process by which patients regain a sense of being human. This enriched perspective will, it is hoped, help the analyst treat traumatized patients who are unable to relate to others, and who do not experience themselves as being human.
Togachi’s book will enrich an analyst’s sensitivity to the appearance of the moment without context – the psychoanalytic zero – which opens infinite opportunities for continued growth in a psychoanalytic relationship. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in self-psychological, intersubjective and relational theories.
Koichi Tagashi is a certified clinical psychologist and licensed psychologist in Japan; licensed psychoanalyst in New York State; and certified psychoanalyst at NAAP, New York. He is faculty and training & supervising analyst at TRISP, New York; professor and clinical supervisor at Konan University, Kobe, Japan; and mentor of the Taiwan Self Psychology Study Group. He is a member of the Council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, an international editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, and an editor of The Japanese Journal of Psycho-Analysis. He co-authored “Kohut’s Twinship across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human” (Routledge, 2015).
Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P.
Hiroshima & Kobe, Japan
Email Koichi Tagoshi
