Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. Her work focuses on cross-cultural understandings of health and illness, mind and body, religious healing practices, medicine and therapy in the fields of medical anthropology, psychological anthropology and the anthropology of religion by bringing together Western and Asian (particularly Japanese and Tibetan) methodologies and epistemologies.

'This fascinating and carefully researched study provides one of the few accounts of a modern nonwestern psychotherapy practice. It should be read by all interested in psychotherapy and culture.' - Tanya Luhrmann, University of Chicago, USA'This is the most serious interpretation of the practice of Naikan I have come across...A compelling book that the reader will sit down and finish in a single reading and at the end assisted to look deeply into his or her own moral life. It is a book as much about our shared existential condition as about Japanese culture today.' - Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University, USA

• Part 1: Naikan 1. Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Introspection 2. The Expansion of Naikan 3. Personal Accounts of Naikan Part 2: Therapy 4. A Confessed Therapy 5. Embodies Memory and the Reconstruction of Autobiography 6. Naikan as an Alternative to Western Therapies Part 3: Religion 7. Naikan's Shin Buddhist Legacy 8. Enclosed Silence, Sacred Space: Death in the Naikan Environment 9. Using the Body: The Role of Meditation 10. Elements of Christianity in Naikan? 11. From Salvation to Healing: Ties between Religion and Therapy Part 4: Health & Society 12. The Place of Culture in Health and Illness 13. Conclusion: Questioning the Categories of Religion and Psychotherapy