From Neurasthenia to Morita Therapy: the development of psychiatric knowledge in modern Japan (1900s-1930s)
The aim of this paper is to review and summarise recent historical research on neurasthenia in Japan and show how the concept of neurasthenia and its wide diffusion among the Japanese public in the early twentieth century constituted a watershed in the elaboration of psychiatric knowledge. Psychiatr...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cjs, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
| Pubblicazione: |
Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies
2022
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| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | The aim of this paper is to review and summarise recent historical research on neurasthenia in Japan and show how the concept of neurasthenia and its wide diffusion among the Japanese public in the early twentieth century constituted a watershed in the elaboration of psychiatric knowledge. Psychiatry became established in Japan as a medical discipline and a system of care for the mentally ill in the 1880s, but its views on mental illness and the treatments it espoused only gradually gained legitimacy among the public. The notion of neurasthenia – which was imported as a disease category by Japanese psychiatrists in the 1880s and assimilated by the general public after the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) – provided a new lens through which the Japanese could grasp everyday physical and mental complaints by placing them in the social and cultural context of the “process of civilisation” and the “struggle for existence”. In this way, the concept of neurasthenia brought a new sphere of individual experience into the realm of psychiatric expertise and contributed to the production of new psychiatric knowledge by generating a growing number of sufferers in search of a cure. Between the 1910s and 1930s, psychiatrist Morita Shōma (1874–1938) developed a novel theory and psychotherapy for neurasthenia that lay at the crossroads of Western psychiatric and psychological knowledge and popular Japanese therapies of the day. |
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