Dependency and Japanese Socialization: Psychoanalytic and Anthropological Investigations in Amae

Preface

Preface This book is a culmination of study and reflection about dependency theory that began in 1968. At that time I was a young academic psychiatrist at the State University of New York, Health Sciences Center in Syracuse. During my own postgraduate training in psychiatry I had been introduced to anthropology by ErnestBecker, through coursework covering material subsequently published as The Birth and Death of Meaning (Becker 1962) and Revolution in Psychiatry (Becker 1964). This introduction was followed by connections to the social sciences through Paul Meadows (Syracuse University) and Benjamin Nelson (the New School for Social Research ). In the early 19703, I devoted an investigational year to studying Japanese Americans residing in Hawaii. My research was designed to look into cognitive and experiential dimensions of dependency (called amae in Japanese) demonstrated in second- and third-generation (nisei and sansei) subjects living in Honolulu. My interest in Japanese manifestations of dependency was a direct result of reading the early publications of Takeo Doi, who had defined amae as "the need of an individual to be loved and cherished; the prerogative to presume and depend upon the benevolence of another ." According to Doi's observations, the privilege of requesting and receiving special consideration from selected others was maintained in Japan throughout the lifespan. This was in contrast to many Western societies, where the acknowledgment and gratifications of dependency are consigned to early childhood, and subsequently become disguised and suppressed. Doi also concluded that the manifestations of dependency were of crucial, rather than incixin xiv / Preface dental, significance in both cultures: in Japan where they remained conscious and acceptable prerogatives, and in the United States where needs for gratification were more conflictual and potentially regarded as negative. Using a combination of open-ended questionnaires and informant interviews I attempted to find out the extent to which the experience and awareness of amae were present in the contemporary Japanese American subculture in Hawaii. During the academic year 1970-71, I was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii. I was also informally connected to the Social Science Research Institute, which providedcontact with visiting Asian and American specialists. These connections gave me access to colleagues and students in the departments ofpsychology, sociology, and history on the Manoa campus. During this investigational year I conducted an ethnographic examination of enryo (ritualized deference) with Colleen Johnson, and a survey of attitudes toward verbal behavior with Anthony Marsella. Extensive interviews with informants and participant observation into areas of dependency were carried out in a varietyof private and public settings. Information about the communicative aspects of relationships with family, kin, friends, and workmates was accumulated through interviews with nisei and sansei contacts . Although the Japanese term amae was virtually never used, conversations and observations repeatedlydocumented the implicit patterning of a form of social and emotional relatedness parallel to the normative expectations for interdependency in Japan. These manifestations of amae in second- and third-generation descendants remained apparent despite an intervening forty to seventy years of disconnection from mainland Japaneseculture. As Doi might have predicted, I was unable at that time to carry these findings and interpretations to a conclusion that was satisfactory . This represented the recognition that dependency phenomena are unusually diffuse and complex. They are subject to variations according to position in the lifespan, the features of particular situations , and degree of subcultural identification. Also, as I extended my reading of the literature regardingdependency, complexities in Western psychological theory raised still other questions that required confrontation. Following sabbatical, my study of amae proceeded to address these problems at both theoretical and experiential levels. Subsequent publications of Professor Doi's—particularly his Anatomy of Preface / xv Dependence (i973a) and Anatomy of Self (1986)—were helpful in clarifying and extending his earlier work. As he describes it, the significance of amae became more obvious to him through noticing its attenuation and omission in American life, observed during extended periods while he trained and conducted research in the U.S. The American omission of allowable, overt adult dependency became even more evident to him after returning to Japan following living in Washington, D.C., Topeka, Kansas, and San Francisco. In a parallel manner, I found that the significance of allowable dependency found among some JapaneseAmericans began to arouse more questions following my return from field work and reimmersion into the culture of the northeastern United States. Subsequently, my efforts to embed the investigational findings into a broader...