Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima

9 Formulation: Self and World

FORMULATION: SELF AND WORLD The path beyond anger is formulation. By formulation I do not mean detached theories about the atomic bomb, but rather the process by which the hibakusha re-creates himself—establishes those inner forms which can serve as a bridge between self and world. Ideology and "world view"—often in their unconscious components—are central to the process, and by studying their relationship to A-bomb mastery, we gain a sense of their significance for mental life in general. Formulation includes efforts to re-establish three essential elements of psychic function : the sense of connection, of organic relationship to the people as well as non-human elements in one's life space, whether immediate or distant and imagined; the sense of symbolic integrity, of the cohesion and significance of one's life, here including some form of transcendence of the A-bomb experience; and the sense of movement, of development and change, in the continuous struggle between fixed identity and individuation.1 Conflicts we have discussed over issues of trust and peace, as well as struggles with residual anger, are part of the "psychological work" involved. And the internal "A-bomb philosophy" which results—the imagery of formulation—not only enhances mastery but, in an important sense, contains the mental representation of mastery or its absence. D E A T H I N L I F E In this larger sense all hibakusha live on the basis of some formulation of their experience, whether complete or fragmentary, overt or implicit. My experience was that an unusual degree of inarticulateness (I refer not to intellectual level but to the general incapacity to convey feelings or ideas) was likely to be associated with particularly strong residual anxiety, whatever the part played by prior emotional traits or by reservations about the interview situation. For example, the young office worker gave repeated answers of "I don't know at all" or "I don't know what to say" to most questions about her experience, then came to reveal unusually strong fear about physical aftereffects leading to a strong preference for marrying a nonhibakusha, as well as a fantasy of dying in another nuclear war and thereby being reunited with the A-bomb dead. Both the general fear and the anxious fantasy were elements of her unspoken A-bomb formulation. On the whole I found that women had less capacity than men for expressing their formulations with coherence or completeness. Further exploration could sometimes reveal, rather than total inarticulateness, an implicit formulation containing a strong feminine commitment to the perpetuation of organic life and a related propensity for "organic knowledge." In contrast, men made greater demands upon themselves for overt formulation, and anxiously struggled with suggestions of inarticulateness. Thus, it was with fear and anger that the white-collar worker told me: "I just can't put these feelings into words"; and with a sense of impairment and lingering guilt that the grocer concluded: "I just don't want this to happen to my child—that's all I can say about it." Both, moreover, were annoyed with themselves because of their verbal limitations. The psychobiological differences between the sexes that play a part here are given particularly strong emphasis in Japanese cultural tradition.* * Japanese culture has placed general emphasis upon aesthetic expression and nuance of feeling at the expense of abstract, interpretive thought. For women the pattern has been intensified by a rather narrow definition of acceptable "feminine" behavior. Even more than in most cultures, a Japanese woman demonstrating incisive theoretical gifts runs the risk of being considered (by herself as well as others) "unfeminine." These attitudes have contributed to longstanding discrimination in educational opportunity, and to stress upon woman as nurturer and seductress, while woman as "knower" has been restricted to personal and informal areas.2 368 J) Two Modes: Non-Resistance and Special Mission The two predominant patterns of formulation may be termed psychological non-resistanceand the survivor's sense of mission. The first of these suggests ultimate mystery. The ways of the A-bomb were unknowable, as implied in a comment by the elderly Nagasaki official: "One of my nieces . . . vomited extensively but is healthy now. A sister of mine also vomited but died a week later." Or else they are ineffable, as the downtrodden woman laborer tells us: "It was beyond words." In both cases, the quality of the experience which ostensibly prevents formulation is...