On Becoming and Being a Psychoanalyst in Japan: What Was the Amsterdam Shock?

This is an account of a personal journey from a foreigner in Japan to a psychoanalyst. The complicated issues of my family and discrimination in my childhood made me need to think about myself and the human mind. Although I would become a psychoanalyst after psychiatric training, the training of psychoanalysis in Japan at that time was not so established that I had difficulties to find the way to get it. I describe a number of events through my trainings, which were psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Japan Psychoanalytical Association, psychoanalysis at the Menninger Clinic and in the Japan Psychoanalytic Society, and Amsterdam Shock. Especially, Amsterdam Shock was a turning point for the Society to change training systems. And also, that was the point I had to decide how I would reorganize my life; to become an analyst or not. They set me onto a long road toward becoming an analyst, but the experiences on this long way and in my childhood have become bases as an analyst. I mention the issues of psychoanalysis and working as a psychiatrist in private practice under the national health insurance system.