The American Psychoanalytic Association is to be congratulated on its courageous and farseeing sponsorship at its 1997 Annual Meeting of the Interdisciplinary Conference on Amae. The theme of the conference was “Amae Reconsidered: Sweet Indulgence, The Suspension of Formality, Dependency, and Refueling in Japan.”
Daniel M. A. Freeman and Frank A. Johnson have been working long on the subject, finding it a singularly coherent example of human affiliation whose study is rewarding to psychoanalysis and allied disciplines. Besides themselves, they brought into participation 13 Japanese psychoanalysts and social scientists, several of whom work in the U.S. The American discussants were Anni Bergman, Otto Kernberg, and Edward F. Foulks. The discussion was lively, broad-gauged, and far-ranging.
The picture that emerged in 13 fascinating hours was of amae as a state of intimate mutual dependence at the core of Japanese social connectedness. It appears to be analogous to mother-child relationships found in cultures worldwide, including their mythic underpinnings. Though it is considered cherished traditionally as a state and an act of sweet indulgence on the part of a mother totally devoted to family, it is acceded to by a child in a state of “active passivity.” Obedience and sacrifice are life motifs in amae, as are intricately interwoven scruples, with emphasis on a priori understandings.
Conference participants tellingly depicted amae from the standpoint of sociology, social psychology, anthropology, religion, and art. The life cycle and family dynamics were examined. An authoritarian yet relatively absent father furthers amae as a reactive conjunction of mother and child. Youth movements, exhibiting “fundamental rancor” against parental and the larger social authority, were cited as examples of latter-day reactions to amae (and also manifestations of the Ajase Complex, from a myth of mother-father-son relations introduced to the literature by the Japanese psychoanalyst Osawa in 1932).
Psychiatric conditions attributed to malfunction of amae were taijin kyofu (phobic fear of meeting with people), a related state called hanikame (shyness, coyness), a lack of a sense of jibun (self), the splitting in borderline patients, and schizophrenics' total ego incapacity to live within reality.
Toward the end of the conference, participants began to discuss disruptive aggression as a striving toward autonomy, set against a caregiver's assumption of mutuality. Participants emphasized the positive aspect of amae — the careful attention of the mother to the development of her child, with its consequent incorporation of a constant object. Of special note was presenters' sensitivity in depicting the inner, object-relational states of the mother and child in amae, in an atmosphere of sweet indulgence and benign, concerned containment. There were frequent references to Bion, Winnicott, and Klein — theoreticians who studied the mother-child relationship in both its immediate and metaphoric aspects. There were also essays into core spiritual and transcendent aspects of amae, reaching into oceanic feelings and communion with prior generations.
Such sensitivity, so forthcoming and so honestly presented, is an asset to psychoanalysis as it studies the origins and manifestations of narcissism, both pathological and healthy — if indeed there be such a thing as healthy narcissism. The sweet, indulgent tradition of Japan that replenishes emotionally through amae appeared to be inspiring the warm, simply human transaction we experienced as fellow professionals at this exceptional gathering of like-minded souls.
Joseph Abrahams, M.D., is capping a half-century career in “an extended practice of psychoanalysis with reports on findings in narcissism and in group processes.” He is preparing a study on the Ajase Complex and amae.