Prof. Kawai’s Essay Series Published in the May 2018 Issue of Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru

Prof. Toshio Kawai‘s essay series “Kokoro’s Forefront and Layers of History” was published in the May 2018 issue of Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru.

This month’s theme was “spirit possession and dissociative disorder”.
Prof. Kawai points out that dissociative disorder was frequently discussed during the era of Freud and Jung in 19th to 20th centuries. Although interest in it seemed to have disappeared at one point, it picked up again in the 90′ throughout the world, including Japan.
An epidemic of dissociative disorder seems to have appeared in recent years. It resembles the phenomenon of “spirit possession”, but they are surrounded by completely different contexts. In pre-modern times, the cause of possession was seen as something outside of the individual, such as a fox or a spirit of the dead, whereas modern day dissociative disorder does not arise from such “layers of history” within a kokoro.
Then why did many of the types of dissociative disorder that were found in the 90′ seem to have disappeared? This topic will be covered in the next issue.

（Commentary：Hisae Konakawa　Research Fellow）

“Kokoro’s forefront and the layers of history” (21)
“Spirit possession and dissociative disorder” by Toshio Kawai

Previously in this series, I have written about psychosomatic and developmental disorders. In this section, I would like to focus on symptoms. Dissociative disorder includes depersonalization disorder, dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder. The ICD-10 added hysteria (convertible disorder) to this category. Modern psychiatric medical diagnostic classification was established by Emil Kraepelin in 1899. Around the same time, Sigmund Freud began developing his psychoanalytic theories and techniques. This is how the framework for modern psychiatry and psychotherapy were developed…

[Publisher]
https://www.minervashobo.co.jp/book/b358533.html

2018/05/10