Vol. 36 of Prof. Kawai’s Essay Series in Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru was Published

A new installment in Professor Toshio Kawai’s essay series, “Kokoro’s Forefront and the Layers of History” was published in the August 2019 issue of Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru.

The theme of this month’s essay was the internet and the body/the other world.

In it, Prof. Kawai considers the meaning of the body and its place in online psychotherapy. Because online psychotherapy enables both the therapist and the client to engage in psychotherapy from home, they are no longer tied to a physical location in therapy. This is changing the meaning of the body and place in therapy.

Prof. Kawai uses the books of Haruki Murakami to illustrate this point. In his novels, when the main character wants to be connected to someone, they often do so by using technology, such as telephones or the internet, by moving through physical boundaries such as walls, or by moving across time and space. These novels suggest that we can be inherently connected without being together in real space. In addition, only when we lack a real body will we be able to enter a different dimension than those we are aware of.

Prof. Kawai thinks that online psychotherapy is not as shallow as it generally criticized for being. Rather, because of its practical handicap of lacking the face-to-face interaction of two bodies, it may show us to access more essential connections and depths.

(Reported by: Hisae Konakawa, Program-Specific Research Fellow)

Website of the publisher

You can order the brochure Minerva Correspondence: Kiwameru here.

https://www.minervashobo.co.jp/book/b471147.html

2019/09/26