Gender and Spiritual Therapy in Japan

Therapies that are advertised as caring for mind, body and spirit, have become increasingly visible since the 1980s, and consist of the central focus of New Age activities in the West, and more recently in non-Western countries such as Japan. This article aims at demonstrating the applicability to the Japanese setting of theories that link the overwhelming presence of women among practitioners and clients of these “spiritual therapies” to their ability of both legitimizing and subverting traditional discourses of femininity. The author focuses particularly on Japanese women therapists’ testimonies that combine a legitimization of women’s involvement in spiritual therapies through their association with the beauty industry, with an overt criticism of the socio-economic conditions that encourage gender discrimination.

Paging Dr Love

When women's roles in the war effort brought their empowerment, from The Flame Within (1936) to Lady in the Dark (1944), the institution of movie psychiatry reminded women of their place - as passive recipients of male wisdom and treatments. The female movie psychiatrist (The Flame Within) is frequently no different from the successful but unhappy career woman (Lady in the Dark) - their career will never bring the same fulfilment as a solid marriage. The female movie psychiatrist must be ‘cured’ by her love for her male patient. Dr Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) has no difficulties helping her male amnesic patient, accused of murder, escape confinement. She marries him at the denouement of Spellbound (1945). Rather than list over a hundred films where girl (psychiatrist) falls for boy (patient), the challenge is to name those that deviate from this storyline. Classic Hollywood depicted women therapists as inadequate, personally and professionally: Knock on Wood (1954), A Perfect Furlough (1958), Wild in the Country (1961), A Very Special Favour (1965) and A Fine Madness (1966). Similar unhappy archetypes continue to yearn for their male patients in modern films: Mr Jones (1993), 12 Monkeys (1995) and The Jacket (2005). Perfect psychiatrist Dr Lowenstein must be rescued from her miserable personal life by an affair with her patient's brother in Prince of Tides (1991). In all these films, the only effective treatment is love. The audience are encouraged not to dwell on the boundary violations.

A Decade of Feminist Influence on Psychotherapy

The last decade has seen some major impacts of feminism on the institution of psychotherapy regarding theories, treatment techniques, and assessment instruments. The changes in attitudes toward women as therapists and as clients have reflected the general advances of the women's movement in that women clients are more likely to seek women therapists and to receive treatments specifically developed for crises affecting women such as rape, pregnancy and domestic violence. The difficulties in designing empirical studies to demonstrate bias in psychotherapy have resulted in a confusing state of the art because only the higher-order interactions have consistently been significant. Attempts of some women to resist changes brought about by the women's movement and the apathy and levity of others have also presented problems in the path of progress. However, movement toward the long-range goal is encouraging when one compares the writing on women and psychotherapy in recent professional journals with examples from the 1960s.