Psychosomatics 10: 46-50, 1969
Copyright
© 1969 Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine
Object Loss Prior to Medical Admissions in Japan
JOE YAMAMOTO M.D.1,
KEIGO OKONOGI M.D.2, , and
TETSUYA IWASAKI M.D.2
1 Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California
2 From Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
Can different religious faiths alter the reaction to object loss? In order to obtain data to answer this question, a transcultural study was done in Tokyo, Japan. The reason for the study was the Japanese religious beliefs in ancestors who can be fed, assuaged, revered and with whom one may communicate. It was felt that the custom of ancestor worship would facilitate adaptation to object loss in a cultural context where family and kinship ties are extraordinarily strong.
In this research, the goal was to replicate the American study by Schmale. This was not possible for several reasons such as socialized medicine in Japan, the very different medical practices, the newness of interspecialty research at the Keio University and the consequent concern that the patients might be unduly disturbed by the interviewers. Thus this paper is a discussion of the "relationship of separation and depression to disease" in 40 Japanese medical inpatients and a comparison of this group to Schmale's group.
Tabulated results showed remarkable differences in the Japanese patients. They seldom reported a loss or separation immediately before the onset of the medical illness. They seemed to have delayed reactions, becoming ill six months to several years after an object loss. However, in the incidence of anxiety, shame, helplessness, guilt, anger, fear, or hopelessness, over one-half of the patients were aware of these affects. This does raise the possibility that due to cultural differences it may be much more difficult to obtain histories of actual loss, threatened actual loss, or symbolic loss.
The original question could not be answered with these data, but at the same time interesting observations were made of a group of Japanese patients who were adopting patient roles quite dissimilar to those we know in the United States.
