Greetings

Naoki Fujiyama
President, Japan Psychoanalytic Society

Thank you very much for visiting the website of the JPS, the Japan Psychoanalytic Society.
I have been assigned to take over from Kunihiro Matsuki, the previous President, and represent the Society for a period of three years beginning June 2022.
The Japan Psychoanalytic Society is a group of psychoanalysts who are members of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud. As their daily operations, psychoanalysts perform psychoanalysis, a practice whose foundation was built by Freud, and academically pursue the findings thus obtained. These psychoanalysts get together to form an organization and cooperate with each other to ensure the growth and development of psychoanalysis. The JPS can therefore also be said to be a vocational group.

Our most important and significant task is to pass down the unique culture of psychoanalysis to succeeding generations; and with that in mind, we are engaged in training and fostering the next cohort of professionals. Psychoanalysis is a practice that is realized by making as full use as possible of our own minds. Training to become psychoanalysts, a process that includes the trainees themselves undergoing psychoanalysis, therefore requires both time and effort. To make this a reality, we operate an organization called the Japan Psychoanalytic Society Institute, with experienced psychoanalysts serving as the faculty, and offer training programs that comply with the international standards set forth by the IPA. The Institute has branches in Tokyo and Fukuoka.
We also carry out scientific/academic activities both domestically and globally. Besides holding such meetings in Japan, we collaborate with overseas associations that are members of the IPA to hold scientific meetings and set up forums for conducting exchanges with psychoanalysts in other countries. We also edit and publish our own scientific journal, The Journal of The Japan Psychoanalytic Society, and make it available online.
To ensure that psychoanalysis takes root in Japanese society and continues to develop, we maintain friendly and cooperative relations with a variety of groups and organizations with which we share a range of activities. One such organization is the JPS Allied Centre for Psychotherapists which we ourselves established. The Centre uses our Institute’s training resources to train and foster psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists who are capable of working actively in clinical fields that cover an even broader scope. We also work to maintain open and cordial relations at all times with various other psychoanalysis-related organizations that are independent of the JPS. These include the Japan Psychoanalytical Association, which is an organization comprising a large number of clinicians who have an interest in psychoanalysis, and the Kodera Memorial Foundation for Psychoanalytic Studies which was established to promote the growth and spread of psychoanalysis.
Another of our ventures is the raising of awareness of people who make use of psychoanalysis. We hold courses and lectures that are open to the general public, and assist psychoanalysts in publishing enlightening and educational books.

Psychoanalysis is an extremely universal, concrete and substantial system of clinical practice and thought surrounding the human mind. It is a practice that can support the essential growth and development of the human mind. At the same time, it has greatly influenced philosophy and the arts, and in turn has been influenced by them. Because it is universal to human beings, it subsumes diversity and has the power to bridge different thoughts and cultures. Since this attempt to include diversity and bridge ethnic differences is made sufficiently meaningful only if done with a global perspective, we are determined to make even greater efforts to interact and hold dialogues with the IPA and its member societies in countries around the world, as well as with psychoanalysts. We intend to continue to enhance our dialogues, especially with societies and groups in Asia that have links with the IPA.

This has been a very brief introductory greeting, but I hope that I have been able to convey to you an overview of our activities. During my three-year tenure as president, I am committed to directing my best efforts toward making sure that the duties and activities of the JPS that I have just described will proceed ever more smoothly.