Abstract

At Sansei Hospital in Kyoto we performed Morita Therapy not only for Japanese clients but also foreign clients from several countries, like Germany, Switzerland, U.S.A., China, Korea, India and Indonesia. We could treat those foreign clients using Morita Therapy with good success although they came from various cultural backgrounds. One of the characteristic Approaches of Morita Therapy was that it avoided the conceptualization of self-consciousness and self image as a subjective fiction established by abstract and logical thinking. Secondary Morita Therapy moves clients to deal with activities in real life. These 2 approaches help clients not to be involved in symptom development or fixation mechanisms and break through self-centeredness. At the first stage of Morita Therapy, namely in the bed rest period clients can experience his psychic state as if he were a just born baby. The founder of Gestalt Therapy, Frederick S. Perls experienced by himself Morita Therapy. During bed rest therapy he behaved as if he were a baby. This behavior came out not from conscious abstract and logical thinking but from spontaneous "pre-conscious" state of mind. Morita called this "Jun-na-kokoro" (Pure mind). Morita knew that neurotic symptoms come out from those abstract and logical thinking which could lead to fixation of symptoms so that therapy principle might be the de-centralization of self and the pure mind experience which is found in our daily life and also in daily life of foreign people from various cultural backgrounds.