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 Discussion

Our discussions on Freud’s theories of transience and mourning and mortality along with some contexts of Japanese philosophy might have revealed some common threads between them. As there was practically no direct communication between Freud and Kyoto school, how could we explain them? Also we might ask ourselves if there is a possibility that they can inform each other for their further development ?

It is certain that Nishida, Tanabe and Nishitani, all studied abroad, especially in Germany and got direct contacts with Heidegger, Husserl and other great thinkers at the time. Then they brought back what they learned to Japan and developed further their line of thoughts. As they had their Japanese cultural background before they had contacts with European thoughts, the crossover of East and West might have occurred and developed further on in their mind early on in their career as philosophers. Nishida, for example had direct influence from Bergson and James while forming his idea of pure experience. We could think that they attained their truth on their own. However their philosophy that is called “Kyoto school” became unique with quite different flavor from Western philosophy. It is still wonder why their closeness to Freudian thinking came about.

Some would say that Freud’s field as psychiatry and Kyoto School’s field of philosophy are far apart, and the direct comparison between them is not meaningful. However, Freud’s concerns went far beyond mental illness and was interested in human science including philosophy, sociology, and religion. Both Freud and Nishida are interested in reality of the human mind, and Freud’s idea of mourning was born out of his painful experiences with his personal losses of important people. He was also devastated by the loss of culture and civilization due to the war. As we saw above, Freud’s attention shifted from abstract metapsychological matters to mourning and identification involving real human being. Nishida had a special concern about the issue of reality and stated that “reality is the activity of consciousness”. Nishida stressed the significance of real experience for the individual and asserted that not that the individual is there to have experiences, but he is there since the experience occurs. Nishida, Tanabe and Nishitani were all practitioners of Zen meditation and strived to live their philosophy through their meditative practice.

Let us turn to the second question. What can Kyoto school contribute to, or inform psychoanalytic theories of mourning and transience? As we saw, Freud’s notion of transience involved a seed for the “existential paradox”. Hoffman formulated this paradox as a dialectic between “Awareness of temporal limitation threatens to divest things of their value and lends them value at the same time”(R and S, p.49) in his theory of dialectic constructivism. This type of paradox, as a matter of fact, was used by Winnicott in his rhetoric, such as “[T]he basis of the capacity to be alone is a paradox; it is the experience of being alone while someone else is present Winnicott, 1958, P417”

Winnicott, D.W. (1958) The Capacity to be Alone. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 39:416-420.

I consider that this type of paradox is well formulated better described in Japanese “Philosophers of Nothingness” (Heisig,2002??) where the reality is described with the mediators of emptiness and nothingness. Take, for example the following expression.

In traditional Zen teaching, the basic philosophy was described as follows.

 “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." （色即是空）

 It is a condensed exposé on the Buddhist Mahayana teaching of the “Two Truths doctrine”, which says that ultimately all phenomena are sunyata, empty of an unchanging essence. This emptiness is a 'characteristic' of all phenomena, and not a transcendent reality, but also "empty" of an essence of its own. Specifically, it is a response to Sarvastivada teachings that "phenomena" or its constituents are real.  

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 　Some types of treatment method developed in Japan, such as Morita therapy and Naikan Therapy. For them, An additional goal is to attain “arugamama,” or the Zen Buddhist ideal of accepting as they are (Tatara, p230) which is the basic tenet in Morita Therapy created by Shoma Morita in 1930. Naikan therapy was started in 1940s by Ishin Yoshimoto, a devout Buddhist which was developed by the meditation-based practice and was aimed at becoming aware of how much contribution his mother, father, siblingws etc. Both of these methods urge patients a passive acceptance of their reality and destiny, but from a Western perspective, its relative lack of theoretical rationale and evidential basis for these methods might not be convincing. However, “emptiness” based philosophy of Zen appears to merge rather smoothly to, and provide additional philosophical basis for the theory of transience and mortality and dialectic concept of life and death.

Tatara, M (1982) Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Japan; the Issue of Dependency Pattern and the Resolution of Psychopathology. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 10:225-229.

 We might also take a note that there seems to be a common thread between Freud’s theory of identification and Nishida’s and Nishitani’s theories of experiences where the self mergers and “becomes one” with the object. However, this state does not represent a psychotic breakdown with a loss of ego-boundary. This rather mean a healthy ego-state where a self can partake other’s perspective in a dialectic fashion and can engage in a dialogue with the internalized (lost) others. Through identificatory mourning process the self is populated with others, instead of being intruded by others.

 Conclusion

 In this article I discussed Freud’s work On Transience, especially the idea of transience and its relationship to mourning and related theory of identification. We saw how the aspect of Hoffman’s dialectic constructivist view exemplified Freud’s informal existential discussion of mortality. We then switched the focus to Japanese analyst’s and philosopher and see the common thread between them. I proposed the idea of the element of absence, discussed in current analytic literature which can function as a mediator for the experience in Japanese culture, which could be rooted in Japanese philosophy, particularly in the theory of nothingness and emptiness on the basis of the Zen tradition.

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 Hajime Tanabe who succeeded Nishida’s philosophy and his position in Kyoto University developed his own thoughts on thanatology toward the end of his career. While still studying in Germany, he was interested in Heidegger’s idea of death and had an intention of follow up on it (Heisig, 175). He came to believe that “the philosophy of death” should be the core of philosophy. His “dialectics of death” involves that of dealth-in-life and life-in-death which forms the utmost self-awareness. He takes examples of the Zen samurai ideal (*3) and shows that by the death, “letting go of the self” turns out to be a mediation for coming to the affirmation of a new life (Tanabe: Existenz, Love, and Praxis).Tanabe’s thanatology was heavily influenced by the loss of his beloved wife in 1951. He then began to stress the importance of the fact that the mourned person resuscitates in the self. He states that “if the self dies, the existence bound by love is reborn in the “collaborative existence” beyond life and death and stays there eternally. (Collective work of Hajime Tanabe, Vol.13, p.170-171. Tanabe is said to have made a poem; “My wife who sacrificed her life for me is now living inside of myself for good.” Tanabe’s thoughts on death remind us of the discussion of Freud’s theory of identification where a lost object gets internalized with a new life and becomes a part of the ego of the bereaved.

Note 3　Mortality in Bushido

Tanabe only passingly mentioned Bushido (“the Way of the Warrior”, Japanese Samurai swordsmanship) in his writing, but it is worth commenting on in this note. Nothing represents more directly and vividly the thanatology in Zen context than the one depicted in Bushido. Inazo Nitobe’s work is a classic and one of the most widely referenced books on this topic among English literatures（Bushido:The Soul of Japan,1900）. Nitobe states that Zen is a foremost teacher of Japanese swordsmanship, and explains its essence: “It furnished a sense of calm trust in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with death”.(Nitobe, emphasis added by this author).

In this context, Hagakure is also a well-known spiritual and practical guide for Samurai warriors, written by an eighteenth-century samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the Nabeshima clan in Japan. The book dictates how samurai were expected to conduct themselves, how they were to live and die. While Hagakure was for many years kept only to warrior vassals of the Nabeshima clan, it later came to be popularized as a fundamental textbook of samurai thought. The text illuminates the concept of bushido, including living and dying for bravery and honor which is the essense of Hagakure. (William Scott Wilson has selected and translated here three hundred of the most representative of those texts to create an accessible distillation of this guide for samurai. (The Book of the Samurai, Analects of

Nabeshima or Hagakure Analects)  In the famous opening of the text, the author refers to bushido as “the Way of death,” a description that has been interpreted in variously nuanced way, was even used as a way of rationalizing self-sacrificial war spirit. It is to note, however, bushido as depicted by Tsunetomo was under the influence of Zen Buddhism, especially to its concept of muga, the denial or the “death” of the ego.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo (2012) Hagakure: Book of the Samurai. Shambhala Translation.

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 Nothingness and emptiness in Japanese philosophy

Although the purpose of this paper is not a detailed philosophical discussion in Freudian thoughts on transience and mortality, it is worth mentioning briefly some contexts of Japanese school of philosophy in “Kyoto school” so long as their discussions are quite relevant to these topics. Philosophers such as Kitaro Nishida, Hajime Tanabe, and Kenji Nishitani, some of whose works are available in English translation, are said to have established the philosophy of nothingness and emptiness in their attempt to overcome nihilism in the Western Culture (Heisig, 2001). There seems to be a similar line of thoughts in both Freudian thinking and these Japanese philosophers, as will be discussed later, but does it mean that Freud was ahead of time, or just a coincidence?  At least there is no indication that these two had some significant communication. Still the question remains; could there be a possibility that they can inform each other in order to further develop their ideas?

Kitaro Nishida, often called as the father of Kyoto School of philosophy, stressed that in Japanese culture, no-mind (Mushin) or emptying one’s mind are considered to be of particular importance. While the Western culture assumes the presence which underlies existence, Japanese philosophy considers nothingness as the basis for the existence (Heisig, 2001). He then postulates the notion of “absolute nothingness”, which does not imply ordinary connotation of non-existence, but it means that “the self has to be ‘made nothing’ so that it could open up into its true self” (Heisig, p.62). "We might call it nothingness, but then it is not nothingness which opposes being; it rather includes being. Or we might think of it as the hidden reality, but then it is not the reality which did not yet manifest itself; it must be the reality which, in an infinite manner, transcends whatever is supposed to manifest itself; it must include the infinite hidden reality." (Nishida, K. (1929) Acting to the Seeing, IV 155.)

Thus Nishida’s notion of nothingness is discussed as lived and experience-near, and there seems to be an influence form French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson states “seeing an object by becoming it”, and Nishida states “our knowing a thing is to identify with it. When we see a flower, we become flower” (An Inquiry into the Good) and called it “Urphänomen”. This pure experience is where the boundary between we and others disappear and while the ego nears toward object, the object also approaches ego. behind this idea of mutual experience of things lies the idea of William James.

Nishida, K. (1911) A Study of Good.

When we reach the bottom of the thing, we encounter “absolute eternity”, something beyond ego. Fujita explains that in general absolute existence lies outside of ego. However, Nishida is opposed to grasping things in transcendental fashion.

Fujita, Masakatsu (藤田正勝 (2007) 『西田幾多郎：生きることと哲学』 岩波書店)

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 Transience and its cultural implications

In this article I discussed so far Freud’s thoughts on transience and mortality, and explored how these issues are related to beauty, value and art. It is very curious that similar type of discussions are found in Japanese culture.

Some time ago, Japanese analyst Kitayama discussed transience in relation to beauty and value, as well as other implications. In his paper “Transience: its beauty and danger (1998)” he stressed the difference between transience and transition. The former is seen in Winnicott’s notion (“transitional object”) which involves “phenomenological description of movement” while the latter describes “mainly emotional state”. Kitayama states that transience is a universal phenomenon, but is less discussed than transition in the analytic literature. He then discussed that there is a tradition in Japan where they tend to find beauty in what is transient. People project themselves onto the objects which are destined to disappear in time. Kitayama points out that many Japanese are fond of stories which end with separation instead of happy ending, and this can be related to Japanese people’s masochistic tendency. He states as follows; “In my opinion, transition can be just joyful, but it is often accompanied by a sense of transience or transiency that is more or less painful sentiment, sometimes even involving an artistic sense of beauty as well as sense of sadness, emptiness and depression” (p.940).[Emphasis added by the author].

Kitayama did not discuss the rationale for the esthetic value related to transience, similar to Freud. He would say that looking at transient objects drawn in Ukiyo-es (literally meaning "pictures of the floating world", a genre of Japanese art flourished in the 17th ~19th centuries) is enough to appreciate its beauty, except that he suggested that “joyfulness”, a sort of playfulness is involved in transience. I consider that Kitayama implies that transience also belongs to the potential space proposed by Winnicott (Kitayama, 1998). He states; “This process [of transience] is not only fort/da, but also da/fort, that is presence/absence”(Kitayama, p. 939).

Still related to the same topic, Okano (2018) discussed in his paper “Passivity, non-expression and Oedipus in Japan (2018)” that in Japan people tend to find truth and value in “what is kept secret and is not expressed.” He discussed that in Japanese society passive attitude and absence can paradoxically have some positive value. According to his theory, in Japanese culture, people introduce the element of absence in order to express beauty and value (Matsuki,不在論). One of the examples he raises is “Haura”. “Haura” is the lining of a jacket, which is elegant and stylish, but invisible from outside.

Thus, both Kitayama and Okano discuss the element of absence that Japanese naturally or deliberately imply in order to add the value and beauty. The question is, is it related to Freud’s discussion of the foretaste of mourning??

There appears to be some psychoanalytic attempt to make a crossover between psychoanalytic thinking and Japanese culture, including Vermote, Matsuki, and Togashi.

不在論：根源的苦痛の精神分析　創元社　2011年

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 The problems of identification

Here I would like to discuss the issue of identification as a separate topic, as this is specifically important in dealing with Freud’s mourning and transience. While he developed his idea of mourning, Freud also elaborated on the theory of identification in parallel. Freud thought that “Just as mourning impels the ego to give up the object by declaring the object to be dead and offering the ego the inducement to love, so does each single struggle of ambivalence loosen the fixation of the libido to the object by disparaging it, denigrating it and even as it were killing it off. (Freud 257. Clewell.p. 60)　

In relative to this process, Freud considered that in melancholia, there is identification of the ego with the abandoned object (249,Clewell 60). Libido cannot separate from the object, but the very object is not there anymore, and the object needs to be taken in and get internalized. Freud called this process “identification”. Freud thought that a baby, for example, the original identification occurs when baby takes in mother’s milk, which idea was informed by Abraham. However, in “Ego and Id”, six years after “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud stated that identification is no longer a pathological process, but an important process in the mourning (Clewell, 619). Freud began considering that identification lasts for a long period. It was obviously a view different from the 1st point that we saw above.

However, one question might occur. Freud initially thought in the “Mourning and Melancholia” that mourning is a process where libido is detached from the object, which is different from the process of identification. However, Freud seems to be discussing a process somewhat akin to that of internalization when mourning occurs. He states that the objects need to be strongly remembered in order to forget the object. “Each single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to be object is brought up and hyper-cathected, and the detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it …. [W]hen the work of mourning is completed, the ego becomes free and uninhibited again”(p.245).

Clewell states as follows. ”The work of mourning, as Freud described it here, entails a kind of hyper-remembering, a process of obsessive recollection during which the survivor resuscitates the existence of the lost other in the space of the psyche, replacing an actual absence with an imaginary presence.”(p.44).”With a very specific task to perform, the Freudian grief work seeks, then, to convert loving remembrances into a futureless memory.(p.44)”.

Again, it is not clear how much this hypermnesia and imaginary presence (Clewell) that Freud suggested in the mourning process is different from identification in melancholia described in the “Mourning and Melancholia.” At least they share a common feature: powerful internalization of the lost object. While elaborating on the identification process, Freud might have realized that it is not simply a memory of the lost object, but the image of the object living internally as an agent. The lost object is no longer a cold memory, but a live part of the ego. Clewell describes this process as follows: “it is only by internalizing the lost other through the work of bereaved identification, Freud now claims, that one becomes a subject in the first place”.(p.61)

Freud might have had an insight in “Mourning and Melancholia” that transient object can become a part of the ego with added beauty and value, through a painful process of “foretaste of the mourning”. Once internalized, the object is given a new life again, with an added brightness, just as a planet becomes a star shining on its own.

Identification thus understood can be in accord with Hoffman’s view commented by Slavin. In a sense, Freud might have anticipated dialectic constructivist view later presented by Hoffman.

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 Note 2
　Schimmel (2018) proposed that Freud’s theory of mourning demonstrated in the “On Transience” was born in the context of a major paradigm shift in Freud’s theories which was in the context of Freud’s emotional journey (Schimmel, 224) in which he went through many losses in his life. According to Schimmel Freud’s several papers beginning “Mourning and Melancholia” should be classed to a category, along with “On Transience”, “Thoughts on Wars and Death”. This group of papers reflect Freud’s major shift of interest, from psychosexual view to object relations and object losses. By the time he wrote these papers, the World War 1 just began, and despite Freud’s optimistic outlook, the situation got worse and his eldest son Ernst got drafted. Freud reportedly got seriously depressed which was also influenced by separation from Jung and his half-brother Emanuel’s death.
Paul Schimmel (2018) Freud’s “selected fact”: His journey of mourning. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 99(1):208-229）

 　Slavin (2013) followed up on Hoffman’s steps and discussed further the dialectical constructivism and its relationship to the issue of mortality. He calls Hoffman’s constructivist view as the “universal features of the human condition”(p.296). He thinks that human being acquired symbolic and abstract thinking at the cost of a significant loss with “our awareness of the finiteness of our own existence”. He calls this an “evolutionary trade-off". Slavin states: “Human meanings - hope, love, purpose, beauty, like everything we hold, we make, we construct, do not last.(297)” . “[T]he haunting fact of our allotted speck of time, on a speck of a planet, in an infinite universe, erodes meaning, drains it out (297).

Slavin states that human condition from the constructivist view as something “bracing, quite beautiful” although he does not give any particular rationale for its esthetic nature, except to say “because it’s hard won.” Slavin’s statement reminds us of Freud’s own rationale that transience is valuable as “transient value is a scarcity in time". Rather, Slavin introduces the issue of authenticity.  He states that dialectical constructivism draws upon our existential tradition of “making authentic personal meaning on face of both our mortality and of the alienating pressures of the world towards conformity and accommodation".

   The originality of Slavin’s view includes his extension of Hoffman’s view to the tension between self and other. Our finitude naturally includes the fact that we live with others. He considers that our subjectivity is made by what we absorb from otherness “that is inevitably geared to its own naturally self-interested motive, needs, and biases”(p.297). Slavin also stresses the importance of the mother’s role, which make our mortality more tolerable. Hoffman states that our life is given meaning by our parents with their state of semi-deities. However, sooner or later children face that their parents also love themselves, perhaps more than they love their children.

Slavin, MO. (2013) Meaning, Mortality, and the Search for Realness and Reciprocity: An Evolutionary/Existential Perspective on Hoffman’s Dialectical Constructivism. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23:296–314, 2013.