Takeo Doi, MD, 2005

Dr. Doi was well known in Japan as a psychoanalyst and author of the book Anatomy of Dependence, a creative analysis of the Japanese personality first published in Japan in 1971. Approximately one and one-half million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into eight languages, including English. His most recent book, Understanding Amae: The Collected Papers of Takeo Doi, published in 2005, is a collection of his writings extending over his 55 years of professional life during which he has devoted himself to the understanding of psychoanalysis across cultures and the elucidation of the Japanese personality.

Dr Doi graduated from Tokyo University in 1942 and won a Fellowship at the Menninger School of Psychiatry (’50 – ’52),followed by study at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institutes (’55-’56) He returned to Japan and became Chair of the Department of psychiatry at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo (57-71) while also spending two years as a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland (’61-’63). Upon his return to Tokyo he served as a professor at the Schools of Health Science and Medicine at Tokyo University (’71-’80) and then at International Christian University (’80-’82) and was the President of the National Institute of Mental Health, Tokyo (’83-’85).

Dr. Doi’s work serves as a psychoanalytic bridge between Japanese culture and the West, in an effort to enhance greater bidirectional understanding as well as contribute to better global understanding. In addition many of his papers address issues of Japan’s resistance to it own domestic cultural diversity.

Takeo Doi, scholar on Japanese psyche, dies (Associated Press)