Understanding Japaneseness by Nishitani Kosuke;Sherrill Mike;

Author:Nishitani, Kosuke;Sherrill, Mike;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Transmission of Maternal-filial Conflict between Generations

The following is a case of therapy involving the “intergenerational transmission of maternal conflict-feeling about having a child.”[18] Allow me to summarize briefly. A mother, Y, began to suffer from sleeplessness and to think of even killing her firstborn daughter when the daughter was three years old and her firstborn son was one year old. Such thoughts welled up in Y because the daughter seemed to her just like what Y had been in her childhood, a self which Y hated. Thus, Okonogi’s therapy was first applied to her situation.

Interestingly, Y felt very sympathetic toward her mother T, who had been badly mistreated in their family. In fact, Y worried about the possibility of T committing suicide. However, as the therapy went on, Y came to realize that internally she actually wished her mother T would cease to exist. Furthermore, T had been much harder on Y than on her younger brother. After all, with the birth of that son, the position of T as the bride who offered a successor for the family was secure.

The more self-confident T became in her situation, the harder she became on Y which actually constituted re-directed revenge against T’s mother-in-law for how hard she had been on T. With the awareness that she had come through such a process, Y finally began to talk of her “prenatal rancor” toward her mother T, saying, “Why did mother have me even when she felt so unhappy about her family life? Wasn’t it unreasonable? I wish I had not been born at all!” Thus, Y’s cruel attitude toward her own daughter proved to be the same as her own mother’s one to Y. Indeed, it had been transmitted from T to Y.

In the meantime, T, who was also under Okonogi’s treatment, began to speak about the secret of Y’s birth. T married into a good family, but her husband didn’t take care of the family. T regretted marrying him, but could not bring herself to divorce him. She thought her position in the family would improve if she had a son, i.e., a family successor. However, while pregnant with Y she had heard that there had been many mental patients in the family. Again, getting lost between the two possibilities, that is, whether she should stay with the family by having a new baby or whether she should leave the family by aborting the baby, T could not decide and gave birth to Y after all.

After Y was born, T was always on edge worrying about when Y would ultimately go insane. Whenever T quarreled with her husband or was mistreated by her mother-in-law, she re-directed her anger toward her daughter Y. In this environment Y became a very nervous child and always had her mother T on her mind. However, when T’s son, the successor of the family, was born, T’s disposition improved considerably because her husband and other family members suddenly began to treat her better. At the same time though, T began to feel that Y was annoying to her.

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