IAN PARKER is Professor of Psychology in the Discourse Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is widely published, and his books include The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology (1989), Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in Western Society (1997), Critical Discursive Psychology (2002) and Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (2004).

Ian Parker addresses three key questions: 'Why is there psychoanalysis in Japan?', 'What do we learn about Japan from its own forms of analysis?', and 'What do we learn about ourselves from Japan?' The book is about the development of psychoanalysis and modern subjectivity in Japan. It shows how forms of individual selfhood amenable to therapeutic intervention emerged as Japanese culture has opened up to the West. It is also about how approaches to analysing the self have encountered Japan and how analysts tried to make sense of a culture that once seemed at odds with the aims of psychotherapy.