Structure of the Japanese Language and Psychoanalysis: “It does not Preclude the Analysis”

This article examines the propositions of three authors on psychoanalysis with Japanese people, and in Japanese language. These propositions are “subjects divided by language” according to Jacques Lacan, “able to do a psychoanalysis in another language” according to Jacques-Alain Miller, and “dodging the subjective division” in the continuity of Kosuke Tsuiki. As a result, the reasons for the inanalyzability of the Japanese people cannot be found in the structure of the Japanese language. What the Japanese case exposes is an environment which, due to historical, cultural and social factors, allows a weak and slow diffusion of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The Japanese example raises the broader question of the conditions of possibility in our societies of psychoanalytical discourse. From the Japanese case, the author argues that the possibility of operating in the psychoanalytical discourse does not depend on the structure of language.