The article appears in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Volume 88, Winter 2012; Environmental Disasters and Collective Trauma, pp 47 – 60.
Though psychotherapy consists of the emancipation from the big story and the creation of small stories, the dimension of the big story is also important. While I have worked with people in Tohoku, I have keenly felt the loss of the old story, the old worldview, in the background. This loss overshadows the personal psychological problems. So there is a need for a new story. (…)
But it is premature to speak about a new story concretely. It is now important to accept and carry the loss as loss. It is a complicated situation in which human technology was defeated by the overwhelming power of nature on one hand, while on the other hand the omnipotence of nature was lost. This is so to speak a double loss because we have lost our trust in technology against the power of nature and our naive belief in the omnipotence of nature. I would like to respect this double loss so that the emptiness may become a place for the birth of a new being-in-the-world.
Toshio Kawai
Read the paper at IAAP Children and Adolescent Informational Website
