Abstract
From the standpoint of the theory of the therapy in culture, this paper describes how the COVID-19 disaster has transformed the relationship with others, and how the contact with foreign individual, who have different physical experiences and appearances that no one has ever experienced before, is affecting the world of everyday life. In doing so, I drew on the theory of the affect and the empathy from Vygotsky, Spinoza, Bin Kimura, and Edith Stein. I focused on the micro-genetic change of bodily experience and the sensual experience of otherness. It is hypothesized that such a sense of difference could also be an opportunity to open unknown parts of the self. In the process of mind-body transformation, I can read the basic bi-directional movement of the strange into the familiar and the familiar into the strange. The incorporation of this basic movement into the reconstruction of empathic relationships with others suggests a path of self-reconstitution in a world full of threats to the unknown.
