In the course of our 30 years of consultation activities, the medical environment surrounding patients has changed significantly, and the awareness of patients has also changed. What we have been putting importance in our 63,000 telephone consultations are “listening” and “empathy.” The issues in our consultation activities are summarized in ①the importance of throwing in an appropriate word, ②the importance of showing empathy, ③the importance of listening, ④the dealing with difficult clients, and ⑤things to be mindful of. Among them, empathy is to convey how the client's story was received, which opens the client's heart to realize that “this person understands me,” so that the client can take a step forward to become calm. Whether or not this empathy can be achieved properly depends on how you listen to the clients'story, accepting their feelings, and showing that they are not alone. For that reason, empathy is synonymous with good listening, and I think that it is an issue that applies to anyone whose work is to deal with the feelings of people.

In this paper, medical anthropologists and practitioners jointly interpret the experience of a patient with persistent psychosomatic symptoms. The authors address the case of a male patient in his 70s who has been diagnosed as a functional defecation disorder. His preoccupation with bowel movements and increased urinary frequency forces him to spend most of the time on the bed at home. Furthermore, he persistently displays his negative feelings to the medical practitioners. The authors interpret the patient's experience by giving a particular focus on his life history as well as how he interpreted the socio-psychological approach. Some critical issues in introducing ethnography in the field of psychosomatic medicine will also be discussed.

In this paper, I explained “empathy” in psychology and psychotherapy. There are two processes in psychological “empathy” : “emotional contagion” (emotional empathy) and “perspective taking” (cognitive empathy). The emotional contagion is a function of the mirror neuron system. Perspective taking is based on the theory of mind. To understand the patient, “empathy” is essential in psychotherapy. Psychological empathy may be the basis of empathy in psychotherapy. However, “empathy” in psychotherapy is a high-level cognitive function. Until understanding the patient's emotion, the therapist feels “It don't make sense”. The therapist needs to pay attention to signals from the patient. It is important for the therapist always to expand his experience and also to face himself deeply. The entrance to empathy is treating patient with respect, hospitality and trying to understand the patient as a distressed human being.

Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand other people's feelings and emotions”. Needless to say, empathy is necessary ability for us to build a good relationship with others in everyday life. And it is no exception in the doctor-patient relationship. Empathetic communication skills in healthcare settings include not only the promotion of rapport with patients, but also understanding of their illness, creation of opportunities for illness, and nestling in patients suffering from anxiety and fear. However, it is sometimes hard to clearly define what this empathetic communication skill is. On the one hand, it is obvious that the skill is brought up from childhood, but on the other hand, it is not clear whether skills already formed in childhood can be flexibly changed, modified or improved in the process of growing.

In the early 20th century, the importance of empathetic communication skills in clinical scene was indicated abroad. However, it was regarded as just the one significant item in the dialogue with the patient and in the trustful relationship because there was no objective measurement method at that time. In 2001, Hojat developed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSE) to evaluate empathy objectively. The JSE was translated in various languages and it has become possible to evaluate empathy about the clinical scene in various countries.

I have been investigating empathetic communication skills among medical students since 2015. I found out that empathic communication skill of medical students in clinical training is improved in meeting one patient for longer time rather than having conversation with many patients for shorter time. I continued our research by incorporating the results of the survey into clinical training conducted in the following year and investigating the educational effects. From the survey, empathetic communication skill in medical education has become gradually clearer. In this paper, The author explains the current situations of empathetic communication skills of medical students and also how to develop empathetic communication skills that lead to clinical medicine and what to do for psychosomatic medicine.

The present study examined the client-counselor relationship from the perspective of body movement synchrony (i.e. rhythmic synchrony between body movements of interacting partners), based on a video analysis. Four psychotherapeutic counseling sessions were analyzed, of which two were negatively evaluated (low evaluation group) and the other two were positively evaluated (high evaluation group). In addition, two ordinary advice sessions between two high school teachers and the clients from the high evaluation group were analyzed. All sessions represented role-playing. The intensity of participants' body movement was measured using a video-based analysis. The temporal relationship between body movements of clients and counselors/teachers was analyzed using a moving cross-correlation with time lags between the two time series of body movement intensity. The results revealed : (1) a tendency of the counselors' body movements to occur with a 0.5-second delay as compared to those of the clients all across the 50-minute sessions ; this tendency was (2) particularly notable in the case of the highly evaluated sessions ; (3) not observed in the advice sessions, the two sessions displaying inconsistent patterns ; (4) a consistent temporal pattern among four counseling sessions. The changes in the quality of client-counselor relationships were considered.

Background : As well as lifestyle habits such as smoking, diet, sleep and physical activity, coping strategies against psychological stress can be important factors which explain the relationship between personality and diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the relations among personality, coping strategies, lifestyle habits, and subjective stress.

Method : Based on self-administered questionnaire obtained from 11,552 participants in the Kyushu University Fukuoka Cohort Study, we executed covariance structure analysis.

Results : Higher neuroticism was associated with more frequent passive coping strategies and less frequent positive coping strategies in both men and women. On the other hand, when treating extraversion as an exogenous variable, difference was seen between men and women as to more effective coping.

Conclusion : It was suggested that personality traits affect psychological stress via not only lifestyle habits, but also coping strategies.

Objectives : The effects resulting from arranging and viewing a flower on autonomic nervous functions, the hardness of shoulder muscles, and psychological healing were investigated

Subjects : Adults (N=51, 17 men and 34 women, Mean age 56.0 years, SD=15.7).

Methods : The participants randomly took part in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the participants put their favorite flower in a vase such that it satisfied them, and viewed the composition for five minutes. In Experiment 2, participants viewed the composition of a flower put in a vase by other person, for five minutes. In Experiment 3, the participants viewed pictures for five minutes. The EEGs were measured when participants viewed flowers under the three experimental conditions and RR interval, HF components, and LF/HF components were analyzed. The hardness of shoulder muscles was measured before and after each experiment using a muscle hardness meter. A questionnaire on healing, which was developed by Nihon University College of Arts was used to assess the degree of healing after each experiment.

Results : The muscle hardness decreased significantly in Experiment 1 compared to Experiment 2 (Left shoulder : p=0.015 Right shoulder : p=0.002) and Experiment 3 (Left shoulder : p=0.019, Right shoulder : N. S.). Moreover, the HF component in Experiment 1 increased significantly compared to Experiment 3 (p<0.001). Furthermore, the total Healing Questionnaire score in Experiment 1 increased significantly compared to Experiment 3 (p<0.001).

Conclusion : Parasympathetic nervous activity was considered to be increased, the muscles of the shoulder relaxed, and participants experienced psychological healing from arranging a flower to satisfy themselves and viewing the composition.