A female with gambling dependency who did Intensive Naikan twice has shown improvement for three years due to the disappearance of her original feeling of lack of love. Naikan therapy is performed by a standard therapeutic technique in almost all patients irrespective of symptoms or behavioral problems. It can achieve wide and radical correction of perceptions. In Naikan therapy, the patient's behavior toward others is repeatedly examined objectively from three aspects (what others did for them, what they did in return, and troubles they caused). The discovery of true love and healthy guilt can be attained. The self-image and the image of others are revised to realistic and adaptable perceptions.

  In this patient, with the deepening of Naikan, her perception seems to have corrected itself to self-affirmation and affirmation of others. This correction may have changed her values, resulting in inhibition and disappearance of meaningless and valueless behavior, and incorporation of more meaningful, valuable behavior.

  Language permeates every sphere of the culture in which the language is spoken. It affects the ways of thinking of the people who speak the language. Naikan emerged from a distinctive Japanese cultural background. It should not be separated from Japanese mores and values although it has proved a decisive influence on non-Japanese speakers. In this paper, I'd like to explore the relation between the Japanese language and Naikan as an indigenous Japanese psychotherapy. First I will portray some characteristics of the Japanese language, contrasting them with English. Then I will make an outline of the specific Japanese word "saseteitadaku," which has no counterpart in English. "Saseteitadaku" may be the embodiment of the Japanese mores and values and also of the Japanese cultural-bound aspects of Naikan. This is a small step toward clarifying the differences between the Japanese cultural-bound aspects and the more universal aspects of Naikan. I hope this attempt will lead to a clearer vision of the essence of Naikan's cross-cultural aspects, those aspects that may be applicable to people from non-Japanese cultural backgrounds.

  In Naikan therapy, there is no explicit therapist-patient relationship as in psychoanalysis. However, there is a kind of therapeutic resistance between therapist and patient in Naikan. This resistance appears in the therapeutic execution concerning the three Naikan themes. The therapeutic resistance in Naikan therapy depends on whether a Naikan therapist can share in the attitude to stand in another's shoes with the patient, or whether the patient performs his/her task to meet the expectation of the therapist. If a Naikan therapist cannot realize the above-mentioned phenomena, he fails to understand adequately the therapeutic dynamics of guilt in Naikan therapy. Moreover, he fails to grasp the real function of the three Naikan themes. To realize the above-mentioned therapeutic interactions helps a Naikan therapist to succeed in mutual understanding between Naikan therapy and other psychotherapies

  Journal Naikan to be done in daily life is one of the important forms of popular Naikan because Intensive Naikan must be performed for one week in seclusion. However, there is much psychological research yet to be done on the effects of Journal Naikan.

Here is a report on three aspects: (1) How much personality change does it bring? (2) Does it provide the same efficacy with two months' sustained practice as Intensive Naikan? (3) How does it compare with the results of two former studies showing that. Intensive Naikan resulted in two years and one-to-four years of Naikan thinking and quality of life?

  Methods and results: Forty-three university students majoring in psychology were divided into two groups. The Naikan group (n＝18) experienced Journal Naikan for two months and the other group (n＝25) experienced no Naikan during the same period. Both groups were given the YG personality test before and after that period. As a result, positive personality changes were revealed by the YG test. The quantitative and qualitative effects of Naikan were as marked in the Journal Naikan group as in the Intensive Naikan group. A followup survey (n＝9) showed continued effects after three years.

  Conclusions: Journal Naikan can be said to have the possibility of similar qualitative and quantitative efficacy of Intensive Naikan, but perhaps to a lesser degree.

  The Naikan method was employed in the course of psychiatric nursing education. Students submitted reports after two months of journal Naikan. Analysis of their reports revealed that they reviewed their relationship with others, practiced humble self-insight, and re-experienced love. Results of additional questionnaire surveys demonstrated changes in the following categories: "sense of being reviewed and anthropophobia" in the self-esteem scale, "self-trust" in the trust scale, the total score and "depression" in the Yatabe-Guilford personality inventory, and "role-taking self" in the self-acceptance scale. In particular, students who expressed "emotional change" in their reports after Journal Naikan were found to show such tendencies to a higher degree. The above results suggested that, in basic nursing education, Journal Naikan is effective for developing students' emotions to facilitate their self-understanding and the empathetic understanding of patients.