“Ego-experience” is a subjective experience, engraved in the memory, of the awakening of the ego, and was posited by German adolescent psychologists in the early 20th century. In this study, I report on survey results for 215 respondents to a 2005 questionnaire on ego-experience, one of two I administered to students of the same girls’ school, as well as a comparison over time for 622 respondents to a 1982 questionnaire. The results showed that there was no change in the percentage of girls who recall some ego-experience, and those who recall the age of initial experience as about 10. On the other hand, some remarkable changes were observed. Particularly, fewer respondents chose experience in the “ego-consciousness” category as core experiences, suggesting that the subjective world of contemporary adolescents is characterized by less internal confrontation and dialogue. Finally, this paper examines the necessity of taking these changes into account in psychotherapy.

Changes in the social structure in Japan are leading to gradual changes in the personality of young individuals. These changes, in turn cause changes in adaptation or maladaptation, leading to the emergence of a new type of depression that is different from classical depression. Therefore, the Scale on Working Attitude Types (ScWAT) was developed in the present study, to assess the modern personality characteristics influencing on work. Scale items were developed by identifying the common features of the new type depression and the personality characteristics of young individuals in the modern Japanese society. By analyzing the data of 343 participants in their twenties, 5 subscales were extracted, and the validity and reliability of the scale were confirmed. Clear differences were observed in the personality and stress responses of individuals classified into 5 clusters using this scale. This result suggests that the ScWAT is useful to understand the personality of individuals, to aid stress management.

This research attempted to empirically investigate how individuals experience “self” and “others” according to the theory of sense of self from nonverbal aspects. In the survey, participants (N = 15) read a short story and discussed it with the researcher. All dialogs were video recorded and nonverbal behaviors of participants/the researcher in the obtained video data were coded based on analysis index. Quantified nonverbal behaviors were analyzed using moving correlation method, and time series changes of nonverbal behavioral synchronization between participants and the researcher were examined. Results revealed that in those with a high sense of self, active mutual exchange was maintained between self and others in the non-linguistic domain. Conversely, in those with a low sense of self, mutuality in the nonverbal area was weak. This result suggests the importance of nonverbal areas in considering the problems in sense of self of adults.

The present study examined the psychological characteristics of surgical patients with Graves’ diseases (GD) and papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) through the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Baum test before and after the surgery. In the pre-test [Study 1], the PTC group scored higher on “externallyoriented thinking” of the TAS-20 and drew less structured trees regarding the boundary, consistency, and inner differentiation, compared with the control group. In the post-test [Study 2], the mean score of “externally-oriented thinking” of the TAS-20 was lower, and the mean score of “difficulty identifying feelings” of the TAS-20 was higher than that of the pre-test, respectively. The trees drawn in the post-test were classified into following three clusters; “changed into a more stable structure”, “changed into a more unstable structure”, and “unchanged”. We discussed that the genuine psychotherapy is needed for those who showed more fundamental psychological changes.