[A transcultural study of Taijin-kyofu and social phobia--differences of experiences of eye communication between Japanese and German patients].

The transcultural psychiatry of "Taijin-kyofu" methodologically involves two problems. (1) Field-work regarding western social anxiety has not been sufficiently carried out by Japanese researchers. (2) Most attention has been paid to partial-phenomenal differences rather than to a general-essential difference between western social phobia and Japanese "Taijin-kyofu". Taking account of these problems, we presented four German cases of social phobia and compared their experiences of making eye contact with those of "Taijin-kyofu" patients. This approach revealed a general-essential difference between the Japanese logic of "Becoming" and the western logic of "Doing". By examining the cultural backgrounds of this difference, it was suggested that not only the nominative subject who does something in the actual mode but also the dative subject to whom a becoming process appears in the middle mode should be more closely studied.