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MARIAL CENTER COLLOQUIUM (Assistant professor of Anthropology, Emory University) Healing Through Rewriting Life Narratives Wednesday, March 2, 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Recovery of one’s memory is not a new therapeutic technique, and is employed in psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies. However, a Japanese therapy that did not arise through the influence of Freud also employs “digging up one’s past deeds” as the main technique of its practice. This talk will describe Naikan, a Japanese-originated therapy that focuses on the recollection of one’s past while sitting in a small screened-in space all day for seven consecutive days. Naikan, which literally means “inner-looking” or “introspection,” comes from a Japanese Mahayana Buddhist self-cultivation practice. During the one-week period, clients spend two hours at a time recalling a particular period of their life, and then report what they managed to recall to the practitioner. Over time, their narratives often undergo significant changes due to the process of introspection. By the end of the week, this sustained examination of their past life often yields powerful experiences of healing that are both psychological and physical.
Dr. Ozawa-de Silva is an assistant professor of anthropology at Emory. She received her Ph.D. in social and cultural anthropology from Oxford University in 2001. Following that, she was a visiting research fellow at Harvard's Department of Social Medicine, and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. Her academic vision is to contribute to cross-cultural understandings of health and illness, especially mental illness, and contribute to the field of medical anthropology by bringing Western and Asian (particularly Japanese and Tibetan) perspectives on the mind-body, religion, medicine, therapy, and health and illness into fruitful dialogue. At the same time, Dr. Ozawa-de Silva would like to stress a critical awareness of cultural biases in medical anthropology, and facilitate collaborative research projects on cross-cultural understandings of mental health and well-being.
DIRECTIONS TO THE MARIAL CENTER The MARIAL Center is located on the 4th floor of the main building of Emory's Briarcliff Campus, 1256 Briarcliff Road. There is ample parking close to the building. Alternatively, you may take the Emory shuttle (Route A). The Emory shuttle (Route A) provides transportation from the main campus to the MARIAL Center every 20 minutes (a 5-10 minute ride). For the shortest travel time, board the shuttle in front of the B. Jones Center or at the corner of Dowman and Fishburne (across from Glenn Memorial) at approximately 4, 24, and 44 minutes after each hour. A complete schedule and the route map are available on the web at http://www.epcs.emory.edu/AltTransp/route-a.htm Please tell the receptionist at the front window
that you are here for the
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