Scriversi dentro. La psicoterapia spirituale del Naikan

Naikan (jp. “introspection”) is a 20th–century Japanese form of psychotherapy with Shin Buddhist roots that is explicitly focused on the systematic, loosely chronological reflection on, and narration of, one’s life and relations with others. As such, it can be read as a form of spiritual autobiography — “spiritual” because it is neither fully religious nor secular, and “autobiographical” because, even though nothing is actually written down, a form of interior (re–)writing can be seen as lying at the core of it. Naikan will here be analysed in its standard, week–long intensive form, moving outward from its essential ideal components — the themes that frame the narration itself — to its social and material environment, that is, the practitioner’s relationship with the Naikan guide, with the centre, with other practitioners and with the traces of her or his own practice. The aim, beside describing an interesting case of autobiography as a practice and discourse more than as text, is that of showing how many different elements and aspects on different levels can aesthetically converge, “rhyme” and therefore cooperate or complement each other in order to form one singular transformative experience.