C Ozawa-De Silva
Biographic Data
| ID | 12338 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Ozawa-De Silva |
| GIVEN NAMES | C Ozawa |
| FAMILY NAME | De Silva |
| SIGNATURE | DE SILVA C O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3068-1938 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Anthropology of Loneliness
Loneliness is increasingly recognized as a public health crisis. In contrast to approaches that medicalize loneliness as an individual pathology, this review offers a multiscalar anthropological reframing of loneliness not as an individual psychological state, but as a social breakdown involving a deficit of the practices that establish empathy, belonging, and solidarity in collective life. Drawing from ethnography and theory, we trace the pathwa…
Cultivating empathy and compassion
This qualitative study presents an analysis of data taken from 16 participants who were interviewed during and 1 year after they attended a course in Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a meditation course that seeks to help participants cultivate empathy and compassion. The study sought to examine what benefits, if any, participants in a CBCT course reported with regard to their understanding and practice of empathy and compassion; and…
Toward an anthropology of loneliness
Loneliness, which is increasingly recognized as a public health concern, is not just a matter of individual psychology or cognition, but inherently social, cultural, and relational. It is an affective, subjective, and intersubjective reality, distinct from the physical reality of social isolation. This introduction to the thematic issues of Transcultural Psychiatry argues that the social and cultural nature of loneliness is an important area of s…
In the eyes of others
In recent years, loneliness has become widely recognized as a public health issue that impacts negatively both on physical and on psychological health, even increasing the risk of mortality. This article focuses on the relationships between social connection, loneliness, and meaning in life that emerged from a study of suicide website visitors and interviews with Japanese college students. It poses three questions: (1) Is the need to be needed an…
Mindfulness of the kindness of others
Mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition involves a variety of practices, and contemporary secular forms of mindfulness practices, therapies, and interventions can similarly be broadened to include more of these forms. The Japanese practice of Naikan takes one mindfulness practice from the Buddhist tradition-that of recollecting the kindness of others-and asks clients to engage in this practice for 1 solid week, 15 hours per day. Difficult interpers…
Shared Death
Existing models for understanding suicide fail to account for the distinctiveness of Internet group suicide, a recent phenomenon in Japan. Drawing from an ethnography of Internet suicide websites, two social commentaries in Japanese popular culture, and the work of developmental psychologist Philippe Rochat, I argue that participation in Internet suicide forums and even the act of Internet group suicide result from both a need for social connecte…
Secularizing Religious Practices
Adapted from a Shin Buddhist style of meditation, Naikan (“inner-looking”) is a week-long contemplative practice that involves reviewing one's life from the perspectives of others and has been called an indigenous Japanese psychotherapy due to its effectiveness in treating a variety of disorders. Data collected during an extended ethnographic study of Naikan in both Japan and Austria reveal that Naikan, a “secularized” practice that removes overt…
Too Lonely to Die Alone
Demystifying Japanese Therapy
Naikan has been viewed as a culturally specific therapy aimed at resocializing clients into conservative Japanese social norms. The Ajase complex is used to support this view by illustrating specifically Japanese therapeutic needs arising from the Japanese mother-child dynamic. Based on ethnographic work conducted in Japan and Austria from 1997 to 2003, this article traces the logic of this conservative view and the challenges posed to it by Naik…
Beyond the Body/Mind? Japanese Contemporary Thinkers on Alternative Sociologies of the Body
Western sociology of the body, despite its attempt to create a somatic approach to human existence, inevitably shares many of the rationalistic and Cartesian assumptions of wider Western sociology. A contrasting, and in many ways radically different approach is that found in both classical and contemporary Japanese thought. In this article two major contemporary Japanese theorists of the body - Ichikawa Hiroshi and Yuasa Yasuo - are introduced an…
Toward an anthropology of loneliness
Loneliness, which is increasingly recognized as a public health concern, is not just a matter of individual psychology or cognition, but inherently social, cultural, and relational. It is an affective, subjective, and intersubjective reality, distinct from the physical reality of social isolation. This introduction to the thematic issues of Transcultural Psychiatry argues that the social and cultural nature of loneliness is an important area of s…
Beyond the Body/Mind? Japanese Contemporary Thinkers on Alternative Sociologies of the Body
Western sociology of the body, despite its attempt to create a somatic approach to human existence, inevitably shares many of the rationalistic and Cartesian assumptions of wider Western sociology. A contrasting, and in many ways radically different approach is that found in both classical and contemporary Japanese thought. In this article two major contemporary Japanese theorists of the body - Ichikawa Hiroshi and Yuasa Yasuo - are introduced an…
Demystifying Japanese Therapy
Naikan has been viewed as a culturally specific therapy aimed at resocializing clients into conservative Japanese social norms. The Ajase complex is used to support this view by illustrating specifically Japanese therapeutic needs arising from the Japanese mother-child dynamic. Based on ethnographic work conducted in Japan and Austria from 1997 to 2003, this article traces the logic of this conservative view and the challenges posed to it by Naik…
Shared Death
Existing models for understanding suicide fail to account for the distinctiveness of Internet group suicide, a recent phenomenon in Japan. Drawing from an ethnography of Internet suicide websites, two social commentaries in Japanese popular culture, and the work of developmental psychologist Philippe Rochat, I argue that participation in Internet suicide forums and even the act of Internet group suicide result from both a need for social connecte…
In the eyes of others
In recent years, loneliness has become widely recognized as a public health issue that impacts negatively both on physical and on psychological health, even increasing the risk of mortality. This article focuses on the relationships between social connection, loneliness, and meaning in life that emerged from a study of suicide website visitors and interviews with Japanese college students. It poses three questions: (1) Is the need to be needed an…
Secularizing Religious Practices
Adapted from a Shin Buddhist style of meditation, Naikan (“inner-looking”) is a week-long contemplative practice that involves reviewing one's life from the perspectives of others and has been called an indigenous Japanese psychotherapy due to its effectiveness in treating a variety of disorders. Data collected during an extended ethnographic study of Naikan in both Japan and Austria reveal that Naikan, a “secularized” practice that removes overt…
Mindfulness of the kindness of others
Mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition involves a variety of practices, and contemporary secular forms of mindfulness practices, therapies, and interventions can similarly be broadened to include more of these forms. The Japanese practice of Naikan takes one mindfulness practice from the Buddhist tradition-that of recollecting the kindness of others-and asks clients to engage in this practice for 1 solid week, 15 hours per day. Difficult interpers…
Beyond the Body/Mind? Japanese Contemporary Thinkers on Alternative Sociologies of the Body
Western sociology of the body, despite its attempt to create a somatic approach to human existence, inevitably shares many of the rationalistic and Cartesian assumptions of wider Western sociology. A contrasting, and in many ways radically different approach is that found in both classical and contemporary Japanese thought. In this article two major contemporary Japanese theorists of the body - Ichikawa Hiroshi and Yuasa Yasuo - are introduced an…
Demystifying Japanese Therapy
Naikan has been viewed as a culturally specific therapy aimed at resocializing clients into conservative Japanese social norms. The Ajase complex is used to support this view by illustrating specifically Japanese therapeutic needs arising from the Japanese mother-child dynamic. Based on ethnographic work conducted in Japan and Austria from 1997 to 2003, this article traces the logic of this conservative view and the challenges posed to it by Naik…
Too Lonely to Die Alone
Shared Death
Existing models for understanding suicide fail to account for the distinctiveness of Internet group suicide, a recent phenomenon in Japan. Drawing from an ethnography of Internet suicide websites, two social commentaries in Japanese popular culture, and the work of developmental psychologist Philippe Rochat, I argue that participation in Internet suicide forums and even the act of Internet group suicide result from both a need for social connecte…
Secularizing Religious Practices
Adapted from a Shin Buddhist style of meditation, Naikan (“inner-looking”) is a week-long contemplative practice that involves reviewing one's life from the perspectives of others and has been called an indigenous Japanese psychotherapy due to its effectiveness in treating a variety of disorders. Data collected during an extended ethnographic study of Naikan in both Japan and Austria reveal that Naikan, a “secularized” practice that removes overt…
Mindfulness of the kindness of others
Mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition involves a variety of practices, and contemporary secular forms of mindfulness practices, therapies, and interventions can similarly be broadened to include more of these forms. The Japanese practice of Naikan takes one mindfulness practice from the Buddhist tradition-that of recollecting the kindness of others-and asks clients to engage in this practice for 1 solid week, 15 hours per day. Difficult interpers…
Toward an anthropology of loneliness
Loneliness, which is increasingly recognized as a public health concern, is not just a matter of individual psychology or cognition, but inherently social, cultural, and relational. It is an affective, subjective, and intersubjective reality, distinct from the physical reality of social isolation. This introduction to the thematic issues of Transcultural Psychiatry argues that the social and cultural nature of loneliness is an important area of s…
In the eyes of others
In recent years, loneliness has become widely recognized as a public health issue that impacts negatively both on physical and on psychological health, even increasing the risk of mortality. This article focuses on the relationships between social connection, loneliness, and meaning in life that emerged from a study of suicide website visitors and interviews with Japanese college students. It poses three questions: (1) Is the need to be needed an…
Cultivating empathy and compassion
This qualitative study presents an analysis of data taken from 16 participants who were interviewed during and 1 year after they attended a course in Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a meditation course that seeks to help participants cultivate empathy and compassion. The study sought to examine what benefits, if any, participants in a CBCT course reported with regard to their understanding and practice of empathy and compassion; and…
The Anthropology of Loneliness
Loneliness is increasingly recognized as a public health crisis. In contrast to approaches that medicalize loneliness as an individual pathology, this review offers a multiscalar anthropological reframing of loneliness not as an individual psychological state, but as a social breakdown involving a deficit of the practices that establish empathy, belonging, and solidarity in collective life. Drawing from ethnography and theory, we trace the pathwa…
Psychology (9 works) · Psychotherapist (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Anthropology (3 works)