Originally Posted by
Keigo Okinogi, "Psychoanalysis in Japan", in Akhtar, S. (ed.), Freud and the Far East: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the People and Culture of China, Japan, and Korea, 2009
The Story of Ajase and His Mother: Heisaku Kosawa’s Version
The Ajase complex is an original theory developed by Heisaku Kosawa and subsequently expanded by myself. Whereas Freud based his Oedipus complex on a Greek tragedy, Kosawa developed his theory of the Ajase complex from stories found in Buddhist scripture. The story of Ajase centers on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation.
Well known to the Buddhist world, Ajase’s story appears with many variations in the scriptures of ancient India. These scriptures entered Japan by way of China and Korea from approximately 700–1000 AD. Kosawa modeled his theory on the version of Ajase’s story appearing in the Kanmuryojukyo, a Buddhist scripture centering on the salvation of the mother. In this instance, the woman saved by the Buddha is Ajase’s mother, Idaike.
Wife of King Bimbasara, the ruler of an ancient Indian kingdom, Idaike feared that as her beauty faded she was losing her husband’s love. She consulted a soothsayer, who told her a sage living in the forest would die in three years’ time, to be reborn as her son. However, Idaike was too anxious to wait three years, and, desperate to have a child, she killed the sage. As he was dying, the sage cursed Idaike, telling her that, reincarnated as her son, he would one day kill the king. Idaike became pregnant at this moment. The unborn Ajase had thus already been murdered by his mother’s egotism. Moreover, fearing the wrath of the sage reincarnated in her womb, Idaike attempted to kill her son by giving birth to him from the summit of a high tower. Ajase survived; however, having broken his little finger as a result of his fall, he was nicknamed “the prince with the broken finger.”
Ajase passed a happy childhood. However, on reaching adolescence, he learned from Daibadatta, the enemy of Buddha, that his mother had attempted to kill him by giving birth from the top of a high tower; he had only to look at his broken little finger for proof. The Sanskrit word Ajatasatru means both “broken finger” and “prenatal rancor” (a term to be discussed below). Disillusioned with the mother he had idealized, Ajase attempted to kill her. He was subsequently overcome by guilt, however, and developed a severe skin disease, characterized by festering sores so offensive that no one dared approach him, except for his mother, Idaike. Despite his mother’s devoted care, Ajase did not readily recover; he even attempted several times to kill her. Seeking relief, Idaike went to the Buddha and told him of her sufferings. The Buddha’s teachings healed her inner conflict, and she returned to continue to care for Ajase. Eventually, the prince was cured to become a widely respected ruler. This is the version of the Ajase story Kosawa wrote in the 1950s, based on the Kanmuryojukuo.
Themes of the Ajase Complex
My own research has identified two fundamental aspects of the Ajase story as presented by Kosawa. I will also present, as a third point, Kosawa’s own examination of guilt in the Ajase complex.
The Mother’s Conflict Between the Wish for a Child and Infanticidal Wishes.
Queen Idaike wished to have a child in order to protect her status as queen and maintain her husband’s love—she took the extreme action of killing the sage to achieve her desires. However, believing that the birth of the reincarnated sage would bring disastrous results, Idaike began to fear the child in her womb. She then attempted to kill her child by giving birth to him from the top of a high tower.
The story of Ajase illustrates two conflicting emotions on the part of the mother. On the one hand, she wishes to have a child in order to protect herself and to achieve her own desires. On the other hand, projecting persecutory imagery and hatred onto her baby, she becomes fearful of the child’s birth and attempts to kill him.
According to Serge Lebovici, such conflict depicts the mother’s ambivalence concerning her bébé imaginaire. The egocentric conflict of the mother—her wishes both to have a child and to eliminate her baby—arouses persecutory anxiety through projection onto the child she carries. This unconscious maternal conflict appears clearly in the Ajase story.
The Child’s Prenatal Rancor and Matricidal Wishes.
Ajase experienced rage toward his origins from the moment of conception. As a reincarnation of the murdered sage, that is, he desired to kill his mother even before his
birth. In Buddhism, this anger experienced toward birth itself is termed mishooon, or prenatal rancor. Kosawa compared the Oedipus complex and the Ajase complex as follows:
"Freud’s Oedipus complex originates in a conflict involving the libido, with the son’s love for his mother and hatred for his father. The Ajase complex, on the other hand, concerns the more fundamental question of birth or origins."
Kosawa further contended that whereas incestuous desire and patricide formed the core of the Oedipus complex, the Ajase complex centered on the themes of matricide and prenatal resentment.
Two Types of Guilt and the Mother’s Forgiveness.
The paper Kosawa originally submitted to Freud concerning the Ajase complex bore the title “Two Types of Guilt.” (“The Ajase Complex” was a subtitle.) In this paper, Kosawa
asserted the following: When a child makes a mistake or does something wrong, he or she first experiences guilt as a fear of punishment. However, human beings have another sense of guilt, which is of a higher dimension than mere fear of punishment. This second type of guilt is experienced when the child who fears punishment is forgiven his or her wrongdoing.
In terms of the Buddhist legend, Ajase suffered feelings of guilt when confronted by a minister with his desire to kill his mother. Shocked at his own contemplated matricide, he began to shake and became deathly ill. Idaike, however, forgave her son and nursed him devotedly. Under his mother’s care, Ajase experienced a more profound sense of guilt, one of heartfelt remorse.
Kosawa termed this guilt resulting from forgiveness zangeshin or “repentance.” He emphasized the need to differentiate between repentance and the guilt related to punishment. This “repentance”-type guilt compares with Klein’s depressive/reparative guilt. The Ajase story may thus be viewed as depicting the transition from a punitive to a reparative type of guilt. (Kosawa may in fact have read Klein’s The Psycho-Analysis of Children before writing his thesis.)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
