Yukio Ishizuka (born June 14, 1938, in Hakodate, Japan) is a psychiatrist who grew up in Japan and graduated from Keio Medical School. He completed his internship at Jefferson Medical College Hospital in Philadelphia and his residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1969. Ishizuka was a clinical assistant Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Medical Center. In 2007, the Japanese International Medical Student Association Ishizuka founded as a medical student received the coveted Health Culture Award at the Japanese Imperial Palace. He is the author of the Japanese book, Self-Actualization and has been a full-time practicing psychiatrist in New York since 1976.
In 1969, when Ishizuka completed his residency in Boston, psychoanalysis was at its zenith in American psychiatry, with many professors having undergone psychoanalytical training. Harvard Professor David Riesman encouraged Ishizuka to undergo further training in psychoanalysis under Erich Fromm. Impressed by Fromm's initial definition of health, but questioning that psycho-analytic psychology with its emphasis on one's past was clinically effective, Ishizuka hesitated. Not convinced that undergoing seven years of psychoanalysis could help him better understand health or happiness, he left psychiatry. His French wife, Colette, who later inspired much of his work on intimacy and the role a spouse or comparable intimate partner plays in it, supported his decision to follow his intuition. In 1969 he joined McKinsey and Company, an international consulting firm, as an associate in Paris. In 1972, he left consulting to become President and Co-founder of a subsidiary of Mitsubishi International Corp for mergers and acquisitions. During his fourth year in M&A, a business colleague sought his advice on how to overcome depression. Dr. Ishizuka's rewarding experience helping his friend led him to return to the field of psychiatry in 1976. Ishizuka returned to medicine with a desire to understand what it meant to be well.
Influences
Ishizuka draws from the principles of both Zen Buddhism and quantum mechanics in his method of treatment. While the latter emphasizes the interconnectedness of the entire universe, the former believes that a solution to human suffering lies in being one with the universe. The process becoming one with the universe begins with being better related to, and experiencing a higher level of intimacy with, one's partner or wife and requires the latter's active participation.» and training in the West helped him develop a model of health across different cultures.
Ishizuka, who graduated from Keio Medical School in Tokyo, and completed his residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1969, has been a full-time practicing psychiatrist in New York since 1976. He is the author of the Japanese book, Self-Actualization.
Since 1976, Ishizuka’s main contribution has been the development of a new paradigm of health including: a full personality model that withstands the demanding criteria for mental health models set forth by Marie Jahoda a hierarchy of defense which is mobilized when one's past experience and current capability to cope are exceeded by life challenges a clinical approach that focuses on ‘closeness’ with a spouse or comparable partner for fundamental personality change the use of crisis as an opportunity to transform self, intimacy and achievement far beyond a previous best level of experience a method of therapy Lifetrack, that defines, measures and enhances well-being as the central objective clinical insights on self-actualization and fear, breakthrough intimacy, and stages of personality transformation under crisis