Yukio Ishizuka

Who is Yukio Ishizuka?

Yukio Ishizuka 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.