Discussion of “The Korean Personality” by Educational Psychologist Yoon Tae-rim’s and The Light and Shadow of American Psychoanalysis

During the 1950s and 1960s, the principles of guidance and the school counseling system were introduced as part of the institutionalization of psychoanalysis in education. Yoon Tae-rim, an educational psychologist and professor at Seoul National University’s College of Education, was one of the counseling movement’s leading proponents. The movement sought to apply psychological concepts, including psychoanalysis, to contemporary education. Yoon aligned with ideologists of juvenile delinquency who, in the 1950s, advocated punishing the likelihood of problematic behavior. In his 1964 book, Yoon employed modernist claims from Japanese Oriental studies and Western psychoanalytic arguments to analyze “the Korean personality.” The argument centered on a negative interpretation of Korean traditions and character, particularly Confucianism. According to the linear developmental stage framework of psychoanalytic logic, the argument posited that Koreans were collectively in a state of “retardation.” This reflected the racism and imperialist perspective inherent in American psychoanalysis.