On the field, Americans in all likelihood benefit from this fixation. American's ability to be openly aggressive with little or no conflicts about it, allows them to focus, score and win with little guilt or anxiety. The Japanese, with their group orientation and patriarchal societal structure, may be encumbered regarding their ability to compete and be aggressive. We will see later in this paper, that the ability to win has some negative and some positive consequences. When we discuss self issues and winning, we introduce concepts such as independence, boundary establishment and self esteem.
Independence is a basic concept in American psychology.
The establishment of the self occurs around age 4 and consists of successfully separating from the mother in order to establish an individuated and independent safe. Trouble in development produces what we call narcissism or borderline disorders. People with poor self definition and problems with dependency are considered narcissistic. Many professional athletes in America are considered narcissists, extremely dependent upon crowds to fuel an empty inner self. For our purposes, we want to attempt to make some cross cultural statements about narcissism in Japan and America's athletes, and connect this with the ability to win.