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 Positive mental health In 1976, while many psychiatrists continued to be preoccupied with the definition of psychological illnesses (Diagnostic Statistical Manuals), Ishizuka turned to a monograph by M. Jahoda published in 1958 entitled « Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health.» Jahoda offered six conditions for developing and evaluating future models of Positive Mental Health. In doing so, she pointed out the limits of the ‘disease’ model and set guidelines to define models of health applicable both in wellness and disease. Concluding that the ‘medical’ or ‘disease model’ used in psychiatry was not fit to understand healthy human beings or to assist them in ‘normal’ or optimal functioning, Ishizuka began to build such a model. His exposure to the East, and training in the West helped him develop a model of health across different cultures. Focusing almost entirely on the experience of his diverse patients, he challenged what he knew to define a model of health and personality applicable both in extreme distress and optimal health. The three spheres: basic psychological needs and self-actualization In 1975, Dr. Ishizuka hypothesized that three basic psychological needs or spheres determine psychological health and self-actualization across cultures: the search for self, the need for intimacy, and the quest for achievement. The three spheres, also referred to as the "triad of psychological adjustment" or "tripod of happiness" are subjective, dynamic, and broad enough to encompass all psychological events. These three interconnected