Shoma Morita is a renowned Japanese psychiatrist who developed an original psychotherapy called “Morita Therapy” in the early part of the 20th century. His real first name was “Masatake”, but people began to call him “Shoma” and as he also used his nickname “Shoma” whenever he signed his name in English, his nickname has become more popular. Shoma was born in 1874 as the eldest son of the Morita family in the southern part of Japan. His father was a carpenter who was quite strict in discipline whereas his mother was quite soft on Shoma and spoiled him. As a result, Shoma grew very attached to his mother, just like Freud did. Shoma is said to be full of curiosity but was also nervous. When he was little, he had exhibited all kinds of problems, ranging from insomnia, enuresis (until he was quite older), truancy, and failing at school. These symptoms may have been a result of somewhat distorted relationship with his parents. One of the episodes that was quite famous about Shoma is that when he was around 9 or 10 years old, he saw a colorful painting of hell at a Buddhist temple. After he saw this painting, he became fearful of death and suffered from nightmares. Shoma is said to have suffered from neurasthenia (neurosis or anxiety disorders) since his childhood.

Shoma entered the Tokyo Imperial University Medical school in 1899 when he was 25. Another famous episode of Shoma around this time was that when his father was late in sending his tuition payments for him, he became frustrated and angry toward his father. He had also been suffering from anxiety and had had difficulty concentrating for his studies. With all that, he felt that he did not care about anything and was thinking of flunking and remaining in the same grade for another year. With the encouragement from his friend, however, he studied hard despite his neurotic symptoms and did well on his final exams. It is then that he realized his symptoms had disappeared. This experience is said to have played a key role in his later development of Morita therapy. Since his graduation from the Medical school in 1902, he had actively  engaged in the treatment of neurasthenia (neurosis), from which himself suffered. During that time, there were no effective treatment for neurasthenia. Shoma made trials and errors until he got an inspiration from his experience of having one of his acquaintances who suffered from neurotic symptoms stayed at his own home.His acquaintance got better and his symptoms were gone after about a month, living a healthy structured life at Morita's home. Morita was having a hard time naming his method. Morita initially called it "home therapy", "natural therapy", or  "personal experience therapy"and when one of  his disciples asked him "how about Awareness therapy?",  Morita replied, "That's interesting. Make sure you document that you came up with the name". It was later named "Morita therapy" when a German Medical Journal featured his approach in 1937 and the name "Morita therapy" has been used since then. Morita served as a professor of Jikei University School of Medicine from 1925 to 1937. He became a professor emeritus since then.

Morita is known to have a strong will to live. He cried at his death bed, saying "I still have a lot of work to do". He threw a get well party whenever his illness got a little better in order to galvanize himself . He told his followers, "I am still desperate to live, so don't treat me as if I won't make it". Shoma Morita is indeed a well respected , charming person, who had committed to living his full potential.