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"The Prohibition of Don't Look" is a psychoanalytic concept conceived in Japan, exemplified through myths, folk tales and clinical work, by Osamu Kitayama in 1985. This Prohibition proclaims a situation of being forbidden to see the separation-individuation process by the dependant person in a love-relationship, for example the son in the mother-son relationship. This may in later years create a complex love-relationship for the son vis-à-vis his love-object which maybe personified with guilt; and may also problematise the primary caretaker, i.e. the mother, through its mechanism of masochism in the mother. This paper examines the Prohibition of Don't Look in some of the Japanese folk tales and myths, while at the same time explores the application of the Prohibition in the Hindous context, deriving material from the clinical and the cultural contexts of India. Simultaneously it attempts to examine western and universal cross-cultural reflections on such related aspects revolving around shame, guilt and masochism, and its deeper psychological repercussions in the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]