Learning by Teaching Psychotherapy in China

Of China's 1.3 billion people, about one-third are middle class with access to education and opportunity. That 400 million people is a larger population than the whole of any Western country. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, ancient traditions that form the background of Chinese cultural life, were submerged in the nihilism imposed from the time of communist assent in 1949, and in the destruction of learning and professionalism imposed by the Cultural Revolution that began in 1964. China remains largely a non-religious society, organized by a practicality in which everything is possible — except dissent or resistance to the government.

In China, from about 1920 until 1949, there was widespread reception of psychoanalytic ideas in philosophy, literature and the social sciences. Freud was translated into Chinese, and analysis was even regarded as a weapon in the struggle against Confucian ethics. Then Freud and analysis were banned during communist rule. But, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s, a psychodynamic culture began. Psychoanalysis was first of interest in the academy, but has spread back into mental health. Psychotherapy until recently consisted of corrective group exhortation rather than probing the unconscious or even applying behavioral techniques. Introduction of psychoanalysis began with the education of a group of psychoanalytically oriented therapists abroad, and expanded in recent years through shared efforts to introduce more sophisticated psychotherapy of all stripes into China. These projects have been led primarily by German and Norwegian cultural initiatives, followed lately by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and other American projects. Freud has been given new translations, and other Western analytic texts are also being translated. (Four books by myself and Jill Scharff is currently in the process of translation in Beijing.) Now a vigorous program to develop a psychodynamic culture supports ongoing train