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Chair: Angela Joyce
Presenters: Viviane Green, Qian Wang
Angela Joyce introduced the panel and observed the great challenges inherent in adapting and transplanting descriptions of theory, method and practice from Western culture to another setting.
Viviane Green introduced her paper “The challenge of cross-cultural teaching” by noting the huge socioeconomic changes in China over the last 30 years. In a country with an ethnically uniform (91% Han) population of 1.37 billion, there are only 20,000 psychiatrists. Green reported a sense of dislocation, anxiety and anomie. These difficulties flourish in a population with large-scale internal migration, the breakdown of traditional family structures, an increase in individuality and the prevalence of only children as a result of the one-child policy from 1976 to 2016.
There are aspects of Chinese culture that may appear to be unsuitable for the development of psychotherapy. For instance, people may not be used to talking about their problems in such a family-oriented culture, especially when shame is so prevalent, and boundaries between self and other seem less structured than in the West. Moreover, the place in society of a professional offering certain defined services has not been established in Chinese society, and not been well understood. Nonetheless, there is a great need for psychological programmes. The Sino-British programme grew from 60 to 80 students to 200, by the third cohort.
The Sino-British programme is a three-year training centred on teaching how to work in the transference/countertransference, to develop competencies in working with children and adolescents. It involves two annual five-day training sessions, as well as the option of weekly mother–infant seminars over the Internet with experienced child psychotherapists/analysts. There are also weekly clinical groups. The training is recognized by the IPA Chinese Committee and several significant Chinese mental health associations. Training is conducted in E