Editor's Introduction

From Richard Wu's cover painting, The Monk Scholar, to the closing of this issue with the announcement of the Freud Museum London's online exhibition, “Freud and China”, this second issue of volume four is full of wonderful articles and images. It has been my personal pleasure to read these articles describing and derived from some of the premier training programmes, as our colleagues from China and the West have collaborated to bring the best in psychoanalytic experience to Chinese therapists and students.

The issue begins with two lead articles. First, Wang Huan, a Jungian analytic candidate in London and author of a new book we have previously reviewed, introduces her study of the classic Chinese opera, The Peony Pavilion. Her landmark contribution on applied psychoanalysis combines art and analytic thought in a way that is then picked up elsewhere in this issue. Then Liu Zixiao, Pan Dandan, and Ju Fei present their research on the psychological roots and modes of transmission of rumours during epidemics, an article of extraordinary timeliness in this time of Covid-19.

We then present the informative articles that are the main feature of this second issue on analytic training in China. First, we have an article on training in child and adolescent therapy by Viviane Green, a UK child therapist, established with the collaboration of Wang Qian, a senior analyst at Beijing's Andang Hospital. Vivienne Elton follows with a wholly original article about work with babies in an orphanage conducted by a Chinese therapist whom Elton supervised and mentored. This article is groundbreaking in its use of the techniques of infant observation to intervene with these parentless babies.

Next Alf Gerlach, who founded and chairs the Sino-German training programme, one of the earliest to introduce analytic therapy and also family systems and cognitive behavioural therapy to China, describes the evolution and impact of the programme held through the auspices of the Shanghai Mental Health