Editor's Introduction to “Local Beliefs and Mental Illness” by Mao Zhikang

Mao Zhikang's article, which follows “local beliefs and mental illness”, is written from an exclusively psychiatric point of view, without considering the psychodynamic and psychotherapeutic potential of understanding more of his patient's situation and symptomatic presentation, and without consideration of the use of these perspectives to relate his disorder to cultural influences.

Nevertheless, we decided to publish his contribution because it offers something quite different that is of value to the psychodynamic therapist: a reading of the intersection of psychiatric diagnosis with the cultural influence of primitive religious and spiritual beliefs, in the case of this patient, the folklore of the Northeast area of China. So, while it does not represent a psychodynamic point of view, and the treatment of this patient was exclusively medical without any attempt at psychodynamic understanding of the unconscious meaning of the patient's symptomatology, or of the intersection of the cultural issues with the symptomatic or general personality organisation of the patient.

We can understand that in patients who develop severe mental illness, psychodynamic treatment alone may not be sufficient and indeed the patient did show some improvement with the medical treatments of electroconvulsive therapy and psychotropic medication.

There are already studies of the intersection of cultural mores and myths in China that result in idiosyncratic symptomatology. One such important study by Gerlach (2014) described the symptomatic appearance of koro or castration fear associated with local belief in the fox demon representing female aggression.

The importance of this article is that it represents a kind of practice that is more common in China than psychodynamic psychotherapy. For that reason many patients, when they do come to dynamic psychotherapists, have first been treated in a similar medical way. In addition, it is notable that in this case the writer is extremely sensitive to the