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《神州交流》Chinese Cross Currents
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Foreword:
Psychoanalysis and Psychology
in China
Vol. 3, No. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2006
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Although Sigmund Freud’s surname transliterated in Chinese is written using the same characters as Floyd (as in Pink Floyd), a simple search of Fuluoyide on Dangdang.com, China’s biggest online bookstore, returns some 437 results; and if we exclude the musical items, most of the books and journals listed are by, about, or related to the father of psychoanalysis. Introduced in the 1910s, Freudian ideas have had quite an impact in China, only for more than a quarter of a century to be denounced and dismissed as petty bourgeois decadence. As a sign of the times that requires no real effort in interpretation, China demonstrably celebrated Freud’s 150th birthday in 2006, up to the point of having the portrait of the good Viennese Doctor making the cover and being the subject of the featured dossier of the May 15th edition of China Newsweek (Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan), one of the most influential Chinese current affairs weeklies.
While, among the Chinese intelligentsia, Freud’s legacy is often acknowledged, especially among fiction writers, it is also widely established that psychology in China is far more under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon schools of behaviourism and cognitivism. Some say that the lack of success of Freud’s and his continuators’ ideas have to do with Chinese culture being unable to make room for an over-emphasis on dreams and sex. Others just blame “pragmatism”: people in China do not have the money and/or the time to enter into a proper course of psychotherapy. Some others believe that it is just a question of time and opportunity, and that more pressing needs—along with the process of surmounting the stigma that mental illness often represents—will ultimately allow Freud’s understanding of the human psyche to become more mainstream.
The fast-paced modernisation experienced by China during the past twenty-five years has brought in its wake all the far-reaching and disturbing effects produced by a new environment, full of uncertainties, that has developed on a foundation of unresolved traumatic memories. Yet, the growing demand for psychological counselling is today hardly met. Facilities are scarce, and mental health professionals in short supply. Recent reports put the number of psychiatrists and psychologists in China at just 14,000—about the same number as France, with a total population of 60 million compared to China’s 1.3 billion. In any case, with a fee per hour of psychotherapy ranging from 200 to 500 yuan, only a small portion of the well-off Chinese will ever go to a therapist. But mental disorders include a wide range of illnesses: anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, etc., and also depression, which is the most common. Depression is often seen as one of the main causes of suicide.
More than 250,000 Chinese commit suicide each year, with mortality rates especially high among young rural women. Suicide is today the fifth most frequent cause of death in China and the leading cause of death in young adults aged 15-34, according to recent World Health Organisation figures. Of the more than two million patients going to hospital for injuries caused by a suicide attempt, only 10% have previously been monitored by a mental health worker. Furthermore, a study conducted by the Beijing-based Suicide Prevention and Research Centre, using psychological assessments of 659 cases where people received emergency treatment for serious but failed suicide attempts, shows that depression and symptoms of chronic or acute stress are predictors of suicide in 63% of these cases—against 90% in similar studies conducted in other countries. This illustrates the blatant discrepancy between the need and the availability of professional help.
We have tried in our special dossier to illustrate some aspects of the difficult journey of Freud’s ideas in China, especially in relation to acculturation. Summing up all the challenges that cultural accommodation of groundbreaking ideas entails, Geoffrey Blowers presents a meticulous study of amendments proposed in the 1920s and early 1930s by scholars from the East to the supposedly universal Freudian Œdipus Complex. Kay Chang, Gertina van Schalkwyk and Emilie Tran propose an assessment of the first years of the training of psychology majors at the University of Macau, and how it can help foster psychological mindfulness in the territory. Ma Yuanlong reflects upon the long lasting influence of Jacques Lacan, one of Freud’s most important continuators, on contemporary philosophy. Finally, for Zeng Yuan, of the influence of Freud on Chinese literature there is no doubt, and this can best be illustrated in Can Xue’s latest novel, Five-Flavour Street.
In the Features section, Sélim Abou offers a poignant plea of how and why Lebanon’s present tragedy should mobilise world opinion. On the lighter side, Michael Saso, again showing that a wise man can accomplish anything if he does not force things, proposes his own slightly humorous take on the workings of knowledge transmission in different Daoist traditions.
Through its very variety, this issue shows once more that nothing in this world can be completely foreign to us.
Eric Sautedé, Chief Editor |
