Untamed Jianghu or Emerging Profession: Diagnosing the Psycho-Boom amid China's Mental Health Legislation

End of an era or a moment of reshuffling: fragmentation of entry-level training in China's psycho-boom

This article examines the fragmentation of entry-level training in China's psycho-boom since the state terminated its certification for psychological counsellors in 2017. Initially, the policy change was perceived as the end of an era marked by rapid yet disorderly development. The stringent state regulation that many people anticipated, however, did not occur. The certification's ending turned out to be a moment of reshuffling that gave existing key players - including the Registry System under the Chinese Psychological Society, other quasi-official organizations and their partners in the training industry, and digital start-up companies - a new chance to vie for growth and dominance in the space it left behind. The heat of the psycho-boom continues, as do the chaos and struggles within it.

Figures of the Psychotherapist in Contemporary Chinese Literature

Since the 1980s, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have attracted great interest in Chinese society, and in parallel, the psychotherapist as a character has emerged in Chinese literature. Through four novels by three Chinese authors, namely, Xu Xiaobin 徐小斌, Ke Yunlu 柯云路, and Bi Shumin 毕淑敏, this article studies the evolution of the image of the psychotherapist in contemporary Chinese literature, which reflects the reception of psychoanalysis as well as the development of psychotherapy in China. In Xu Xiaobin’s novel, two psychology students attempt to cure a psychotic patient through “transference therapy” based on a complete misunderstanding of the notion; Ke Yunlu features a “life counselor” who, like typical good counselors in Chinese classical novels, simply gives advice without caring about the patients’ needs and desires; and the two novels by Bi Shumin show a significant change in the writer’s understanding of the profession and therapeutic methods, as well as the current, unregulated situation of psychotherapy in China.

A brief review of applied psychology in China

Psychology in China has a long past, but a rather short history. Modern psychology was introduced to China in the early 20th century soon, psychology as a scientific discipline was established when the teaching, research, and academic exchanges began. Specifically, applied psychology was established until the last decade of the 20th century; however, the past 30 years have witnessed the fast growth of applied psychology in China. In this article, we briefly introduce the history of psychology in China, its establishment as a discipline and a profession, and present some applications of psychology in the domains of public mental health as well as in educational and organizational settings.

You Are the Future: Embodied History in China's Psy-boom

Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. They all work in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. China is in the midst of what scholars call the "psy-boom." This is generally defined as the rapid rise in psychological services in the country. Rather than understanding this rise as a linear phenomenon or one in which the understanding of psychology and its uses are universally shared by all practitioners, these three therapists show how haphazard and staggered the uptake in psychological services has been. They also show how the different historical contexts and shifting qualification standards that defined their generation of the psy-boom in turn shaped their therapeutic practice. The study uses Bourdieu's concept of the habitus to show how the embodied history of China's psy-boom impacts the practice of counselling and understanding of psychology.

When the Ghosts Live in the Nursery: Postpartum Depression and the Grandmother-Mother-Baby Triad in Luzhou, China

In Luzhou, China, where grandmothers often serve as primary caregivers for infants, the past and the future haunt new mothers suffering from postpartum depression. In this article, I draw upon longitudinal interviews conducted with ten families in Luzhou as part of a larger multi-sited ethnography of postpartum depression and anxiety. I argue that the grandmother-mother-baby triad model of infant care in interior urban China accentuates the pain of depressed postpartum mothers by making it difficult for them to rid their homes of the ghosts of past trauma and lost futures. Mothers resent and fear grandmothers even as they rely on them to care for their babies. Memories of trauma, perceived displacement by the grandmother as the mother figure for their babies, and lack of control over their households and children characterize postpartum mothers' experiences. Mothers primarily blame their mothers-in-law for their unhappiness even as they depend on themselves to "self-adjust."