http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/10/meet-dr-freud
These days, the Chinese are increasingly willing to pay to talk. Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and China specialist, said, "This is radically distinctive from the past." As he sees it, a mental shift has occurred, in "the very words used to talk about the self, which were always available to people if they wanted them, but were regarded as selfish and egocentric." The Chinese call it the "psycho boom."
A few years ago, Chinese television launched a program called "Xinli Fangtan"—"Psychology Sessions"—in which people sit at a heart-shaped table and talk with a therapist about their troubles. It provides a running tally of the side effects of the national growth spurt: bankruptcy, extramarital affairs, gambling, health-care costs, unemployment, loneliness. Unlike Americans, who can look comfortable divulging details of their private lives on Dr. Phil's stage set, the guests on "Psychology Sessions" favor earnest, if hasty, disguises. One woman told her story from behind a large pot of bamboo. A couple and their young son wore oversized baseball caps and sunglasses, which made them look like a blind family at a ballgame. The titles of the episodes are crafted to drop a scrim of propriety over the indignities of modern life: a dysfunctional rich family tells its story in "Millions of Wealth, Millions of Hatreds"; the sad tale of an affair is titled "An Encounter with My Husband's Close Female Friend."
A few years ago, Chinese television launched a program called "Xinli Fangtan"—"Psychology Sessions"—in which people sit at a heart-shaped table and talk with a therapist about their troubles. It provides a running tally of the side effects of the national growth spurt: bankruptcy, extramarital affairs, gambling, health-care costs, unemployment, loneliness. Unlike Americans, who can look comfortable divulging details of their private lives on Dr. Phil's stage set, the guests on "Psychology Sessions" favor earnest, if hasty, disguises. One woman told her story from behind a large pot of bamboo. A couple and their young son wore oversized baseball caps and sunglasses, which made them look like a blind family at a ballgame. The titles of the episodes are crafted to drop a scrim of propriety over the indignities of modern life: a dysfunctional rich family tells its story in "Millions of Wealth, Millions of Hatreds"; the sad tale of an affair is titled "An Encounter with My Husband's Close Female Friend."
In Beijing, I watched a visiting analyst address his audience with a joke—“What is a psychoanalyst? A Jewish doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood”—which his Chinese listeners greeted with respectful silence.
ReplyDeleteTo appeal to readers, one edition of Freud’s autobiography depicted him rattling off classical Chinese allusions with the fluency of a Confucian scholar and bidding farewell to Austrian colleagues by cupping his hands in front of his chest.
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