When a student comes to Wensheng Yang, PhD, for help, Yang turns to the ancient Chinese concepts of yin and yang. Using a counseling approach he developed called Mountain Stream Therapy, Yang, director of counseling and psychological services at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, strives to help students break yin’s power over their minds and strengthen yang’s. For Yang, yin is “adherence,” a state of being unable to break free from thoughts and feelings like greed, resentment, ignorance, arrogance or suspicion. The clinician’s job, says Yang, is to restore what he calls activity, or the empowerment of yang.
Other Chinese practitioners are adapting Western concepts of clinical psychology to meet Chinese needs. Take psychoanalysis, the predominant form of psychological assistance since it was introduced to China in the 1920s. With its emphasis on helping patients become more independent and autonomous, psychoanalysis conflicts with the Taoist notion of oneness, says Jie Zhong, PhD, a practicing psychoanalyst who earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at Peking University. The Chinese psychoanalyst, Zhong explains, should allow the patient to decide which goal is paramount: individuation or harmony.
In addition, Zhong says, psychoanalysis in China may include delving beyond a patient’s immediate family relationships and into historical traumas that have shaped an individual’s family identity—as far back as World War II, the Cultural Revolution and even the Qing dynasty more than 100 years ago.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is also becoming popular in China, although in mainland China its practice is limited almost exclusively to psychiatrists. CBT is especially attractive to many patients because it is typically a shorter-term option and most patients must pay out of pocket for their care. Chee-wing Wong, chair of the Chinese Association of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy in Hong Kong (where psychologists are allowed to practice CBT), is working to promote the evidence-based practice in mainland China. But because of the restrictions on psychologists there, Wong and his colleagues at the association focus on training psychiatrists in CBT.
“Their mainstay treatment is medication,” says Wong. But now, he says, CBT is gradually gaining acceptance in “medical hubs” such as Beijing, Nanjing, Changsha, Chengdu and Guangzhou as a mainstream, evidence-based intervention, especially for those with mood or anxiety disorders.
