Freud in China
October 11, 2010 8:22 AM   Subscribe

Despite the social stigma that still surrounds mental illness, doctors are eager to learn and apply psychotherapy, and thanks to Skype and a healthy supply of retired American therapists, Freudian psychoanalysis is enjoying a renaissance in China.
posted by jetsetlag (25 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
The problem with Freudian analysis in China is that an hour after the session you feel neurotic again.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:27 AM on October 11, 2010 [10 favorites]


During one recent lecture to doctors from Liaoning province, he rendered his newly acquired knowledge into more palatable terms for his Chinese audience: Freud's idea of the subconscious, he explained, is like the ghosts of Chinese superstition - they may move among us completely invisibly, but they are powerful forces nonetheless.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:35 AM on October 11, 2010


Given that the only problem Freudian psychoanalysis is qualified to treat is "not having anyone to talk to," I can't imagine that this is really going to do much to address the social stigma attached to mental illness in China.
posted by saladin at 8:41 AM on October 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


Dismissing Freud's contribution to our current understanding of psychology and psychoanalysis is both easy and lazy. This may not be the most useful treatment many of these people could receive, but I'm sure some will benefit from it.

That's the best I can say without actually registering an account so I can RTFA.
posted by hermitosis at 8:54 AM on October 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


And who says we can't export anything to China these days?
posted by Bromius at 9:03 AM on October 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


This should be combined with acupuncture. Penis acupuncture.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:22 AM on October 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


That's the best I can say without actually registering an account so I can RTFA.

Bugmenot has some accounts for you.
posted by jason's_planet at 9:24 AM on October 11, 2010


Interesting; I listened to someone presenting research questioning the value/validity of directly applying Freud in Japan (yes, I know, Japan is not China), but interesting points were made about the risks and dangers of applying Freudian theory cross culturally (particularly without some form of update, new language and terminology).
Do the same signs and symbols mean the same things to all people?
What I got from the presentation was that no, our secret brains do not always translate 1:1.

The warning given was "we should be cautious and not pathologize behaviors which may seem foreign to the outsider". It was about guilt & premarital sex, and competing 'guilt theories' cross culturally.
posted by infinite intimation at 9:30 AM on October 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


also, I was able to access the Wapo article by entering through this NPR portal.. yeah, I don't get it either, but it worked.

Also mirrored at AARP Bulletin.

Happening in '08 too at bloomberg
posted by infinite intimation at 9:43 AM on October 11, 2010


Yeah, instead of trying to help people with talking, they should really just be giving out more drugs. It's easier and ultimately cheaper. It's like Benjamin Franklin said: 'A nation with a ready supply of Xanax will never have need of an asylum.'
posted by kaibutsu at 10:04 AM on October 11, 2010


>Dismissing Freud's contribution to our current understanding of psychology and psychoanalysis is both easy and lazy. This may not be the most useful treatment many of these people could receive, but I'm sure some will benefit from it.

I think it's an overall positive development, not because I'm a fan of lying down on a couch for five days a week for ten years, but because this might introduce these Chinese therapists to more recent additions to the psychodynamic canon.
posted by jason's_planet at 10:27 AM on October 11, 2010


Yeah, instead of trying to help people with talking, they should really just be giving out more drugs.

When the drugs are appropriate and effective, giving them out is a good thing. It's only the other situations where it's a problem.

I grant you, Big Pharm has found no shortage of other situations.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:31 AM on October 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Dismissing Freud's contribution to our current understanding of psychology and psychoanalysis is both easy and lazy. This may not be the most useful treatment many of these people could receive, but I'm sure some will benefit from it.

It's easy because Freudian analysis is full of shit. It's not lazy because it's attractive shit people are always prepared to defend.

I used to think Freud ought to be respected asa founder of a modern branch of medicine, but even by that rationale your sentiment is idiotic. Would you suggest that using Galen's understanding of anatomy to treat people is useful? Would you dismiss any challenge to the idea as "easy and lazy"? Would you suggest that people told that their brain is a cooling system have "derived some benefit" from such treatment?

A little more research and it become's Freud's own material was full of fraudulent claims and manipulation of his data. He was a shit scientist, a liar, a fraud. He flat-out lied about patient case histories, work from tiny, unrepresentitive samples, and just made shit up. If you aren't concerned about that, you might as well champion thalidomide as Freud.

Yeah, instead of trying to help people with talking, they should really just be giving out more drugs.

Feel free to talk someone out cerebral palsy, a la Freud. Or diagnose everything as caused by infantile sexual abuse.
posted by rodgerd at 10:46 AM on October 11, 2010 [4 favorites]


Why does this post refer to a renaissance in Freudian analysis since it was not there previously?
What seems curious to me is that the Chinese, moving ever closer to capitalism, is playing catch-up with the West and here we seem to have a cultural lag, and this suggests that it will not be long before Freudian therapy will be replaced by other approaches.
posted by Postroad at 11:02 AM on October 11, 2010


Freud is a good fit for modern China: Its core is authoritarian mystique, its expense makes it a status marker for the successful and newly rich, and, oh yeah, its emphasis on Bad/Wacky Parental Relations neatly parallels the recent fall of the elderly from their formerly honored place.

Too bad that psychoanalysis contains no methods for producing actual behavioral change, and that its central technique is basically akin to Roman Catholic confession... assuming both penitent and priest drank absinthe beforehand.

A psychoanalyst in the NYT article notes that the demand there is just like in the Sixties; well, yes. Next: The Burma Shave and Lucky Strikes Revivals.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:04 AM on October 11, 2010 [4 favorites]


Makes perfect sense. Freud was, in the end, a theorist of the conditions of subjectivity and selfhood under capitalist social organization -- hence "Civilization and its Discontents," for example. As China discovers the delights of commodifying human experience fully, no doubt neurosis will follow.
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:05 AM on October 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


"I used to think Freud ought to be respected asa founder of a modern branch of medicine, but even by that rationale your sentiment is idiotic. Would you suggest that using Galen's understanding of anatomy to treat people is useful?"

No. But here's the actual relevant distinction: in historical overviews of medicine - even of clinical psychology - the praises of Galen and Hippocrates are sung far and wide, while Freud is often just an embarrassing footnote. I guess ultimately wrongheaded theories - even if they spurred interesting developments and ultimately helped move us along - are tolerable to cultural and historical consciousness only if they occurred N years ago for some N > 200, 500, or 1000.

"But people still defend Freud, so we have to stay on guard!" So refute the false ideas and accept the insights for what they are. Why demonize the person when it's the ideas with which you take umbrage? Or is this not about truth and how to best help people after all?
posted by mister-o at 11:39 AM on October 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Is this a bad place to point out the bad things which the descendants of Freud have attempted or accomplished with his theories?
posted by hippybear at 12:31 PM on October 11, 2010


Most of what people know of Freud and psychoanalysis is really Ego Psychology which was an invention of Freud's daughter Anna Freud and introduced as America as "Freudian". That's OK, as long as we keep in mind that this Freud is Anna rather than Sigmund, but other schools of psychoanalysis, particularly Lacan, regard Ego Psychology as a distortion of Sigmund Freud's original insights.

darth_tedious: Freud is a good fit for modern China: Its core is authoritarian mystique...Too bad that psychoanalysis contains no methods for producing actual behavioral change

This is a deeply contradictory set of claims. Ego Psychology holds up the idea of the “healthy ego” – for Lacan, a false notion – where the analyst is the ideal ego for the analysand (the patient). Lacan’s criticism is that this is a fundamentally conformist, authoritarian notion: the idea is that an unhealthy ego is in conflict with its environment and the Ego Psychology cure attempts to remove that conflict by changing the analysand so that they’re able to function better in society. So claiming that psychoanalysis ought to produce actual behavioral change is to claim that psychoanalysis ought to be authoritarian. This is the premise behind non-psychoanalytic therapies like CBT, which are often proposed as the reasonable, scientific alternatives to the pseudo-science of Freudianism.

The Woody Allen joke comes to mind: “The food here is terrible! And the portions are too small!” Or even the story of the broken kettle in Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”: a neighbor accuses a man of returning his kettle to him in a broken state, and the man defends himself giving three contradictory explanations: the kettle wasn’t broken when he returned it; it was broken when he borrowed it; and he never borrowed it to begin with.

Maybe the best evidence that Freud was on to something can be found in how irrational, contradictory and desperate his opponents become when they attempt to debunk him. Perhaps the most effective form of unconscious repression is to deny the unconscious altogether.
posted by AlsoMike at 12:47 PM on October 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


That's the best I can say without actually registering an account so I can RTFA.

I think it's the fact that the link is to the "print" version. Here's the story. I didn't have to register.

Wow, so the US can finally export mostly obsolete theories about penis envy and dream analysis to a new generation of students who don't know any better.

Related: The war on unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, hello positive thinking (sorry, couldn't find full text online, but good article on the (American) mental-health industry.)
posted by mrgrimm at 1:43 PM on October 11, 2010




> This is a deeply contradictory set of claims... So claiming that psychoanalysis ought to produce actual behavioral change is to claim that psychoanalysis ought to be authoritarian. This is the premise behind non-psychoanalytic therapies like CBT, which are often proposed as the reasonable, scientific alternatives to the pseudo-science of Freudianism.

Well, this is an interesting point, and brings us to the matter of therapy's purpose.

If one wishes to treat the Unconscious as some completely unknowable bottomless abyss, full of insatiable monsters and irreconcilable demands-- a force within that, beyond childhood, cannot learn and cannot change-- one can certainly do that.

And in line with that assumption, it's fair to settle for taking some morbid, perhaps palliative pleasure in arriving at a narrative for "why" one behaves or believes as one does.

One can certainly do that, and many, many have.

But it's problematic to overlook the authoritarian nature of transference, and the mute opaque aura of the silent analyst, seemingly gathering endless threads, only to hoard them. Transference isn't some incidental effect of the Freudian approach; that, plus free association, is the Freudian approach. "Insight" based work, in the absence of precise tools for change, fosters dependency; the analysand receives the momentary pleasures of talking about his or her experiences and problems, but with no mechanism for addressing them. Want another serving of temporary relief? Come back next week.


While it's fair for a client to enroll in a process of Mommy/Daddy Identification and self-absorption with no particular protocol for change, it's also fair for a client to seek changes in himself or herself. And if one's purpose in seeking therapy is self-change, modern approaches are far, far more effective.

Simply put, treating behavioral patterns as the product of Fate-- sorry, I meant to say The Unconscious-- is great for characters in Greek drama, but, assuming that one's purpose is to change these patterns, is less so for actual human development.

> Perhaps the most effective form of unconscious repression is to deny the unconscious altogether.

Similarly, perhaps the most tempting way to deal with obsolescence is to claim that true change is impossible.
posted by darth_tedious at 3:38 PM on October 11, 2010


It's partially the fault of the psychoanalytic movement and even of Freud himself that psychoanalysis is misunderstood and trashed. Freud was pretty revolutionary for his time and attempted to ground his theories in evolution. He was a radical atheist and considered religion an illusion akin to neurosis. All this was over a century ago. Much of the sexual freedom we take for granted came about because of battles waged by the psychoanalytic movement but they also made many mistakes which led to it becoming intellectually isolated and mired in the cult of Freud's personality.

I recently heard a case presentation of a woman analyzing (mainly via Skype) a Chinese man and it was not some sort of archaic "Freudian Psychoanalysis" as the article seems to suggest but not that different from what you'd find in any dynamic psychotherapeutic treatment in the US of A. There were no mentions, of "penis envy" or other artifacts of 19th century Austrian culture. The charge per session (the article refers to "long-term and often expensive therapy") was $10 which is typical of the CAPA cases this article is about.
posted by Obscure Reference at 8:31 PM on October 11, 2010


If one wishes to treat the Unconscious as some completely unknowable bottomless abyss, full of insatiable monsters and irreconcilable demands... it's fair to settle for taking some morbid, perhaps palliative pleasure in arriving at a narrative for "why"... treating behavioral patterns as the product of Fate-- sorry, I meant to say The Unconscious

I'm not sure what you're describing here, but whatever it is, you won't find stronger opponents to it than Freud and Lacan. You've misunderstood psychoanalysis so severely that your criticisms could only be called psychoanalytic.

But it's problematic to overlook the authoritarian nature of transference...Transference isn't some incidental effect of the Freudian approach

Frankly, it's bizarre to raise this point in the context of psychoanalysis as if it is a news. Any relationship where one partner is assumed to be the authority figure creates an ethical problem, but, as you say, transference is not incidental to analysis - the whole point is to dismantle it.

"Insight" based work, in the absence of precise tools for change, fosters dependency; the analysand receives the momentary pleasures of talking about his or her experiences and problems, but with no mechanism for addressing them. Want another serving of temporary relief? Come back next week.

I don't see the logic. If you think psychoanalysis is nothing but a sympathetic ear, how could it foster dependency? Is sympathy an addictive drug? Why can't the analysand turn to other sources for sympathy? And yes, if you assume that psychoanalysis cannot work, it's obviously a waste of money, but that's question-begging.
posted by AlsoMike at 10:57 PM on October 11, 2010


> transference is not incidental to analysis - the whole point is to dismantle it

And the larger design extending from that point is that Freudian therapy fails miserably at dismantling that authoritarian relationship, insofar as it is commonly built on treatment periods of months and even years.

>I don't see the logic.

I believe you.

>If you think psychoanalysis is nothing but a sympathetic ear, how could it foster dependency?

You seem to presuppose that, in the context of deciding whether to continue psychoanalytic treatment, the otherwise troubled analysand is now incapable of irrational behavior...
posted by darth_tedious at 12:23 AM on October 12, 2010


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