72nd Moderator | Xu Luqing
The Beijing Federation of Social Psychological Work recently released a letter called "Hu Xinyu, please give a psychological counselor five minutes", which caused a lot of doubts and quickly appeared on the hot search, and some netizens called it "a grand PUA".
Similar discourse of psychological counseling is not uncommon in China, and Zhang Li, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, examines the rise of the "counseling fever" in China in his book Anxious China. She found that since psychological counseling entered China in the 90s, many changes with local characteristics have taken place, whether it is the emphasis on "positive psychology" or the mixing of corpuses of different cultures, the I Ching, sand table therapy and hypnosis have become popular elements. Psychology has also developed personnel and organizational management functions - the author of the article "Hu Xinyu, please give a psychological instructor five minutes" has the professional title of "social psychological instructor", and some Zhihu netizens mentioned that this is a profession different from "psychological counselor" and "psychotherapist", which currently only exists in Beijing, and is mainly aimed at "community, party affairs, institutions and schools". Many also worry that the emphasis on self-determination and self-management in psychotherapeutic culture will shift attention from structural issues to the individual's mind.
Is there a "psychological fever" happening at the moment? Are more and more young people seeing counseling, and is psychological culture becoming more common in popular culture? When the love variety show asked Li Songwei to analyze the intimate relationship, the public media asked Cui Qinglong to analyze the anxiety of the times, and the content of public accounts such as "Know Yourself" and "Simple Psychology" became increasingly popular, how do we understand a good relationship? How does the family of origin affect us? Is it really possible to solve the problem of anxiety? Every night, when we click on the title that directly addresses the confusion of life, looking for answers about our emotions, relationships, and life in superficial psychological concepts, can psychology really be our antidote?
01 Expensive, local and short rest: psychological counseling through our eyes
Pan Wenjie: When I was in college, I was a member of the psychological committee in my class. The counselor will talk to classmates, and I have the responsibility of inviting everyone to talk. One thing that I haven't figured out so far is that in the TV series, the words and psychological test results of psychological counselors and counselors are absolutely private and absolutely cannot be said to outsiders. But in actual school life, if you are judged to have inappropriate tendencies, your counselor or even the school leader you don't know at all may know.
In a 2011 New York Times article titled "Stressed and Depressed, Koreans Still Reluctant to Undergo Psychotherapy," psychologist Kim Hyong-soo, a professor at North Korea University, said, "If you feel depressed, Koreans will suffer in silence and wait for it to pass, because those who go to psychiatry will feel a lifetime of humiliation." "Those who seek counseling often go to private clinics and even pay in cash so that the records don't show up on Social Security when they're looking for a job." However, private counseling is more expensive, ordinary people can only afford public clinics - I asked a well-known psychological counselor in China, he said that his price is really too high, he himself will not pay for this consultation - I don't know if Chinese also have this situation, both want to receive psychological counseling, but also worry that I don't know where to leak privacy.
December 4, 2015, Xi'an City, shuffling, flopping, interpreting tarot cards, has a certain psychological suggestive function, many people use tarot card divination as psychological counseling
Yin Qinglu: I have tried psychological counseling with several friends, and when I consulted, I often thought "as long as it is not uncomfortable now", but psychotherapy requires long-term intervention to be effective, and my troubles will disappear after two days, plus the consultation fee is very expensive, so the final result is often abandonment. As Wen Jie said, ordinary people can only afford public clinics, but the level of some psychiatrists in the country is not ideal ... Counseling, a game of "self-exploration", is not affordable for the poor.
Interestingly, Zhang Li also analyzed different schools of psychotherapy in China in "Anxious China", such as low-cost, evidence-based, cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at solving current problems, which was just in line with my mentality at that time (by the way, some AI psychological counseling apps also use this therapy, I don't know if the logic of chatGPT is related to this). In addition, there is a therapy that I am more interested in and more localized, that is, Jung-inspired sand game therapy, in which the client draws various images on the sand table to establish a world corresponding to the inner state, but the imagery and the inner state are not causal, but an unexplained meaning correlation. A schoolgirl draws a red carp, supposedly symbolizing her desire for freedom, while a tall pine tree symbolizes rooting and stability.
Imagery is a very Chinese concept, outside of Western psychological epistemology, and Jung himself was fascinated by the I Ching and the Taiyi Jinwen. Cognitive therapy points to the human brain, where everything is justified but does not give people more promise. Many people say that fortune-telling and psychotherapy have similar efficacy, and it seems to point to the fact that the aspect of counseling that emphasizes cause and effect is sometimes not enough.
On January 26, 2021, psychological counselors from Qinhuangdao Mental Health Association provided psychological counseling for front-line staff.
Dong Ziqi: Yes, Jung is the author of The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Book of Life in China, and I was shocked when I saw this book. To introduce another perspective, Xu Dishan introduced the origin of the traditional superstitious activity of Fuqi in "A Study of Fuqi Superstition". Fuqi was once popular among literate scholars, and was originally used for divination exams, in fact, it was also like a kind of psychological counseling to confirm what they care about the most - the test luck and career path - is psychological counseling always aimed at what a person cares about the most? In her oral autobiography, the recently deceased translator Yang Wei recalled the family's help-up ceremony, in which the seventh aunt called Xiaocui, a prostitute who was abandoned and died by the seventh uncle before her death, not only communicating life and death, but also bringing a sense of relief and relief.
Thinking about it, the psychological counseling in many movies is really related to fantasy. Originally, movies in the United States and Hong Kong liked to use, such as the protagonist in "The Sixth Sense" is a famous expert who helps the "hell" little boy to relieve psychological problems, and the role of Leslie Cheung in "Different Dimension" is a doctor who helps the girl who collides with evil out of psychological difficulties, and later both psychologists are involved in their own existential crisis. Perhaps in the imagination of these movies, psychological counseling is stepping on an obscure yin and yang road, so while unclogging the psychology, it may also touch the mysterious and unspeakable.
It's the same in crime movies. The undercover character played by Tony Leung in "Infernal Affairs" is treated by a female psychiatrist, and she is also the only outsider in the play who knows his true identity and does not care, only here can he sleep well. This probably reflects a kind of understanding, a kind of tolerance for people trapped in a hell of endless torture, there is not only right and wrong in this world, and people in the world are not only good and bad, even if someone walks on the edge of the knife and never sees the light again, he can still get a short rest here. Counseling is like an interruption to the endless hell, and I like this kind of treatment.
On June 4, 2014, Beijing 65 Middle School specially opened a psychological stress reduction room for college entrance examination candidates, providing psychological counseling and counseling to candidates to relieve their anxiety before the exam. In the stress reduction room, psychological stress relief help such as "music relaxation", "sand table games", and "individual counseling" is provided.
Psychology with a "positive" approach: what are the limits of self-responsibility?
Pan Wenjie: Since everyone is very anxious today, seeking inner peace can be said to be people's heartfelt desire. I've seen many people seek religious liberation, but atheists may only seek psychology. Where there is demand, there is opportunity. I once discussed the vulgarization of psychology with Yu Feng, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the School of Philosophy of Wuhan University. He said that some of the things cited by people in society actually have certain sources. For example, the concept of "mindfulness" is particularly popular, which is a research point of positive psychology, mindfulness when people will enter a state of relative concentration of consciousness, will slow down the heartbeat, feel calm, there are many people in the folk associated it with some bizarre things, think that drinking tea, drinking coffee or listening to Buddhism can be mindful. But in fact, scholars and the public do not mean the same thing when they say the same concept, for scholars, the introduction of concepts requires experimentation and scientific testing.
Interestingly, although Yu Feng studies positive psychology, his background is somewhat pessimistic. He told me that psychology is not like sociology and political science for macro thinking, but a micro discipline, which refers to "doing positive things to yourself and adjusting the way you look at yourself when you can't do something macroscopically."
Yin Qinglu: Popular psychology does have a vulgar and positive side, such as happiness is better than pain, such as "there must be a problem must have a native family and other reasons", and for example, the promise of a better life is placed on the individual, which is the same reason that anthropologist Feng Zhudi mentioned in "All Things Life: Health Care in Contemporary Beijing" that health preservation is in line with the state's call for privatization of medical care and that individuals should be responsible for health.
However, I will also see now that more and more people have understood that "the original family is not the whole cause", and psychological counseling cannot solve structural problems in one fell swoop. So, what else can psychology do at this time? That is, what is non-vulgarized psychology like? I'm curious about that. A while ago, a friend pressed his head to Amway Li Songwei's new book "5% Change", which probably means that people can only act through this extremely limited body, and achieve even 5% change, even if there will be repetition and withdrawal in between. I think this mentality is also a desirable positivity, and it is also a mentality that ordinary people can learn, rather than a false positivity that "hopes that counseling can bring me the promise of happiness".
Handan, Hebei: The school carries out a variety of psychological counseling activities
Lin Ziren: Yu Feng said that psychology is a "microscopic discipline", and interestingly, Wei Mingyi, the author of "Silent Worker", also mentioned in an interview with Interface Culture that she has been doing psychological counseling work for many years and found that this discipline has been difficult to make herself satisfied - no matter how hard she works, there are still so many people waiting outside the door of the consultation room, and the suffering does not seem to abate. As a result, she had a lot of doubts about the world and realized that this doubt could not be answered by psychology. In her view, the field of counseling is experimental and less closely connected to the real life world, and anthropology may provide clearer and more comprehensive answers to her doubts.
Last week, I read "Thirty Bu Li", which introduces a remarkable Japanese social phenomenon, in which young Japanese in their thirties (most of them victims of the employment ice age) face major setbacks in work and life, but still grit their teeth and are unwilling to seek help from relatives and friends, refuse help from NGOs, and even die alone. NHK's modern feature team began to investigate a lonely death incident to try to understand how this phenomenon came about. They conclude that the neoliberal "theory of self-responsibility" is deeply engraved in the hearts of this generation of young Japanese, making them ashamed to admit that they have failed and need outside help, because everything stems from their own "not working hard enough" and that they deserve it. The formation of this neoliberal psychological structure is related to a subconscious hopelessness and fear: people have no hope of shaking the system, and can only adapt to the external environment by changing themselves.
Although China is not a neoliberal society, we are also very familiar with the logic of this "self-responsibility theory", and "Hu Xinyu, Please Give the Psychological Instructor Five Minutes" disgusts us precisely because we are to some extent aware of the limits of the "self-responsibility theory". The harder you try, the luckier you will be, some pain is difficult to erase with a positive attitude, do not blame yourself. I think that sometimes such a simple empathy may be more comforting than professional psychological counseling.