In this time of rapid societal change, frameworks that appear to pursue mental wellness are universal. For what reasons, for whom, and in what ways they emerged, however, differ by their cultural contexts. Among the proliferating scholarly accounts focused on the history and ethnography of “psy” sciences in contemporary China, Li Zhang's Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy is an eloquently written and compellingly argued work on the opportunities and predicaments of psychotherapy in the post-Mao period. Using her fieldwork in Kunming as a lens, the anthropologist analyzes what she terms “inner revolution,” which reflects the reconfiguration of self, family dynamics, affects, social relationships, and modalities of governing, along with the emergence of a new psychotherapeutic culture that has been constantly evolving against wide-ranging social and political backdrops in China.
Combining theoretical discussion and anecdotes from her fieldwork, Zhang effectively answers the questions that she sets for the book: “How do we explain [the] significant shift in the way people manage their well-being, endure distress, and recast selfhood when family bonds and social ties become increasingly fragile in post-socialist times? How can it be that a popular ‘psy fever’ has taken hold in China at this particular historical moment?” (p. 4).
The critical process that Zhang observes is the indigenization (bentuhua) of Western psychotherapy in China. However, this process differs from the institutionalization of indigenous psychology (bentu xinlixue), which focuses on its origins in Chinese ethics in the 1980s; this is another story that is undocumented in this account. Rather, it takes pragmatic roots in a context-specific society, where the need to eliminate anxiety among Chinese middle-class populations has been growing. According to Zhang, the impact of this growth surpasses the clinical sphere of mental health services. Its tentacles stretch into personhood, family, sociality, and governing, eventually psychologizing a multitude of social and economic problems eternalized from structural changes in China. The stories told in the book are not just about how Western psychotherapy has been transformed and rebranded as an “eclectic bricolage” (p. 121) to meet the demand in China. The cherry-picked schools of psychology reflect how the Chinese “self” has become concurrently engineered by the state as well as governed by neoliberalism.
Anxious China spans seven chapters. In the first chapter, in addition to providing a general history of psychology in twentieth-century China, which laid the foundation for the contemporary psy fever, Zhang explains why there is a growing curiosity about popular psychology and a craving for psychotherapeutic techniques to improve oneself and enhance social relationships.
Chapter 2 analyzes how practitioners selectively embrace various schools of psychotherapy to fit the collective values and individual desires of Chinese society. Zhang humorously uses the innuendo of “culture” to describe the creative process that she terms bentuhua. Instead of one-dimensional translation or transplantation, such fervor requires Chinese therapists to negotiate multiple transformations during the process. Such a process is contingent upon three factors: time constraints, affordability, and misalignment with Chinese norms. A fascinating example cited in the chapter is the coincidental overlap between the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy and socialist “thought work.” Despite the former accentuating the individuality of clients and the latter the collectivity, the two still find an awkward compromise in China's unique national condition.
Inspired by subjects “with Chinese characteristics” in contemporary Chinese expressions, chapter 3 illuminates how a successful therapeutic relationship is formed in China. The chapter begins with the contradiction between Carl Rogers's nondirective approach in therapy and the reliance of the Chinese on authority, probing another paradox that China faces and needs practically. In chapter 4, Zhang looks in great detail at how the Satir model of family therapy was introduced in southwest China and eventually spread across the country. The commercially branded Chinese Satir model and its “master effect” witnesses an added contradiction between the quest for common good and the interest in profits in the society.
Chapter 5 address how middle-class urbanites nurture new forms of self and attain mental wellness through various therapeutic tools, such as travel, psychology courses, and trainings. Such selves, narrated by the characters Zhang met in different therapeutic venues, were all lost somewhere against the precarity of contemporary China. By “disentangling” and “re-embedding” themselves, these individuals attempt to carve a new psycho-sociality that fits with the family and society.
In chapter 6, the question of happiness is critically examined. In a globalized yet authoritarian China, the definition and content of the “good life” has been constantly queried. The search for personal and scientific happiness reflects the Chinese urbanites’ survival strategy of self-fulfillment as learned individuals as well as self-preservation among the immense anxiety commonly experienced by themselves. In the last chapter, Zhang brings back the “state,” which is indispensable in discussing contemporary issues of control and development in China. Citing various national projects that are heavily laden with psychological language, Zhang shows how the conventional argument about psy disciplines serving as a foundation for governance in liberal democratic societies is contested in China.
About a decade ago, scholars advocating indigenous Chinese psychology raised the question of why Western psychology still prevails despite the call to establish models of psychotherapy in which the theoretical orientation should be consistent with Chinese philosophy. Anxious China offers a nuanced answer. Although the book only addresses the locale of popular psychotherapy in a specific geographical location among a specific class of people in postsocialist China, the methodology opens a door for other scholars to envision the full picture of psy sciences in a society that is convoluted with its long modernization history and politics. In addition, all the technical terms mentioned in the book are preserved in the form of Chinese spelling, hanyu pinyin, leaving space for readers to understand them using their own insights. Such a skillful approach, augmented by Zhang's own reflections provided at the end of each chapter, suggests the need for tiyan—a participant-centered technique of experiential learning that acts as an essential component of the imbibing to feel, appreciate, and continue questioning all the things considered in the book.
