Dec 22, 2018 06:55 AM
https://aeon.co/essays/why-china-held-on...al-hygiene
EXCERPT: . . . While mental hygiene in the Western world was eventually swept under the carpet and forgotten about, its echoes have persisted in China. If we look back in time, the continued influence of mental hygiene in China is hardly surprising.
[...] When placed in combination, xinli weisheng or jingshen weisheng – the terms used to translate mental hygiene – conveyed a sense of monumental possibility. If physicians and politicians could regulate individual bodies through public-health measures, then they could do the same for individual minds. And if psychological science could control the minds of the Chinese people, then government regimes could achieve unprecedented authority. For Chinese political leaders emerging from years of foreign imperialism, military factionalism and domestic insurrection, mental hygiene promised more than just a solution to mental illness. It also offered the key to power, stability and direct influence over a disciplined citizenry.
[...] The plan to apply psychological concepts toward political goals was neither new nor particularly Chinese. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the study of the mind had veered away from philosophy and toward an engagement with the experimental ethos of the social sciences. Invoking the authority of the laboratory, psychologists made radical promises about their ability to use conditioning techniques to manipulate the psyche.
[...] The notion that mental hygienists somehow possessed the tools to correct mental – and, by extension, behavioural – deviance appealed to ambitious political leaders. In their view, mental hygiene could possibly eradicate all sorts of questionable traits and unpalatable activities – homosexuality, promiscuity, criminality, miscegenation and Marxism among them.
[...] The theory behind mental hygiene proved appealing to Chinese sensibilities. From the turn of the 20th century, when Western psychological textbooks had begun making their way (via Japanese translations) to Chinese readers, the Chinese had generally looked at scientific psychology as a practical discipline. It was to them less intriguing for its philosophical insights than for its potentially transformative utility. In the same way that public health aimed to improve both bodily hygiene and racial fitness, psychology seemed to provide a method for advancing the mental strength of the Chinese citizenry.
[...] Despite their US training, Chinese psychologists took the concept of mental hygiene in a different direction than their Western counterparts. While mental hygiene in the US remained a medical initiative – at least to a certain degree – mental hygiene in China was viewed as almost entirely political.
[...] By early 1937, the Mental Hygiene Association had expanded to more than 230 members. [...] One broadcast put the message plainly: the problem with mental illness was that it ‘harmed social order’ and ‘jeopardised the Chinese race’. However, by bringing the disorder to the early attention of psychiatrists and psychologists, the illness could be mitigated, and the health of the nation assured.
The mental-hygiene movement in China brought clear implications. Since mental hygienists considered heterodox behaviours to be a sign of poor mental health, anyone who failed to conform to the ideals of the Nationalist Party could be stigmatised as mentally ill. And since mental hygiene was conceived as the purview of the state, madness was viewed as a primarily national concern rather than an individual one. Combining a patriotic ethos with the mandate to improve environmental stimuli, Chinese mental hygienists sought to achieve psychological wellbeing – and by extension, national strength – through the elimination of deviance and political dissent. In so doing, they moved closer to finally accomplishing the ‘psychological reconstruction’ that Chiang had so fervently spoken about as China’s leader.
The Chinese Mental Hygiene Movement had just begun to gain momentum when it was cut short by the onset of war with Japan in 1937. [...] Preoccupied with the war (and with their own survival), psychologists laid low until the conflict resolved. When it did, however, they emerged to find that mental hygiene had died an anticlimactic death alongside it. Due in part to the discovery of Nazi atrocities against the mentally ill, mental hygiene acquired an almost global disrepute.
[...] But while it was slowly abandoned in other parts of the world, its legacy endured in China. The Chinese Communist Party, which rose to power in 1949, continued the practice of associating ideological nonconformity with mental illness. Particularly during the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, when asylums were emptied and political bureaus shut down, those deemed ‘mad’ were closely linked to those deemed counter-revolutionary. In more recent years, too, political dissidents have been accused of mental illness and institutionalised against their will, while in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, re-education has become the tool of choice to heal the ‘madness’ of so-called religious extremism of the largely Muslim population.
The enduring appeal of mental hygiene in China, then, can be attributed to the way it satisfies the ongoing political desire for conformity and control. Just like the Nationalists before them, the Chinese Communist Party has seen in mental hygiene a way to rehabilitate (or merely eliminate) those who have strayed from the ideal of order that modernity had promised. Therefore, the main irony of Chinese mental hygiene is that, while political psychiatry was originally aimed against supporters of communism, the communists would later become its most notorious advocates. And while mental hygiene, the world over, was originally conceived as an opportunity to improve the lives of those considered mentally ill, the vicissitudes of history turned the endeavour almost completely on its head....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/why-china-held-on...al-hygiene
EXCERPT: . . . While mental hygiene in the Western world was eventually swept under the carpet and forgotten about, its echoes have persisted in China. If we look back in time, the continued influence of mental hygiene in China is hardly surprising.
[...] When placed in combination, xinli weisheng or jingshen weisheng – the terms used to translate mental hygiene – conveyed a sense of monumental possibility. If physicians and politicians could regulate individual bodies through public-health measures, then they could do the same for individual minds. And if psychological science could control the minds of the Chinese people, then government regimes could achieve unprecedented authority. For Chinese political leaders emerging from years of foreign imperialism, military factionalism and domestic insurrection, mental hygiene promised more than just a solution to mental illness. It also offered the key to power, stability and direct influence over a disciplined citizenry.
[...] The plan to apply psychological concepts toward political goals was neither new nor particularly Chinese. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the study of the mind had veered away from philosophy and toward an engagement with the experimental ethos of the social sciences. Invoking the authority of the laboratory, psychologists made radical promises about their ability to use conditioning techniques to manipulate the psyche.
[...] The notion that mental hygienists somehow possessed the tools to correct mental – and, by extension, behavioural – deviance appealed to ambitious political leaders. In their view, mental hygiene could possibly eradicate all sorts of questionable traits and unpalatable activities – homosexuality, promiscuity, criminality, miscegenation and Marxism among them.
[...] The theory behind mental hygiene proved appealing to Chinese sensibilities. From the turn of the 20th century, when Western psychological textbooks had begun making their way (via Japanese translations) to Chinese readers, the Chinese had generally looked at scientific psychology as a practical discipline. It was to them less intriguing for its philosophical insights than for its potentially transformative utility. In the same way that public health aimed to improve both bodily hygiene and racial fitness, psychology seemed to provide a method for advancing the mental strength of the Chinese citizenry.
[...] Despite their US training, Chinese psychologists took the concept of mental hygiene in a different direction than their Western counterparts. While mental hygiene in the US remained a medical initiative – at least to a certain degree – mental hygiene in China was viewed as almost entirely political.
[...] By early 1937, the Mental Hygiene Association had expanded to more than 230 members. [...] One broadcast put the message plainly: the problem with mental illness was that it ‘harmed social order’ and ‘jeopardised the Chinese race’. However, by bringing the disorder to the early attention of psychiatrists and psychologists, the illness could be mitigated, and the health of the nation assured.
The mental-hygiene movement in China brought clear implications. Since mental hygienists considered heterodox behaviours to be a sign of poor mental health, anyone who failed to conform to the ideals of the Nationalist Party could be stigmatised as mentally ill. And since mental hygiene was conceived as the purview of the state, madness was viewed as a primarily national concern rather than an individual one. Combining a patriotic ethos with the mandate to improve environmental stimuli, Chinese mental hygienists sought to achieve psychological wellbeing – and by extension, national strength – through the elimination of deviance and political dissent. In so doing, they moved closer to finally accomplishing the ‘psychological reconstruction’ that Chiang had so fervently spoken about as China’s leader.
The Chinese Mental Hygiene Movement had just begun to gain momentum when it was cut short by the onset of war with Japan in 1937. [...] Preoccupied with the war (and with their own survival), psychologists laid low until the conflict resolved. When it did, however, they emerged to find that mental hygiene had died an anticlimactic death alongside it. Due in part to the discovery of Nazi atrocities against the mentally ill, mental hygiene acquired an almost global disrepute.
[...] But while it was slowly abandoned in other parts of the world, its legacy endured in China. The Chinese Communist Party, which rose to power in 1949, continued the practice of associating ideological nonconformity with mental illness. Particularly during the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, when asylums were emptied and political bureaus shut down, those deemed ‘mad’ were closely linked to those deemed counter-revolutionary. In more recent years, too, political dissidents have been accused of mental illness and institutionalised against their will, while in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, re-education has become the tool of choice to heal the ‘madness’ of so-called religious extremism of the largely Muslim population.
The enduring appeal of mental hygiene in China, then, can be attributed to the way it satisfies the ongoing political desire for conformity and control. Just like the Nationalists before them, the Chinese Communist Party has seen in mental hygiene a way to rehabilitate (or merely eliminate) those who have strayed from the ideal of order that modernity had promised. Therefore, the main irony of Chinese mental hygiene is that, while political psychiatry was originally aimed against supporters of communism, the communists would later become its most notorious advocates. And while mental hygiene, the world over, was originally conceived as an opportunity to improve the lives of those considered mentally ill, the vicissitudes of history turned the endeavour almost completely on its head....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/why-china-held-on...al-hygiene