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| | The value of cultural approaches for the humanistic psychiatry and psychotherapy | | 2005-2-22 0:46:06 ShanghaiTongji University,Medical School Pr.Zhao Xudong |  The value of cultural approaches for the humanistic psychiatry and psychotherapy
The value of cross-cultural psychiatry must be emphasized both in its contents of researches as well in its unique perspectives and thinking way. Such an epistemological uniqueness can be used in daily clinical works.
Karl Jaspers famous distinction between "understanding psychology" (verstehende Psychologie ) and "psychology of explanation" (erklaerende Psychologie) was forgotten by many colleagues who are blindly proud of being biologically-oriented psychiatrists. In fact, we need very much the science to understand "meaning" derived from phenomenon, especially, when we practice psychotherapy.
Therefore, some psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who were willing to work in a more humanistic way to their clients or patients, appealed for more attention to issues of "indigenization of psychology", and to issues of the cultural affinity for and the barriers against the Western psychiatry and psychotherapy that the Chinese were being confronted with.
I have written my dissertation with the title "The introduction of systemic family therapy into China as a cultural project" at Heidelberg University, Germany, in 1993. And 6 years later, we have completed a longitudinal clinical study on the possibility to practice and develop psychotherapy in China. Results of this empirical program supported the theoretical hypothesis, i.e., to practice psychotherapy in China should be a systematic cultural project rather than a purely natural scientific and technological operation.
In one of the most successful international training programs for psychotherapy, the bilateral exchanges between European trainers and Chinese trainees was encouraged, and the participants could learn practical transcultural skills, in order that they would offer culturally specific and personally tailored mental health service for Chinese clients.
(Edited by Shuping,Tan) | | [CLOSE] |
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Ministry of Health, (2003) No.013
ICP:No.040657