ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a model from multicultural discourse studies which offers a conceptual, practical, and ethical guide to psychoanalytic work, to the theoretical pluralism within psychoanalysis, and to dialogue between western and non-western modes of thought. The encounter of psychoanalysis and China holds the possibility of dialogue and new meaning for both. The meeting of psychoanalysis and China is an opportunity for new meaning and growth. There is also the risk of repeating the history of the dominant western voice. It is hard to see from our inside perspective that psychoanalysis is embedded in western modes of thought and world views. Granting the importance of uniquely private meaning, there remain linguistic, historical, and philosophical differences between China and the West which continue to influence meaning and subjectivity and which may require some modification of psychoanalytic constructs. Chinese and western thought differed in the former’s emphasis on process and disinterest in stable entities and essences.
