ABSTRACT
This chapter engages the trend of ‘retraditionalisation’ in China by looking at three Confucian precepts driving new forms of ‘indigenous’ counselling in China: ren, the relational self, and filial piety. Based on ethnographic research and drawing on theoretical insights on contemporary governance in China, I contend that the current understanding of retraditionalisation is inadequate as a way to understand the popularity of psychotherapies in China that invoke these precepts presumably from the Chinese cultural tradition. While it is true that these therapies bring Confucianism back into (mental) health care practices, they always hybridise the Confucian precepts with Western forms of knowledge and behaviour, resulting in therapies that are both old and new. These methods actually optimise the inner force of the individuals for relief and salvation, penetrating their hearts and minds more thoroughly and more profoundly than Western psychotherapy. In this sense, the Confucian notion of the self with a collective ambience is mobilised to do more than what an automatic, individualistic self can achieve in terms of self-reflexivity and self-governing. The integration of Confucian thought into counselling inevitably inculcates certain Confucian ideologies that are identified with or that parallel government interests. Such parallels intensify clients’ attachments to official ideologies and nation-building projects. ‘Retraditionalisation’ in China is thus not nostalgia or a return to traditional values; it borrows from tradition as a means of acculturating ‘Western’ psychology in service of both individual and political ends.
