ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how a study of doctrines and precepts of Confucianism facilitates my ethnographic analysis of psychological self-help genres in China. Since the 1980s, elements of Confucian philosophy have emerged in these genres to help relieve moral confusion and psychological distress. While this Confucianized self-help defines psychological disorders as social and moral dilemmas rather than individual pathologies, its emphasis on virtue cultivation and the intrinsic goodness of human nature – that being virtuous fulfills human nature – biologizes social and moral forces that generate psychological distress. This biologization serves to naturalize and legitimize government initiatives that invoke Confucianism to gain ideological leverage and download state responsibility onto individuals. Yet, a broad, critical view of Confucianism also allows a keen analysis of its political and therapeutic deployment, revealing means of indigenizing psychotherapeutics for a Chinese populace. This case exemplifies how a philosophy can be both the subject of ethnographic research and a tool for its analysis.
