The University of Chicago from Mask to Mirror
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FROM MASK TO MIRROR: SELF AS OBJECT IN CHINESE POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT BY AMIR HAMPEL CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2017 for my father Contents List of Figures iv Acknowledgments v Abstract ix Masks and Mirrors 1 Chapter 1: Personality and Principles 71 Chapter 2: Bitterness and Admiration 139 Chapter 3: Clarity and Tension 198 Chapter 4: Interests and Ideals 266 Confidence and Change 329 References 354 Appendix A: Mirrors 383 Appendix B: Images 388 iii List of Figures Figure 1, Intertwined 383 Figure 2, Happiness 383 Figure 3, Uncivil Society 384 Figure 4, Harried Children 384 Figure 5, Presenting Themselves 385 Figure 6, Teaching Empathy 385 Figure 7, Shared Space 386 Figure 8, Parents’ Eyes 386 Figure 9, And Possibility 387 Figure 10, Together 387 Figure 11, Hold On 388 Figure 12, Reading 388 Figure 13, Dreams 389 Figure 14, Good Fortune 389 Figure 15, Book Cart 390 Figure 16, Be a Hero 390 Figure 17, Filial Piety 391 Figure 18, Peace of Mind 391 Figure 19, Socialize 392 Figure 20, Everything is Fine 393 iv Acknowledgments It would not have been possible to research and write this dissertation without the assistance and friendship of many people. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the following: Everyone who welcomed me to Toastmasters clubs, and all who invited me to share their frustrations and their joys. To the members of my club: thank you for your friendship, and for albums full of happy memories. My teachers and classmates at the International Chinese Language Program in Taipei and the Inter-University Program for Chinese Studies in Beijing. Thank you for the gift of language. The staff of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, especially Yuan Ji, Liang Xueming, Dennell Reynolds, and Lai Sumin. Feng Shizheng, who hosted me at Renmin University’s School of Sociology and Population Studies. David Orlinksy, for a critical introduction early in my research. Li Yawen of the Andingmen Psychiatric Hospital. v Si Jiyuan, for stimulating conversations about psychotherapy in China. Yi Chunli and Zhou Ting of Peking University’s School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences. Zhou Li and Hou Ruihe from the Renmin University Psychological Counseling Center. Jian Lili, for sharing your knowledge. And to other academic and clinical psychologists in Beijing who shared their time, expertise, and reflections. Allies in thinking through the role of psychology in contemporary China, including He Feng, Tu Mengyue, and Ma Lingyun. The social activists who invited me to engage with their projects. Xiang Hui and Wu Shi from the Aquarius Publishing Group. The researchers at China Youthology, especially Lisa Li, Candy Yang, and Eddie Bai. Huang Hsuan-Ying and Eric C. Hendriks, for always being generous and encouraging. Ma Zhiying, Chen Chen, Ben Ross, Basia Ellis, Lindsey Conklin, Britta Ingebretson, and Elizabeth Fein, for intellectual exchange and for friendship. Lesley Turnbull, who kept this project going through dark times. Ran Ran, for carrying heavy things. Ananya Chakravarti, for the vasanas. vi Janar Chiaken, for the music. Marshall Kramer, for materia medica. Miles Loomis, for destabilizing dialogs. David Kern and Chelsey Leruth, for building a nest. Peter and Sarah Knaack, bonfires of life. Wu Guandi My family The sun The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Ford Foundation, the Committee on Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago, and the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, for providing financial support for this project. Participants in the Cultural Psychology Workshop and the Medicine and Its Objects Workshop at the University of Chicago. Janie Lardner and Spencer Bonadeo, for thoughtful care. Norman Girardot, Gordon C.F. Bearn, and Michael Mendelson, who set me on so many journeys. James Hevia, Johanna Ransmeier, and Dan Slater, for an enlightening sojourn in Hong Kong. vii John Lucy, for teaching me how to think about means and ends. Judith Farquhar, for helping me to find the way. Eugene Raikhel, for pointing out productive paths. Betty Farrell, for saving the day. My adviser, Richard A. Shweder, for the most dependable support and guidance a student could wish for. Words cannot suffice: 一切尽在无言中 viii Abstract This dissertation describes young adults in China who pursue self-definition through self-help psychology, focusing especially on people studying public speaking and social skills. The dissertation engages with academic theories of autonomy and identity by showing how young adults in China discuss, practice, and promote self-definition. It also contributes to a growing social science literature on the therapeutic, cultural, and political effects of the psychological disciplines as they spread worldwide. Anthropologists have demonstrated that a range of psychological interventions aim to create autonomous, self- managing subjects; they have critiqued these interventions as depoliticizing and economically exploitative. However, autonomy is not only a political logic or a cultural ideal, but also a condition of life in mobile mass societies. This dissertation demonstrates that young college graduates in China draw on self-help psychology as a set of resources for adapting to the possibilities, dangers, and psychosocial demands of life outside of interpersonal networks. It shows that self-help psychology is teaching people in China ways to define who they are in relation to two elements of a liberal society: among strangers, and before an impersonal law. Young adults studying social skills are learning to derive a social identity by being humorous and confident, and also by asserting individual interests and ideals. However, while young adults in China are studying self-presentation skills, the dissertation argues the way in which they bind themselves to their visible personality is deeply shaped by Chinese historical, cultural, and social logics. ix The dissertation draws on a year and half of participation in personal growth groups in Beijing; interviews with psychotherapists and psychology writers; collaborations with cultural activists; and a survey of self-help texts. By shifting between the perspectives of professional and self-help psychology, the chapters show how the concepts of autonomy and identity are translated between Western psychological expertise and Chinese social discourse. As young adults learn to construct an identity through voluntary association, on stage before a distant audience, and in relation to the image of a perfected self, they develop a liberal sense of being individuals in tension with a reified society. In China, psychologists who are promoting autonomy are continuing a long tradition of modernist reforms that aim to create a civil society of responsible individuals; these efforts now gain strength from experiences of mobility and fragmentation that make stranger relations normal and personal projects vital. But while social changes are teaching young people in China the power of actively crafting an identity, even exposure to Western technologies of self- definition does not make for a Western subjectivity. Drawing on critical strands of Western and comparative philosophy, the dissertation suggests that the autonomous individual is defined by antagonism, and is subject to a temporality that stakes identity on an eternal moment. Since young adults in China are now worrying about job interviews and dates, they are anxious about fleeting social interactions; they are working to acquire confident self-presentation skills that may help them to secure a social identity. But the self is most tightly bound to its social image not by the eyes of strangers but by the gaze of a transcendent judge, by a trial that finds one either guilty or x righteous. Under this gaze, which has been comparatively less central to Chinese people’s psychic economy, the individual becomes a self-justifying political actor. The psychological doctrines now entering China imply a distant law. Self-help concepts including communication, will power, positivity, intimacy, and self-esteem all invoke legalistic and confessional understandings of discourse, and a heroic, antagonistic view of personal efficacy. These terms change their meaning as they are translated into Chinese contexts. The first chapter of the dissertation describes Toastmasters public speaking clubs, which have expanded rapidly in Chinese cities. Since their members are mostly recent college graduates, these clubs are excellent sites in which to study processes of identity formation among young adults. In Toastmasters clubs, young urban professionals are learning strategies of self-presentation that, they hope, will help them to establish their careers. However, club members are worried not only about job interviews, but also about dates. The chapter analyzes Toastmasters clubs as therapeutic sites in which young adults struggle with a disordered sociality, a condition located in the anxious interplay between their embodied and encultured psychosocial capacities and the demanding possibilities of urban life. Facing their fears on stage, club members learn to feel themselves as objects under the gaze of a distant audience, and to define themselves under this gaze. However, club members construct a sense of identity not only by performing as individuals, but also by integrating into the social life and shared ethos