It ‘s always helpful to remember that no freedom is guaranteed, and that includes the practice of psychology. There are few better historical examples of how politics can impact the practice of psychology than the story of a Chinese psychologist named Chen Li in the midst of China’s so-called Cultural Revolution. Beginning in 1966, the communist leader of the country Mao Zedong exerted total control over Chinese society, attempting to rout out any sign of what he considered decadent Western influence.

The Cultural Revolution, in its severe orthodoxy, had a traumatic impact not just on Chen Li, but on millions of Chinese. The often draconian measures exercised by the government during this period were also powerfully felt by the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, both of which of course had their cultural origins in Europe.

China, Communism and Psychology

A civil war raged in China after World War II. Communist forces led by Mao Zedong ultimately drove the Chinese nationalists to the island of Taiwan in 1949, where they established a smaller, alternative state. Supported in his efforts by the Russian government, Mao initially allowed a large degree of Russian influence to pervade his government and Chinese culture. This was felt especially strongly in the field of psychology.

From 1949-1966, major influences in psychology in mainland China were now Russian. Pavlovian reflexology, never a strong focus of the American and Western European influenced psychiatry of the 1930s, was now emphasized. Psychology departments were closed and absorbed into philosophy or education departments, as was the academic practice in communist Russia.

Social engineering was big during this period of Chinese history. For example, the practice prostitution was said to have been largely eliminated during the 1950s. Psychoanalysis was frowned upon, but it was still allowed to be taught in a more limited fashion. A biological interpretation of mental disorders, always a strong current in traditional Chinese thought, became even stronger under this period of Russian influence (Kleinman, 1986).

Chen Li and Marxist Thought

The example of a Chinese psychologist named Chen Li (1902-2004) serves as a more personal example of the impact that the Cultural Revolution could have on individuals. Trained in London, Chen Li returned to China in 1935. His work in industrial psychology influenced practices in the country in the forties and fifties. He also used factor analysis in a study of intelligence. The Japanese invasion of China during World War II was the first interruption of his work but hardly the last.

When Chen Li was in his forties, the communist faction in post-war China took control of mainland China in 1949. Whether he felt pressure to do so or not, Chen Li gradually incorporated a Marxist perspective to his writings.

In a 1960 article entitled “Some problems of the nature of psychology” published in Acta Psychologica Sinica, Chen Li wrote: “For the past two years we have been evaluating the bourgeois elements in psychology … Teaching and research in psychology must serve proletarian politics and psychological theory must have some relevance to practical matters in life.”

Further, Chen Li also asserted that “it is absolutely correct to give politics the lead in the study and teaching of psychology.” (Brown, p. 128)

In practical terms, however, it is difficult to discern how much this constrained the study of psychology. As Marxism focused on the worker, it meant an elevation of industrial psychology. But Chen Li also emphasized the importance of psychotherapy and educational psychology as well.

Other contemporaries of Chen Li in 1958 and 1959 also examined shortcomings in Western psychology during a period called “the psychological criticism movement.” The behaviorism of John Watson was rejected because it denied the relevance of consciousness, the raising of which was considered a key element of worker empowerment. Watson’s entry into advertising after leaving academia was offered as proof of his theory’s bourgeois or capitalist sympathies. Bourgeois or Western social psychology was rejected because of its focus on the individual and denigration of “the psychology of the mob.” The community of workers, more than any one individual, must be central to any Marxist psychology.

Ling Ming-yu and Psychiatry

Ling Ming-Yu was a leading figure in Chinese psychiatry. His influence extended before and after the installation of a communist government in the country. Ling’s influence would not survive the Cultural Revolution, however.

Ling Ming-yu’s mentor was R. C. Lyman, an American psychiatrist. After getting his medical degree, in 1934 Ling developed a neurology and psychiatry unit at another hospital in the city of Changsha. By the 1950s, Ling had become dean of the training hospital, now called the Hunan Medical College. His psychiatry unit had 25 beds and a large outpatient clinic. During this period, Ling advocated for the modernization of psychiatry across China, a gesture he would have every reason to regret a decade later.

Ling Ming-yu’s psychiatry program at Changsa came under severe criticism and stigma with the arrival of the Cultural Revolution. The pressure was so severe that of six senior psychiatric faculty, two of them committed suicide. Ling was demoted, not allowed to teach or practice psychiatry, and underwent demeaning “self-criticism and struggle” sessions, a device the government used to undermine and demoralize perceived dissidents.     

Other psychiatry programs in China faced equally withering criticism. Nanjing Psychiatric Hospital was condemned in no uncertain terms, largely based on the psychoanalytic orientation of its faculty. This was ironic, as many psychoanalysts in other parts of the world during this period espoused Marxist sympathies. The Chinese government was having none of it, rejecting such arguments as “a capitalist class hotch-potch of falsehoods” (Kleinman, 1986, p. 225).

The Repression of Chen Li

With the Cultural Revolution, the practice of psychology was essentially outlawed as a corrupting Western influence. On the so-called Gang of Four that spearheaded the disastrous shift in government policies, Yao Wenyuan was a literary critic who rose to power due to his radical appeals to intellectual and political purity within the communist movement. Yao was the leader most interested in decrying psychology as irredeemably classist.

As Chen Li would later summarize, Yao Wenyuan attacked the discipline of psychology in his writings for being “an idealistic and metaphysical method,” “anti-scientific in its methodology,” as well as being “not suitable to present-day needs.” Using Yao’s writings as justification, the political arm of the Cultural Revolution began their “inhuman brutalities” under the overarching slogan of “Thoroughly Crush Psychology.” (Brown, p. 153, 156)

Chen Li’s studies of childhood development came under fire for not sufficiently considering cultural context in learning. The government forced Chen Li out of his university post and saw to his demotion to elementary school teacher. They did this in an attempt to cause Chen to lose social status as a form of punishment. But Chen’s personal resilience shone through and both he and his students ended up enjoying his new role. As a result, frustrated officials reassigned Chen Li, by then in his sixties, to manual labor. Even that failed to break him.

Chen Li After the Cultural Revolution

Mao died in 1976. In relatively short order Mao’s widow and other Gang of Four members were arrested. The new political regime encouraged ties with the West and, by association, non-communist regimes. As a result, psychologists and psychiatrists were allowed to practice again and began to regain status and respect. The so-called Cultural Revolution was over. A more specific analysis of freedoms regained and remaining restrictive influences would require another article.

Chen Li wasted little time in crafting a devastating critique of the ideas of Yao Wenyuan, now safely imprisoned and serving a twenty year sentence. In a 1979 journal article, he and Wang Ancheng lambasted Yao as a “reactionary pen-pusher” and “a political charlatan without the slightest knowledge of psychology.” Chen Li declared that the “criminal havoc and destruction wreaked on psychology by the Gang of Four … must be thoroughly exposed and settled.” (Brown, p. 151, 155)

This was not primarily motivated by a sense of literary revenge, though it would have been understandable given all Chen Li endured. The psychologist understood that unless Yao Wenyuan’s ideology was totally dismantled, it might rise again in different form. Chen Li was careful to use copious references to Marx, Lenin and Mao himself to buttress his arguments.

Nonetheless Chen Li and Wang Ancheng still felt a need to genuflect to the new powers that be. They concluded their article extolling psychology’s bright future “under the glorious leadership and warm concern of our Party’s Central Committee.” (Brown, p. 156)

Freedom, as ever, was relative.

Chen Li survived the turmoil of the previous decade to return to academia. Subsequent modernization efforts in Chinese psychiatric care utilized one of his 1950s papers. And he was honored on his 100^th birthday for his contributions to his country. Sadly, not all of the victims of the Cultural Revolution were as fortunate.

For a look at another, more proactive and successful response to political oppression on the part of psychologies, you may be interested in reading about the practice of liberation psychology in Latin America.

Mark Carlson-Ghost

References

Blowers, G. H. (1998). Chen Li: China’s elder psychologist. History of Psychology, 1(4), 315-330.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1093-4510.1.4.315

Brown, L. B. (1981). Psychology in contemporary China. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Kleinman, A. (1986). Social origins of distress and disease: Depression, neurasthenia, and pain in modern China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.