Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520344181)

The breathless pace of China's economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people's inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. This book offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding "inner revolution" is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety--broadly construed in both medical and social terms--has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

Author: Li Zhang
ISBN-10: 0520344189
ISBN-13: 9780520344181
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 08/04/2020
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d