Help-seekers, Callers and Clients

Embodied History in China's psy-boom

Bibliographic Data

ID2288970
AuthorsB Bram (0000-0002-1524-5858, School of Overseas and Global Area Studies Oxford University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume34
Issue2
Pages286-300
Publication date2020-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12578
PMID32544293
OpenAlexW3034649990
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited25

Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. They all work in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. China is in the midst of what scholars call the "psy-boom." This is generally defined as the rapid rise in psychological services in the country. Rather than understanding this rise as a linear phenomenon or one in which the understanding of psychology and its uses are universally shared by all practitioners, these three therapists show how haphazard and staggered the uptake in psychological services has been. They also show how the different historical contexts and shifting qualification standards that defined their generation of the psy-boom in turn shaped their therapeutic practice. The study uses Bourdieu's concept of the habitus to show how the embodied history of China's psy-boom impacts the practice of counselling and understanding of psychology

Baby boom · Boom · China · Cultural capital · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Habitus · Political science · Population · Seekers · Social science · Sociology · Engineering · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

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