Lessons in Supervision

Western concepts of supervision were unknown in China, where supervision is more about being told what one has done right or wrong. The effort to create supervision as a reflective space was one of the most foreign ideas that we brought to the training program. Our struggles with them at the boundaries of how the therapy groups were to be organized and run revealed some vast differences in our assumptions. They live in an authoritarian political culture where the system can always be gamed. We presented a conceptual model where boundary violations are possible but always costly in terms of the therapy. The need to think things through and reason to clinical decisions was conceptually and practically strange to them. Initially they tried to do exactly what they thought we told them to do or exactly what they had seen us doing. This chapter details how the Chinese learned how to learn from our Western model of teaching.

There Is No Sex in China—and Other Misunderstandings

This chapter details some of the interactions with Chinese students during the training sessions. It looks closely at the kinds of misunderstandings that occurred and the difficulties as well as possibilities of resolving them. There were differences in how sexuality and sensuality are experienced and talked about and the freedom to openly discuss these matters seemed highly unusual to them. Groups struggled with the meaning of masculinity and its relationship to vulnerability. There was also much striving for perfection and psychological work on whether one had to have had perfect parents in order to grow up. Throughout was the students effort to learn to do therapy through application of principles rather than imitation.

Western Psychotherapy in an Eastern Context

This chapter reviews the history of psychotherapy in China and the gradual opening to Western ideas about psychotherapy. It details the difficulty of getting a Western mind around what Chinese therapists thought was psychotherapy and the ways in which their understandings only became accessible through working together. Translating the concepts into action, not just language, revealed the points of cultural collision. A workshop and a process group illuminated our shared humanity. A decision about how the recording of the process group was to be used, however, unearthed differing fundamental assumptions about privacy and piracy.

The Good Witch

The Chinese propensity to idealize led them to construe the author as a “Good Witch.” When the author seemed to transform people through her teaching and therapy demonstrations, some people thought she was performing something magical. Rather than learning about therapy technique or conceptualization, they set about trying to get her to magically transform them. These responses reflected the complicated dynamics of idealization and dependency. The didactic effort was to move the students towards self-confidence autonomy, but this was complicated by their relative unfamiliarity with being propelled towards autonomy in their personal histories. The challenge was resolving these issues so that the Chinese could assume control of the training program.

Robin—My Gateway, Guide, Ears, and Voice in China

This chapter is an intense portrait of the Chinese interpreter with some reflections on the slipperiness of language between the two cultures. The close relationship that developed between the author and the interpreter also revealed more nuanced aspects of cultural difference that could be narrated from different perspectives. When the interpreter came to a conference in the United States, subtle cultural differences became apparent in what she viewed as unusual. From her perspective, Americans seemed uncurious about people from China. In Mandarin, there is no word for “the Other.” China is largely an ethnically homogenous society and Western approaches to diversity are hard to understand.

Alice in Wonderland

This chapter details the author’s interactions with the wider Chinese society and her efforts to understand what she saw and experienced. She tried to understand Chinese history through Chinese eyes, putting aside her Western view. Authentic Chinese food was new to her and she was impressed by Beijing as an ultramodern city. A visit to a Chinese home gave her a view of Chinese family life. The author learned that “speaking English” has levels and that one can read English without knowing how it sounds. She also came to appreciate the beautiful sound of the erhu, a musical instrument that she hadn’t previously encountered.

The Good Witch Tries to Say Goodbye

This chapter discusses the systemic issues around leaving in-person involvement in the training program. It offers detailed stories of some of the incidents that occurred.

The Political Is Personal

The author tried to make sense of the Chinese political world from their point of view. Their narrative of Chinese history was unlike any she had ever encountered and this chapter details her effort to empathically understand how they viewed the world, in particular how they related to democratic ideas. Chinese fears of chaos and disunity, born of their history, are central to their political organization. As the author tried to find common philosophical ground with the Chinese students, they labelled her a Daoist. They understood her approach to therapy as counseling action through inaction and stressing values of compassion, moderation, and humility, all quite similar to Daoist teaching.

Group Therapy and Healing in China

This chapter reflects on what Chinese therapy students learned in the workshops. Predominant themes of learning involved self-expression, tolerance of feelings, and maintenance of personal boundaries. In China, the expectations for success are intense, and being strong means bearing the load without complaint and with little or no emotional support. simple emotional expression. Many of the patients had been suppressing grievance and pain for years, unable to disclose what had happened to them for fear of being judged or misunderstood. In the groups, the simple act of releasing this pain and receiving the support and affection of others was healing. It required, of course, a great deal of group cohesion and trust for them to be able to do this. The greater openness they felt in the group transferred very often to their lives. Discovering their own wishes and feelings was a powerful impetus to the group members’ emotional growth. As therapists, though, holding boundaries felt to them like displeasing people.

Narrative and Foundational Assumptions

This chapter describes a training program in China involving working intimately with Chinese therapists in quite revealing experiential groups over ten years. The author learned that whatever she could tell about her experiences would be infiltrated by her own Western culture. Her struggle was to bring her embeddedness in a Western perspective into narrative contact with an Eastern, quite different, set of foundational assumptions about life and human relationships. Narrative is always rooted in culture-bound worldviews but can also be a way of bridging them. Culture can only be told in storied form and involves the intersection of self and other. Cross-cultural knowing of the Other is a humbling experience.