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The Worldviews of Healing Traditions in the East and West: Implications for Psychology of Religion

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Abstract

This article will compare the worldviews of psychotherapy traditions in Eastern and Western culture, particularly the therapeutic factors and principles indigenous to the Chinese culture. The author will first define the meaning of culture and psychotherapy from a postmodern anthropological approach. By referring to history and literature in the study of cultural psychology, a comparison will be made between the value systems lying behind therapeutic methods used in the East and West. This includes the worldviews on the body and mind, the self, mental health, relationship, community, healing, and spirituality. Lastly, a famous Chinese legend will be used as an example to illustrate how worldview differences between the East and West determine the goals and process of psychotherapy. It is hoped that psychology of religion would be sensitive to the underlying worldviews across different cultures, without imposing its definition of “mental health” and method of “healing,” as different religions embody different cultural traditions as well. It is argued that whether spirituality or religion is helpful to the wellbeing of local people, it should be defined by the local persons and expressed in their mother tongue. Hence a psychology of religion for Chinese people should respect its customs of healing and particular set of worldviews.

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Notes

  1. The Chinese refer to themselves as the descendants of “dragon,” which is a totem for China.

  2. Examples include koro (縮陽症), amok (狂殺症), and latah (驚神症). These pathologies observed in places outside the Western world are termed by psychiatrists as special mental illnesses that are particular to certain cultures.

  3. According to Dueck and Parsons (2004), the modernist viewpoint of culture can be traced to positivism and empiricism. However, postmodern anthropological viewpoints adopt a phenomenological perspective and philosophy, which includes the subjective experience of the cultural informants and encourages the emergence of cultural narratives. It values the thickness and particularism within the culture, rather than the universality across cultures.

  4. A Chinese idiom.

  5. For instance, Division 45 of the American Psychological Association is “Ethnic Minorities and Psychology,” which includes the African, Asian, and Hispanic American branches under its umbrella. All the branches have their major journals and representatives.

  6. Ling (1935): “But all these qualities may be summed up in the word mellowness. They are passive qualities, suggestive of calm and passive strength rather than as youthful vigor and romance. They suggest the qualities of a civilization built for strength and endurance rather than for progress and conquest. For it is a civilization which enables man to find peace under any circumstance, and when a man is at peace with himself, he cannot understand the youthful enthusiasm for progress and reform.” (Chapter 2, para 5)

  7. The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars (二十四孝 èrshísì xiào) is a classic text of Confucian filial piety written by Guō Jūjìng, a scholar of the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368).

  8. A Chinese idiom

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Correspondence to Rachel Sing Kiat Ting.

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Ting, R.S.K. The Worldviews of Healing Traditions in the East and West: Implications for Psychology of Religion. Pastoral Psychol 61, 759–782 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-012-0439-y

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