Healthy Minds, Compliant Citizens: The Politics of "Mental Hygiene" in Republican China, 1928–1937

The power within: Mass media, scientific entertainment, and the introduction of psychical research into China, 1900–1920

“…The future of China seemed hopeless, and to many reformers, the creation of a “new‐citizen” ( xinmin ) and “new‐nation” ( xinguo ) required a thorough spiritual revolution ( gexin ) of the Chinese people (Yu, 1932b). While some turned to anarchism, communism, eugenics, Buddhism, or psychoanalysis (Baum, 2017; Huang, 2015; Zarrow, 2005; Zhang, 1992), others hailed psychical research as the ideal tool for social change. Reconciling material and mental realities, it was celebrated as an advanced form of science that no longer relegated the psychical to positions of inferiority and backwardness.…”

“…Children featured prominently in such literary works. Not only were they believed to be among the most suggestible subjects, but they also represented the future of the country and its only hope for survival—a widespread feeling in early‐20th‐century China (Baum, 2017). Moreover, hypnotism promised not only to heal illnesses of the mind and body but also improve moral and civic education just as it had done in Japan (Wu, 2019).…”

An international teamwork: Mental hygiene in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s.

“…In addition, psychologists with a behaviorist orientation, as Baum (2015) pointed out, were keen to align themselves with the Nationalist project of state-building. The establishment of the short-lived National Association of Mental Hygiene in 1936, through the initiative of a group of psychologists at China’s most important psychological department at the National Central University in Nanjing, demonstrates this utilitarian and Nationalist orientation (Baum, in press). Nevertheless, given its violent and turbulent history, Republican China did not provide a favorable opportunity for either psy sciences or mental health institutions to develop on any large scale.…”

“…More importantly, a new account of mental hygiene in late Republican Shanghai provides an opportunity to revisit the history of psychiatry and psy sciences in China. Commentators have so far framed this history in relation to knowledge transfer (Pearson, 2014; Szto, 2002), nation and society building (Baum, 2015, in press), social control (Ma, 2014), professional and political commitments (Blowers, Cheung, & Ru, 2009; Blowers & Wang, 2014; Wang, 2016), and other interesting themes. Most of the aforementioned studies tend to revolve around the professional and social interests of Chinese mental hygienists or trace their academic lineage to Western and Japanese psychiatric and psychological ideas.…”