Die Zeit feature article about me published July 3, 2014

[Karl Henning]

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[Karl Henning]

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[Karl Henning]

And Paul's new av

[springrite]

Thanks, Karl!

[Karl Henning]

Glad to be of help, mon cher!

[springrite]

Finally available online:

http://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/2014/28/psychotherapie-peking

[Jo498]

So honestly, are these your CDs or the collection of a friend (as is insinuated in the article), in any case: nice collection!

[Karl Henning]

Bravo!

[springrite]

So honestly, are these your CDs or the collection of a friend (as is insinuated in the article), in any case: nice collection!

A friend's place, used for a therapy session. But our collection look similar, both about 3500 CDs, covering an entire wall.

[springrite]

Alright, the avatar shows a portion of my collection. Yes, those are LPs on top, but they are there for decoration, really. The rest are stored elsewhere.

[snyprrr]

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"Stay strong. Don't let snyprrr and james get to you."

[Karl Henning]

"Stay strong. Don't let snyprrr and james get to you."

"pfffff"

[snyprrr]

All potential for humore is lost with the pic/caption.

[springrite]

Here is a rough translation

The world on the couch
China's next revolution

Deprived parents, depressive Rich: How Paul Yin the therapist helps his fellow Chinese back to peace in the breakneck fast changing country that refuses to stop. By Angela Köckritz


He runs through the psychedelic patterned carpet of a hotel in the north of Beijing. A man of 50 years, spiky hair, Arsenal scarf, always on the move, new projects, ideas that will advance forward. His step is full of tension, equal to how his performance begins. "Yin Pu," said his classmate when he was young, "you will someday be a big time movie star." But Yin Pu, who calls himself Paul in English, became a therapist.

Forty parents are waiting for him there in the seminar hall, Chinese middle class; some have brought their children. There are parents who actually want to space their children, were it not for this oppressive pressure of competition. So many other children and so many other parents succumbed to the pressure and chauffeured her child from one tutoring session to the next. Two parents, four grandparents, six times the hopes, fears, obsessions, and all are focused on a single child – with every family having only one child, what if my child is left behind?

"Grow With Your Child" is the title of Paul's seminar. He jumps on the stage, and once on stage, he is a high-powered machine. He jumps, pulls the arms up, his natural stage presence, physical and vocal virtuosity in full swing. Then, a dramatic pause. "I have not experienced a single rebellious child, but I have seen lots of rebellious parents." His thoughts are often revolutionary in China, where Confucian writings on "filial piety" once praised the boy naked in front of the parents' bed lies down so that the mosquitoes suck his blood and not theirs. But Paul says a child has within his a natural path to development, which includes needing to develop independent thoughts and defend his opinion as a teen. That is a path that one needs to take in order to become independent mature adults. Parents who could not accept that, were the true rebels: "They rebel against nature." He looks sternly: "Do not put the dream that you could not meet yourself on the weak shoulders of your child."

"In China," said Paul after the lecture, "many parents make their children a slave of their own dreams and ambitions in the name of love. You can only free these children by reaching and helping the parents." He is sitting in the hotel restaurant, the sun lights up his face. He is a complex yet congruent person, with a passion for classical music, Buddhism and quantum physics. He had worked in many fields. Sometimes he cries in front of his clients, too, because he wants to show them that it's okay to show his feelings. This is very unusual for a Chinese man, but Paul also comes from an exceptional family. Even the grandmother rebelled against the foot binding and smoked since she was a teen.

When her grandchildren came to the U.S. at 16, she gave him some advice on the way: "Stay for 20 years. If in the end you come back wounded, penniless, with nothing of note accomplished, in my eyes you are then a MAN, because that's how a true man should live. Be an adventurer, no matter what happens. "Paul studied psychology in California, served the exiles of the Tiananmen movement as a press spokesman until he, disappointed by politicians, retired. He returned to China in 2003 during the SARS epidemic to work as a volunteer.

It should be a short visit, but he stayed, "because of the need for psychological help was just overwhelming." Finding a good psychologist in China, even in the major cities, can be incredibly challenging. In the rural areas, it is as good as hopeless. A Beijing girlfriend has been investigating for a good therapist to treat her depression without success. Eventually she tried "provisional cure" in a very Chinese way: You buy an apartment, "and hope time does the trick."

Paul travels with his lectures all over the country. Sometimes he speaks to farmers in villages, then in front of generals who sit like statues. Troubled children and overburdened parents have entrusted to him in therapy sessions, love-hungry teens and traumatized old, rich and poor all seeks his help. Paul is a cartographer of modern Chinese soul, one who travels this road untaken to measure its shoals and heights in order to save every soul.

Much has been written about the Chinese economic miracle, little about what it does to the soul. Hardly any country has fundamental changed in recent decades as China. It affects everyone, from villages to large cities, farmers to factory workers, poor to rich. The whole country is in motion, no, in sprint! Hardly a Chinese is the house where he grew up, find it as it once was. A field turns into a factory, a factory to a new apartment district. "It's like people would in live in a hotel for 30 years and change her hotel room every day," says Paul. "They feel insecure, no matter how much money they have in their account."

Paul does not have his own practice. He treats people where he can meet them and where they can be comfortable, be it at home, at Starbucks or at a teahouse.  Sometimes he rents a room in a hospital. Every now and then he uses the elegant bachelor apartment of a friend. There, Paul sits on a Wednesday afternoon on the couch. Next to him, a young director who is viewed by everyone from the outside as leading a successful life: career, woman, great apartment, and nice car.

But the emotion he feels most often is not happiness but anger. Every morning in the elevator, he sees the advertising on walls: car, apartment, honeymoon. Buy! Invest! Now! Don't miss the chance! The peers are all doing the same. "It is all about money. They talk about almost nothing else. There's no talk about anything spiritual, no thoughts, ideas, believes, and no one seem to have a position on anything. And the faces, they lack even basic genuine expression." They do not talk about their true feelings, as he never talks about his. But he often has sudden burst of anger coming out of nowhere, sometimes towards the parking attendants, and sometimes the apartment security, or a waiter. There is always a voice that says: You shouldn't. Sometimes the director does not go for days out of the house so as not to be angry.

Paul tried to find the source of his anger. Descending into the past of the director, he suddenly recalled when he was in elementary school, he had a teacher who encouraged him initially, but when his results kept getting worse, the teacher began to dislike him, even to the point of distain. When he had to transfer to another school because of a family move, the teacher said to the class: "Please applaud and rejoice over this good news." He stood there, his head bowed, and the humiliation of applause rained upon him. In middle school, one day there was an assignment: everyone was to write an essay exposing other classmates' dirty laundry that only you knew about. If you knew about it but did not reveal it, and others did, and they mentioned you as someone who also knew, you'd be punished. You should denounce each other, and betray your friends, buddies, and classmates. "At that time I understood," says the director: "Society is treason."

To understand where this feeling has its roots, you have to travel with Paul from the present to the past. We first drove down a six-lane road, past the office buildings, the glittering world of the new Beijing. Then he turns into an alley. Behind the skyscrapers another world opens up: the old Beijing, with single-story courtyard houses, curved roofs, grandmothers, the talk on the street. Here is where Paul grew up. Set in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

In 1966, Mao Zedong set off a political witch-hunt that took ten years and cost countless lives. Red Guards marauding through towns and villages, the betrayal in public and denunciation was commonplace. Students revealed their teachers, workers their bosses, husbands their wives, children their parents. Every little thing were determined and controlled: who you loved, what books they read, what you believed. There could be only one loyalty, and that was the Great Chairman.

Mao destroyed the trust that holds together a society. It is still lacking today. "It was not only the cultural revolution," says Paul, "the 20th century in China is a history of political campaigns. Among Warlords, in wars or civil wars, as well as political upheavals, trust could be life-threatening." His family also got into the vortex of politics. His parents, both history teachers, were locked up by their students at school. But sometimes, mom would be released for a few hours late at night. He'd notice it the next morning when freshly cooked meals would suddenly appear on the table.

Mao wanted to create a radically new man, one who not only obeyed, but totally brainwashed in thoughts and even in feeling. Everything that could be a different influence had to be destroyed: religion and tradition, architecture and customs, "reactionary" family ties. "Many then bought the new socialist values," says Paul. But that uniformity only lasted a short time. After Mao came the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, as China embraced capitalism with him. Again, the country experienced a radical change in values. As China changed everyday, value changed everyday. What was wrong yesterday became right today. What is wrong today may become everyone's collective goal tomorrow. The wounds of the Cultural Revolution were never healed. The party offered to their people a chance for material riches, but spiritually, everyone's in oblivion.

In no time in history, says Paul, had the Chinese experienced such values fractures. Many young Chinese sought sense, but no one is there to help them. "The faith of the boys is like a collection of quotations. A line from Einstein, a passage from The Pope, and a few from Nietzsche or Kafka. But the quotes are not connected, have no nucleus." The same is true of the traditional culture, be it calligraphy, Confucianism, Taoism, Painting, Feng Shui or the tea culture. "They learn how to hold a teacup, can perform all the correct steps, but they know nothing of the values behind it. They that are the essence."

The values vacuum makes the transition of the country breathless, it brings insatiable desires and along with it, fears and uncertainty. Because there's nothing left to exert restraint or to protect from the unknown. "In the absence of culture and spiritual guide acting like anchor, the primitive side of existence comes to the fore, such as greed." Money is the biggest trap. Of all that he had treated the newly rich were perhaps the most unfortunate: "Before one is rich, he can always say to himself that he will be happy once he becomes rich. But when he has money but is still not happy, he has nowhere to go. There is no way out. It is the end of hope."

People wanted to leave the past behind and rush into the future, "but ultimately, all the changes, even the good ones, are always imposed upon them from above. It has been that way for thousands of years. Chinese do many things, because they have no other choice. Even when certain things seems to be improving, there is a sense of passivity and helplessness." Even though Paul despises politics,  that makes Paul's work basically very political, because he is shaking the very place where authoritarianism is anchored.

In China, everyone is working on the illusion of a great harmony. But if harmony is understood as everyone appearing to think the same, it will ultimately fail." Paul puts his hope in the young Chinese in the post-1990 generation. Elders are full of complaints and worries about this generation of youngsters who would not obey the elders, refuses to compromise, quits his job when he dislikes the authority, makes his own decision on relationships and marriage, and does not follow society's protocols. "Most of society may see them as a pain in the ass. They may be immature. But at least," says Paul, "They are making decisions for themselves. They have learned to say no where for thousands of years people have failed to do so. This is progress. In them lies China's hope."

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, Paul; greatly enjoyed reading this, and will read it again.