Louise Sundararajan

The Chinese Notions of Harmony, With Special Focus on Implications for Cross-Cultural and Global Psychology

Harmony is a value that is frequently associated with China as much as love is with Christianity. In both cases, misconceptions abound. This article articulates the nuanced conceptualizations of harmony in classical Chinese texts for a two-fold purpose: first, to refute the tendency in cross-cultural psychology to equate harmony with uniformity and status quo; second, to derive from harmony a model of unity that has far reaching implications for the development of global psychology.

Echoes after Carl Rogers: "Reflective listening" revisited.

Abstract By means of an analysis based on Heideggers conceptualization of “authentic language,” this article shows that the Rogerian “reflective listening” is a “speech which maintains silence” and that the therapeutic potential of this “attending skill” lies not so much in its attending to the clients statements, as in its nourishing the silence in the latters voice. In particular, it demonstrates that “reflective listening” has the capacity to function as a therapeutic tautology, as a “negative discourse” which intends to “speak but say nothing,” and thereby recovers silence in the midst of “idle talk.” Ethical implications of this particular perspective on the Rogerian discourse are discussed.

Mind, Machine, and Creativity: An Artist's Perspective

Harold Cohen is a renowned painter who has developed a computer program, AARON, to create art. While AARON has been hailed as one of the most creative AI programs, Cohen consistently rejects the claims of machine creativity. Questioning the possibility for AI to model human creativity, Cohen suggests in so many words that the human mind takes a different route to creativity, a route that privileges the relational, rather than the computational, dimension of cognition. This unique perspective on the tangled web of mind, machine, and creativity is explored by an application of three relational models of the mind to an analysis of Cohens talks and writings, which are available on his website: www.aaronshome.com.

Indigenous Approaches to Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Mental Disorders

Indigenous psychology (IP) shares with critical health psychology a discontent with mainstream psychology and the endeavor to offer alternative formulations of health and illness. As an alternative to the individualistic framework of health in mainstream psychology, we propose a model of the self as a multilayered concentric system. For illustration, we present a variety of indigenous traditions, with special focus on the health-related beliefs and practices in India. Implications of this alternative model of culture and self for the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders are explored. Relevance of this framework to health psychology is discussed, with special focus on the DSM-V controversy, A. E. Kazdin’s call for health reform, and visions of hybridization in the global community.

Spiritual Transformation and Emotion: A Semiotic Analysis

The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce is proposed as a theoretical framework that can model more adequately than conventional theories in psychology the emotional transformations in cultural practices that rest squarely upon self-transcendence as the basis for healing. For illustration, the Peircean notion of the sign is applied to an analysis of spirit healing in Puerto Rico. Clinical implications for psychotherapy in general, and treatment for alexithymia in particular, will be explored.

Two Flavors of Aesthetic Tasting: Rasa and Savoring A Cross-Cultural Study With Implications for Psychology of Emotion

A comparative analysis suggested that two indigenous theories of aesthetic emotions, the Indian rasa and the Chinese notion of savoring, share in common the two defining characteristics of emotion refinement—detachment and self-reflexivity (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007), but that these two aesthetic traditions differ in ways that correspond to the ontological/epistemological divide between the ancient Greeks (and other Indo-European languages) and the Chinese as predicted by Nisbett (2003). Implications of this investigation for theory and research on emotions are discussed.

The hypnotic use of language — a Heideggerian interpretation

Abstract This paper shows that Heideggers theory of language has implications for our understanding of hypnosis. A Heideggerian interpretation of samples of trance inductions brings to light the fact that the hypnotic use of language differs from the everyday language in two major dimensions: in hypnosis, language “call” things into being, thus becoming “something more than a simple, practical means of communicating with others and a means of controlling nature” and in hypnosis, humans enter into a reversed relationship with language, a relationship in which it is language, rather than the hypnotist, that “speaks.”

Narratives of Suffering: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Two Yi Religious Communities in Southwest China

In China, there are 56 ethnic groups, among which Yi people are the seventh largest ethnic group who reside mainly in the most isolated and deprived regions. They are being marginalized with labels such as ‘AIDS/HIV,’ ‘drug addicts,’ ‘violent,’ ‘lazy’ and so on. This study adopted a psycholinguistic approach to examine cognitive processing of emotional information through an analysis of the narratives of suffering in two religious communities, Yi-Bimo and Yi-Christian, in Southwest China. It was predicted and found that in time of adversity, these two religious groups expressed their emotions differently in their narratives of suffering. The Yi-Bimo group tended to express their emotion through implicit codes such as talking about emotionally loaded events without naming their emotions, whereas the Yi-Christian group utilized a significantly more extensive lexicon of emotions. Their cognitive attribution of suffering was also shaped by their social ties and religious approaches. The Yi-Bimo group tended to rely on supernatural reasons to explain their suffering, whereas the Yi-Christian group made more use of internal attributions and life review. In terms of help-seeking methods, these two groups did not differ in their utilization of strong-ties relationship, but Yi-Christians included more weak ties as their resources. The Yi-Bimo utilized significantly more external interventions (e.g. rituals) than the Yi-Christian, while the latter utilized significantly more internal manipulations (e.g. prayer) than the former. In conclusion, as a cultural system, religion coevolves with the ecological niche and cognitive styles that have pervasive impact on the emotional expressions of the local community. * Author Note: Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting, China University of Political Sciences and Law, Beijing, China; Louise Sundararajan, Rochester, New York; Qingbo Huang, Institute of Population Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China. This paper is supported by Fuller Travis Research Initiative Grant on Psychology of Religion in China. Ethical approval was obtained through the first author’s institute. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting, 12, Jalan Lun, Sibu 96000, Sarawak, Malaysia. Tel: 1 (881) 053-3531; Email: racheltsk@cupl.edu.cn.

Patient as the other

Abstract The “Other” refers to that which is “absolutely other,” which, according to certain postmodern thinkers, signifies the radical difference and autonomy of our fellow humans. To approach the patient as the Other, then, is to accept him or her as someone who is ultimately inaccessible to my grasp, concealed from my truth, and withdrawn from my presence. Ethics of the Other poses manifold challenges to conventional patient care: a) it exposes the inherent violence against the Other, as is manifest in the pervasive rejection of absence/concealment, in psychiatric care; b) it demands consideration of alternative perspectives on absence/concealment; c) it demands a new paradigm of healing, a paradigm which focuses on care instead of cure, and which measures excellence in clinical practice in terms of humility and sensibility, instead of power and mastery.

Dwelling Poetically: A Heideggerian Interpretation of Ssu-K’ung T’ u’ s Poetics

According to Heidegger, the only (authentic) way for human beings to dwell, i.e. to “have their sojourn on earth,”1 is to dwell poetically.2 This Heideggerian tendency to see in poetry a paradigm of (authentic) human existence is by no means foreign to the Chinese tradition. A case in point is The Twenty-four Modes of Poetry (Erh-shih-ssu shih-p’in, or Shih-p’in for short) by a ninth century Chinese poet/critic, Ssu-K’ung T’u. This very influential work of literary criticism is “a set of twenty-four poems dividing poetry into different categories and illustrating these with vivid images.”3 The most striking feature about this work is its indirectness in terms of signification.