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Remoulding the Chinese mind : mental hygiene promotion in Republican Shanghai
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Ma, Jinping (2019) Remoulding the Chinese mind : mental hygiene promotion in Republican Shanghai. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3474602~S15
Abstract
In this thesis, I uncover the history of the Mental Hygiene Movement in Republican Shanghai. I show that it had a far-reaching role to play in the city, promoting mental hygiene throughout China and influencing other cities like Canton, Peking, and Chongqing. This movement could be dated from the 1910s but achieved a dramatic expansion in the 1930s before being attenuated in warfare in the 1940s and coming to an end with the foundation of the PRC. Chinese intellectuals and foreign missionaries and experts, despite their different aims, jointly promoted this movement, and it reached out to the Chinese populace through the public media. Mental hygiene arose from the conjuncture of a new understanding toward the mind and mental problems, the establishment of asylums and psychiatric hospitals, new tools of mass publicity available to the government and a range of non-governmental institutes. In addition, development in Shanghai was powerfully shaped by politics and ideology. Initially, mental hygiene emerged in relation to a colonial aim of regulating the unwanted on streets and creating public hygiene and order. Subsequently, Shanghai would increasingly see a strong revolutionary and political influence in remoulding the ‘national’ mind. In particular, nationalism and modernism were powerful factors in development. More generally, the progressive ideology of scienfication lay behind the development of disciplines and clinics.
Shanghai was part of the international history of mental hygiene, but it also demonstrates the importance of locality. For both Chinese governments and the populace, the significance of the Mental Hygiene Movement was more symbolic than pragmatic. The ideological project of remoulding the mind outweighed medical research and the treatment of mental illnesses. I argue that the reason psychiatric policies were not facilitated in China on a large scale was due to the lack of a powerful government force. The acceptance of mind remoulding and self-improvement, however, was more pervasive. One reason for this was that it benefited from the inheritance of a tradition of self-introspection. The Chinese Mental Hygiene movement, therefore, reflected novelty and Western influence but also a convention. Intellectual radicalism was questioned in the process of popularisation and was modified to become more pragmatic in line with everyday practices. Traditional thinking about the mind, while under fierce critique from the modernisers, showed resilience in compromising and integrating new knowledge and ideologies.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Mental health -- Shanghai (China) -- History -- 20th century, Shanghai (China) -- History -- 20th century, Medicine -- Shanghai (China) -- History -- 20th century | ||||
Official Date: | September 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of History | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Thomson, Mathew ; Gerritsen, Anne | ||||
Extent: | xvi, 255 leaves : 1 photograph, 3 maps. | ||||
Language: | eng |
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