Professor Yang Pei Participating in the First “Traditional Culture and Psychotherapy” Forum

Professor Yang Pei of the Dharma Drum University Preparatory Office was invited to attend the first “Traditional Culture and Psychotherapy” Forum held at Shijia Zhuang City in Hebei Province in China. The Shijia Zhuang Juvenile Mental Health Center and the Integrated Mental Organization jointly held the forum, and planned to hold it once every year, each time with different topics of discussion. The theme this time is “Culture, Emotion, and Psychotherapy” with the purpose of discovering the generation and development of humanities and lore from the cultural and psychological aspects of humanity and culture. The forum commenced on November 26, lasted for three days, and completed on November 28.

The Chinese culture extended over 5000 years, and the vast Chinese culture encompassed infinite wisdom. Therefore, the forum mainly aims to search the various thoughts related to psychotherapy from the abundant resource materials on the studies of ancient Chinese civilization, to find out the factors of human mental problems and their characteristics, providing them for further use in modern psychotherapy. 

This forum invited famous psychological experts and professionals engaged in actual practice in various fields of psychological analysis, family therapy, studies on behavior research, mental analysis, humanistic therapy, etc. They all gathered at Shijia Zhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei Province to share their achievements in their individual fields of research. During the forum, the participants presented the fruitful results in counseling, and other fields of psychotherapy in contemporary China through dynamic methods such as reports on special topics, workshops, case studies, etc.

Professor Yang Pei was the only representative from Taiwan participating in this forum. Her topic presented in the forum was the special report on “Chan Meditation and Mental Health”. The main point of the report was: “Chan culture is one of the important links in Chinese culture. In the long history of Chan meditation, it provided the Chinese people with the theory and methods of settling the body and establishing one’s life. Up to the present, although the term of mental health was originated in the West, the methods of settling the body and mind are commonly shared in human culture. How does “Chan meditation” connect with modern people in settling their body and mind in contemporary society? And how does it initiate the dynamic mechanism of “transformation” and “transcendence” based on Chinese traditional culture in the psychotherapy context?” Professor Yang Pei hoped all the psychotherapy workers could find their focal point within one’s own cultural networks in the process of searching for the ideal of life. She also encouraged all participants to understand what exactly is the ideal that one is pursuing, have courage to change the current situation, and thus create a new life experience. 

 In addition, Professor Yang Pei participated in the other agendas, such as the dialogue and discussion of “The Clash and Conflict of Western Therapy and Chinese Philosophical Thoughts”. In the PK cases from different schools, she engaged in dialogue with the expert scholars from China, Tang Denghua, Fang Xin, Wu Heming, etc, regarding psychological analysis, cognitive behavior, and the Satir Model in family therapy. In the summit forum, she even exchanged with expert scholars Sheng Xiao Chun, Liu Dan, Liu Tienjun on the topic “Chinese Culture and Psychotherapy”.  In the agenda on the last day, she assumed the host for the topic “Analyzing Family Culture and its Influences from People’s Names”, presented by Sheng Xiao Chun.  (Organized by Huang Shih-Ting)