Barclay Bram

University of Oxford, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Graduate Student

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Barclay Bram is a Dphil Candidate at Oxford University's School of Overseas and Global Area Studies. He is conducting ethnographic research into mental health in china. He is also a photojournalist whose work has appeared for Granta, the LRB, the FT, Wired and elsewhere. He was shortlisted for the FT/Bodley Head Essay Prize 2019

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Papers by Barclay Bram

Strong Women and Ambivalent Success: The Gendered Dynamics of China's Psy‐Boom

Ethos, Feb 24, 2022

In China, there is a “psy‐boom,” which is understood as the rapid increase in the provision of ps... more In China, there is a “psy‐boom,” which is understood as the rapid increase in the provision of psychological services and interest in psychological concepts since the initiation of market reforms. This is a heavily gendered phenomenon. This paper seeks to explore why women are drawn into the psy‐boom and what sustains their participation in it. Following a year of fieldwork engaging in various forms of psychotherapy training in the city of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province, China, the paper looks in detail at three women who engage in the psy‐boom. The psy‐boom creates a space for these women to try to articulate complex and often competing desires thrown up by the gendered circumstances in which they find themselves. The paper shows how each of these three women draws on their various engagements with the psy‐boom to try to formulate and actualize their visions of the good life.

Help‐seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China's psy‐boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Jun 1, 2020

Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. ... more Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. They all work in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. China is in the midst of what scholars call the &quot;psy-boom.&quot; This is generally defined as the rapid rise in psychological services in the country. Rather than understanding this rise as a linear phenomenon or one in which the understanding of psychology and its uses are universally shared by all practitioners, these three therapists show how haphazard and staggered the uptake in psychological services has been. They also show how the different historical contexts and shifting qualification standards that defined their generation of the psy-boom in turn shaped their therapeutic practice. The study uses Bourdieu&#39;s concept of the habitus to show how the embodied history of China&#39;s psy-boom impacts the practice of counselling and understanding of psychology. [psychology, habitus, China, practice] Ms. Liu is a psychological counselor in the provincial capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu, in southwest China. Every Tuesday evening, Ms. Liu hosts a reading group in her office. Fourteen people are gathered around her in a circle, all with a translated copy of Judith Beck&#39;s (2011) Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond open in their laps. With the exception of the foreign anthropologist, they are all women. The youngest are a pair of college students who have come together; they are 19 and 20 respectively. The rest are in their 30s or older. Three are professional counselors, like Ms. Liu, and have come to brush up their skills. The others are hobbyists, those who have an interest in psychological concepts and who might be flirting with the idea of a career change but have not made substantive moves in that direction. Ms. Liu mediates the conversation, directs who should read what passage, and then draws from case histories to illuminate her examples. She sits in an armchair below a poster that says Without wind and rain the earth wouldn&#39;t have spring. Among the professional counselors is Ms. Wen, who is in her early 30s. At various moments in the evening, she subtly shakes her head at something that Ms. Liu says 286

Strong Women and Ambivalent Success: The Gendered Dynamics of China's Psy‐Boom

Ethos, 2022

At the Jianchuan Chongqing

London Review of Books, 2018

Building the skill of happiness: WeChat’s role in the promotion of mental health in China

Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques

China is in the midst of a “psy-boom” as the use of psychological services and interest in psycho... more China is in the midst of a “psy-boom” as the use of psychological services and interest in psychology and psychologically informed personal development tools are seeing a meteoric rise. One of the key drivers of this trend has been the innovative use of social media tools like WeChat by psychological service providers to both attract consumers and deliver products. This paper argues that online psychological service provision via WeChat constitutes a very literal “technology of the self” in the way that the content published explicitly tells consumers that a better, healthier and happier self is within reach. For a fee these companies help provide people with psychological toolkits that they use to shape their understanding of the ways they can heal themselves and others.

Help‐seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China's psy‐boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2020

Troubling emotions in China’s psy-boom

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021

The rise of psychological counseling, 心理咨询, as part of China's unfolding psy-boom has brought wit... more The rise of psychological counseling, 心理咨询, as part of China's unfolding psy-boom has brought with it a new discourse of distress. In particular, this article will look at the concept of 心理困扰/困惑, which I translate as "psychological troubles." By identifying psychological troubles the psy-boom is providing a discursive space for people in China to discuss issues that distress them which sits in between the medicalized realm of DSM-category illnesses like depression and the language of activism and social justice. This ethnography shows how psychological troubles are understood by some therapists as "blockages" to freely flowing emotions. Drawing on the scholarship of affective contagion, a link is drawn between the unsticking of emotions within persons and the inability of freely flowing emotions to "stick" to wider social issues due to the constraints placed on civil society and free speech by the Chinese Communist Party. The apolitical and nonmedicalized language of the psy-boom is, therefore, a reflection of the social function of this particular form of therapeutic care.

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At the Jianchuan Chongqing

A Time of Lost Gods: Mediumship, Madness, and the Ghost after Mao. Emily Ng, Oakland: University of California Press, 2020, 224 pp

Help-seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China’s psy-boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2020

Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. ... more Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. They all work in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. China is in the midst of what scholars call the "psy-boom." This is generally defined as the rapid rise in psychological services in the country. Rather than understanding this rise as a linear phenomenon or one in which the understanding of psychology and its uses are universally shared by all practitioners, these three therapists show how haphazard and staggered the uptake in psychological services has been. They also show how the different historical contexts and shifting qualification standards that defined their generation of the psy-boom in turn shaped their therapeutic practice. The study uses Bourdieu's concept of the habitus to show how the embodied history of China's psy-boom impacts the practice of counselling and understanding of psychology. [psychology, habitus, China, practice] Ms. Liu is a psychological counselor in the provincial capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu, in southwest China. Every Tuesday evening, Ms. Liu hosts a reading group in her office. Fourteen people are gathered around her in a circle, all with a translated copy of Judith Beck's (2011) Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond open in their laps. With the exception of the foreign anthropologist, they are all women. The youngest are a pair of college students who have come together; they are 19 and 20 respectively. The rest are in their 30s or older. Three are professional counselors, like Ms. Liu, and have come to brush up their skills. The others are hobbyists, those who have an interest in psychological concepts and who might be flirting with the idea of a career change but have not made substantive moves in that direction. Ms. Liu mediates the conversation, directs who should read what passage, and then draws from case histories to illuminate her examples. She sits in an armchair below a poster that says Without wind and rain the earth wouldn't have spring. Among the professional counselors is Ms. Wen, who is in her early 30s. At various moments in the evening, she subtly shakes her head at something that Ms. Liu says 286

Download

Strong Women and Ambivalent Success: The Gendered Dynamics of China's Psy‐Boom

Ethos, Feb 24, 2022

Help‐seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China's psy‐boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Jun 1, 2020

Strong Women and Ambivalent Success: The Gendered Dynamics of China's Psy‐Boom

Ethos, 2022

At the Jianchuan Chongqing

London Review of Books, 2018

Building the skill of happiness: WeChat’s role in the promotion of mental health in China

Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques

Help‐seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China's psy‐boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2020

Troubling emotions in China’s psy-boom

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021

Download

At the Jianchuan Chongqing

A Time of Lost Gods: Mediumship, Madness, and the Ghost after Mao. Emily Ng, Oakland: University of California Press, 2020, 224 pp

Help-seekers, Callers and Clients: Embodied History in China’s psy-boom

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2020

Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. ... more Ms. Zhou, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Wen represent three generations of psychological counselors in China. They all work in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. China is in the midst of what scholars call the "psy-boom." This is generally defined as the rapid rise in psychological services in the country. Rather than understanding this rise as a linear phenomenon or one in which the understanding of psychology and its uses are universally shared by all practitioners, these three therapists show how haphazard and staggered the uptake in psychological services has been. They also show how the different historical contexts and shifting qualification standards that defined their generation of the psy-boom in turn shaped their therapeutic practice. The study uses Bourdieu's concept of the habitus to show how the embodied history of China's psy-boom impacts the practice of counselling and understanding of psychology. [psychology, habitus, China, practice] Ms. Liu is a psychological counselor in the provincial capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu, in southwest China. Every Tuesday evening, Ms. Liu hosts a reading group in her office. Fourteen people are gathered around her in a circle, all with a translated copy of Judith Beck's (2011) Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond open in their laps. With the exception of the foreign anthropologist, they are all women. The youngest are a pair of college students who have come together; they are 19 and 20 respectively. The rest are in their 30s or older. Three are professional counselors, like Ms. Liu, and have come to brush up their skills. The others are hobbyists, those who have an interest in psychological concepts and who might be flirting with the idea of a career change but have not made substantive moves in that direction. Ms. Liu mediates the conversation, directs who should read what passage, and then draws from case histories to illuminate her examples. She sits in an armchair below a poster that says Without wind and rain the earth wouldn't have spring. Among the professional counselors is Ms. Wen, who is in her early 30s. At various moments in the evening, she subtly shakes her head at something that Ms. Liu says 286

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Barclay Bram

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