From the mid-19th century to the first few decades of the 20th century, the critique of traditional families in China gained momentum from various sources. Apart from its social, political, and feminist critiques, different forms of family were subjected to psychiatric and psychological analyses. Historians have underlined the historical contexts in which the family became the subject of medical and psychiatric attention. However, the ways in which families were conceptualized in Republican China as the cause of mental and emotional disorders have yet to be clarified systematically. By focusing on psychiatric and psychological discussions of the dysfunction of families and society and its impact on mental health, the current work looks into the ways in which Chinese psy scientists interpreted Western theories and Chinese social reality in connection with the contemporary debates about national reform and scientific modernity. The present study shows that, while firmly believing in scientific professionalism, these psy experts were keen followers of May Fourth radicals in problematizing traditional morality and social structure and proposing new methods of self-management.
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Between the mid-19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, the Chinese family structure faced several waves of criticism. Christianity, traditional virtues, anarchism, liberalism, and individualism were used by revolutionaries and reformers of dissimilar social and political persuasions to unravel and break from the fetters of conventionalism (Hung Citation2003). In one of the projects of social and national reforms at the turn of the century, Chang Tai-yan (章太炎) asserted that China’s transformation could only be possible through the liberation of its people from institutions such as families, clans, and society (Wang Citation2003: 111–132). Feminists of different stripes insisted that the eradication of traditional morality, especially female liberation from male dominance, was essential to radical social and political change (Zarrow Citation1990: 130–155). At the height of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, Fu Ssu-nian (傅斯年) famously voiced a common sentiment that the family was “the source of all evils,” stressing its invasion of autonomy and restriction of individuality (Fu Citation1919; Wang Citation2000). In the same year, the then 26-year-old Mao Zedong (Citation1919) wrote a series of articles on Hunan Province’s version of Dagong Bao (大公報), criticizing the suppression of individuality and free will of young men and women by arranged marriages. Similarly, the patriarchal household structure was often the target of assault in contemporary novels, including Ba Jin’s Family (Jia), which delineated the deadly clashes between oppressive traditional sociocultural norms and social reformist aspirations (Kaldis Citation2003). The tide of criticism also ramified into an array of debates concerning the abolition of family and marriage in the first half of the 20th century (Chen Citation2015).
