Foundations of Chinese Psychotherapies

This book provides an overview of the foundations of Chinese psychotherapy, based on a full consideration of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist teachings. Serving as a reliable and practical guide to coping with life’s adversities, the book offers therapeutic techniques to guide clinical practice based on the potential mutual enrichment of these teachings and current psychotherapies, research, and practice. It aims to guide readers towards authentic, durable happiness with novel approaches to a variety of mental health problems.

Among the topics addressed:

Cultural heritages and mental health

Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist techniques for self-enlightenment psychotherapy

Psi mechanisms and related training models

Foundations of Chinese Psychotherapies combines modern clinical methods and traditional teachings to form a unique approach to mental health and well-being. It will be a valuable resource for mental health professionals and others who seek to intervene in a variety of mental health problems.

"A systematic introduction to indigenous Chinese psychotherapy is long overdue.Explicating human nature as envisioned by traditional Chinese thinkers, this book is a timely answer to the increasingly contested question of what it means to be human in an era when gene editing keeps tinkering nature’s design. "

Louise Sundararajan, Ph.D., Ed.D., Fellow of the American Psychological Association; Chair and founder of the Task Force on Indigenous Psychology.

"This is an important book. It builds on the work of K.-S. Yang and K.-K. Hwang in their hope for an indigenous Chinese psychology. This book is the next installment in that progression. The world-wide community of scholars needs to know what an indigenous psychology looks like that is sensitive to the insights of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. This book makes that contributionand it is my hope that it will be widely read."

Alvin Dueck, PhD, Distinguished Senior Professor of Psychology, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, USA

Foundations of Chinese Psychotherapies is a valuable introduction to how the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist traditions understand the human psyche, and in particular psychic abilities. Yung-Jong Shiah has a unique perspective on these topics, having been trained in both Eastern and Western traditions, and through his deep familiarity with how science has been used to study these intriguing topics. "

 Dean Radin MS PhD, Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences, USA and author Real Magic (2018) and other books.

Yung-Jong Shiah received his PhD in psychology from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. He is currently professor at Graduate Institution of Counseling Psychology and Rehabilitation Counseling of National Kaohsiung Normal University. He is a pioneer scholar and has devoted much of his professional career to linking Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism to psychology, psychotherapy, and science, with an aim to enhance mental health and well-being. He was supported by grants from Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, and Bial foundation. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on related issues in both Chinese and English. He was a full-time psychotherapist and director of counseling center in two universities in Taiwan (1997–2002). He is the secretary-general of Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association (2018-present) and was secretary-general of Taiwan Guidance and Counseling Association (2015–2016). He served as editors and guest editors for several Chinese and English academic journals. He received the Excellent Research Award from National Kaohsiung Normal University (2010–2021), Subsidies for Distinguished Scholars from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (2013–2021), and the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor (1997).