I am just reading James W. Pennebaker’s highly recommended “Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions” and half way through the book I came to think that there might be a connection between “the healing power of expressing emotions” and the lack thereof in China with regard to the Cultural Revolution or just about any other traumatic event in China’s turbulent history, and the much debated lack of creativity among Chinese people.
Now, I realize that I will in no way be able to even marginally “psychoanalyze” an entire nation here, but I will elaborate why I think that there might at least be some connection.
As far as I know, just about no Chinese person who lived through the Cultural Revolution ever talked to his or her children or anyone else about it. Those ten years were a time of unimaginable horror in which an entire society tore itself to shreds. And experience was horribly traumatic for the victims as well as the aggressors who have to live with what they did. It happened on such a large scale that virtually every Chinese person was affected. And as a result no one feels that it is necessary to talk about it.
In the book, Pennebaker talks about people, such as the wives of Israeli soldiers who went missing in action and their response to these traumatic events – namely the compulsive preoccupation with trivial problems. Now, if these victims of traumatic events are not able to talk about what happened, they are much less likely to resolve feelings of stress and anxiety. They will often revert to “low-level thinking” – mindless, addictive, and compulsive behaviors – to protect themselves from their own feelings and to dull the pain.
The price tag of psychological defense mechanism of mindlessness is the loss of creativity. People caught up in low-level thinking are rigid in their thinking and are less able to appreciate novel approaches to problems.
