Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture

This mind-opening take on indigenous psychology presents a multi-level analysis of culture to frame the differences between Chinese and Western cognitive and emotive styles. Eastern and Western cultures are seen here as mirror images in terms of rationality, relational thinking, and symmetry or harmony. Examples from the philosophical texts of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and classical poetry illustrate constructs of shading and nuancing emotions in contrast to discrete emotions and emotion regulation commonly associated with traditional psychology. The resulting text offers readers bold new understandings of emotion-based states both familiar (intimacy, solitude) and unfamiliar (resonance, being spoiled rotten), as well as larger concepts of freedom, creativity, and love. 

Included among the topics: 

• The mirror universes of East and West.
• In the crucible of Confucianism.
• Freedom and emotion: Daoist recipes for authenticity and creativity.
Chinese creativity, with special focus on solitude and its seekers.
• Savoring, from aesthetics to the everyday.
• What is an emotion? Answers from a wild garden of knowledge. 

Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture has a wealth of research and study potential for undergraduate and graduate courses in affective science, cognitive psychology, cultural and cross- cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, multicultural studies, Asian psychology, theoretical and philosophical psychology, anthropology, sociology, international psychology, and regional studies. 

• Chinese civilization
• Chinese creativity
• Chinese emotions
• Chinese poetics
• Confucianism
• Indigenous psychology
• Taoism
• cross-cultural psychology
• empathy
• filial piety
• harmony
• hierarchy-based emotions
• individualism versus collectivism
• mindfulness
• morality
• social mindfulness
• taoism-based emotions
• tight versus loose cultures

“The book, on the whole, is insightful and dazzling in making interdisciplinary connections across psychology and related disciplines and it serves as a powerful example of articulating a sophisticated and elaborate theoretically informed indigenous psychology. … it will be of importance to cognitive psychology, cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, theoretical and philosophical psychology, anthropology, and Asian studies and to ongoing scholarly debates on the cultural meaning of emotions.” (Sunil Bhatia, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 36 (4), 2016)

“Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture by Louise Sundararajan is an elegant account of the ways in which emotions are experienced by Chinese people, and the book uses this discussion to enrich the Western psychological study of emotion. … Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture offers a rich network of complexly nuanced ideas. … an eloquently constructed book that addresses difficult but important issues holistically within the context of naturalistic science. There are probably not many who would attempt such a task.” (Richard E. Duus, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 60 (48), November, 2015)

• Rochester Psychiatric Center, NY, Rochester, USA

  Louise Sundararajan

Louise Sundararajan was born in Yunnan, China, and grew up in Taiwan.  She received her BA in English Literature from Tunghai University, Taiwan, her Ph.D. in History of Religions from Harvard University, and her Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology from Boston University.  She chairs the Task Force on Indigenous Psychology, which is joined by near two hundred researchers from around the globe.  She served as past president of The International Society for the Study of Human Ideas on Ultimate Reality and Meaning, and also past president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association).  She is recipient of the Abraham Maslow Award for 2014, from Division 32 of APA.  She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and also a member of the Board of Directors for the International Society for Research on Emotions.  She serves on the editorial boards of The Humanistic Psychologist, and Journal of Humanistic Psychology. She is Associate Editor for Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.  She has published extensively on topics related to culture and emotions. Outside academia, she practices psychology as a forensic psychologist, and enjoys the family life of a grandmother.

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