The Guiding Role of Marxism in Psychology

My view on psychotherapy and spiritual practice is that psychology needs to be combined with Marxism-Leninism. I have considered writing about the role of Marxism-Leninism in psychology, but the subject is too vast, and there is no rush, so I have never put pen to paper. This article is a preliminary outline.

I. Within the Scope of Psychology

1. Marxism as a guide to worldview, outlook on life, and values in cognitive behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy emphasizes changing people’s cognitions, core beliefs, worldview, outlook on life, and values to bring about rapid changes in their behavioral patterns over a short period, setting a virtuous cycle in motion and producing quick results. It is a primary approach in brief therapy.

Ordinary people are deeply poisoned by many petty-bourgeois worldviews, such as elitism, social Darwinism, meritocracy, consumerism, and so on, including the just-world hypothesis and the belief that effort determines outcomes.

We can see that the circulation of the most common anti-consumerist articles has had a positive effect. The various forms of critical rethinking commonly found on Xiaohongshu, especially those concerning women’s growth, all fall into this category. The German-style sociological critiques frequently circulated on WeChat Moments often fall into this category too. The politically sanitized Western Marxists dare not discuss revolution, so they scratch away at these unimportant issues.

The belief that “effort determines outcomes” is a more difficult subject. I embraced Marxism and Zhuangzi because Marxism and Daoism offer strong critiques of “effort.” Historical materialism and the Daoist recognition of complexity and limits both help break people’s fixation on effort.

Chizuko Ueno’s work can be understood as a form of behavioral therapy that changes cognition along Marxist lines—consider her book *Patriarchy and Capitalism*, although she herself does not fully embrace Marxism. Without Marxist guidance, one ends up saying what many “women’s growth coaches” say: “Women need to get serious about making money; money is the key to women’s independence.” This is falling out of one pit into another. It is still the question of what happens after Nora leaves home.

Previous articles: “Personal Problems Are Often Social and Human Problems,” “A Focused Discussion of Effort,” and “You Cannot Be a Social Darwinist or an Elitist Only When Luck and Circumstances Favor You”

1. Marxism’s guidance for psychoanalysis

Neo-psychoanalysis, including later developments such as self psychology and attachment theory, studies people’s various underlying psychological processes, defenses, and mechanisms of functioning, especially within their external relational environments. This is consistent with Marx’s statement that “the essence of the human being is the ensemble of social relations,” including relationships of power, hierarchy, control, and capitalization between people, within families, workplaces, and society.

Psychoanalysis studies how people can move beyond unhealthy psychological patterns and defenses, achieve growth of the self, and attain self-actualization. But the social environment profoundly influences and constrains this process. Karen Horney’s famous *The Neurotic Personality of Our Time* discusses precisely these issues. This is why she, Erich Fromm, and others are known as the “sociocultural school”: the problem is not that the individual is ill, but that society is ill.

Separate article: “The Fundamental Contradictions Facing University Students”

1. Marxism and existentialism

By existentialism, I mean the four existential concerns proposed by Irvin Yalom: isolation, meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, and death. (In my own discussions, I usually add another concern, “anxiety and unease,” and call them the five concerns.)

It is easy to see that these issues are closely connected to Marxism and social problems.

“A Common Form of Confusion Among University Students: Existential Crisis”

1. How Marxism can broaden counselors’ worldview, outlook on life, values, perspective, and social experience

Counselors often come from the petty bourgeoisie, and their worldview, outlook on life, and values are deeply influenced by petty-bourgeois culture. 1. They look down on proletarians and people at the bottom of society, whom they find unfamiliar, reject, and fear. 2. Their frequent exposure to issues involving families of origin also leads them to reject and fear matters associated with county-level communities and the lower social strata. 3. Their definitions of “effort,” “normal social functioning,” and so on are too petty-bourgeois. A young man with dyed blond hair living like one of the “Sanhe drifters” appears distorted and abnormal to many counselors, but often this young person is existing, surviving, and resisting in his own way.

Counselors practicing cognitive behavioral therapy may unwittingly use social discipline, society’s “shoulds,” and “normal social functioning” as their yardstick, reinforcing the “tyranny of the shoulds.”

Neither counselors nor clients live in a vacuum. If counselors are unfamiliar with political, economic, and other issues, they will struggle to understand the underlying meanings of clients’ words, behaviors, and subtext. For example, Fromm’s famous *Escape from Freedom* examines Nazism—the collective far-right madness of the German people. Today, too, we can see a worldwide shift to the right, with Trump and other right-wing figures taking power. Without Marxism, how can counselors understand this kind of right-wing fanaticism and aggression? Fromm discusses how, in a hypercompetitive, high-pressure society, individuals feel deeply insignificant and small, escape “freedom and responsibility,” and turn to the worship of and submission to something larger than themselves.

For example, a mother once sent me a private message asking what she should do because her high-school child was passionate about studying Marxism-Leninism but was not doing particularly well academically. I found it difficult to answer on the spot. This is a practical problem. How should counselors understand issues and difficulties like this? How should they understand the many zealous young online leftists on Bilibili and Zhihu, or the many fanatical “little pink” nationalists? If they lack a proper understanding of Marxism and simply see it as a far-right extremism akin to Nazism—a common petty-bourgeois understanding—serious problems are inevitable.

If counselors themselves, as midwives of the psyche, lack breadth of vision and depth of understanding, and do not have a sound grasp of common questions in the social sciences, how can they help clients through the various difficulties of giving birth? It would be like knowing only how to yank a baby out with forceps. (Xiaohongshu @Anna: Such counselors allow the client’s authentic self to be “stillborn,” then find them a doll as a substitute and announce that the baby has been born. Not every client is willing to have an authentic ego/self.)

Many clients consciously or unconsciously avoid the truth; others are not yet able to confront the issues and the truth directly. In any case, the counselor helps the client avoid the issue, much as a fortune-teller and the person consulting them both know that the exercise is a comforting evasion that leaves certain problems untouched.

Previous article: “The Chinese People and Chinese Internet Users Are Different Groups and Classes”

1. The healing potential of the proletariat itself

The petty bourgeoisie fears, rejects, and stigmatizes the proletariat as losers and failures. But only when petty-bourgeois people recognize that they too are part of the proletariat, among those oppressed by capital, can they develop a healthy worldview, outlook on life, and values. Also, spending more time in wet markets and observing ordinary people—middle-aged women, neighborhood aunties, manual laborers, and porters—helps one see that these people are not so frightening. They are not constantly plotting to scam, devour, or extort others. Instead, they work hard and struggle to get by, yet remain unpretentious and warm, embodying a simple truth, goodness, and beauty. This also offers two insights: first, innate wholeness—you do not have to belong to the elite to be happy and fulfilled; second, subtraction—it is not terrifying to remain poor for life without moving up the class ladder, and you can pare down your goals in life.

The many stories of people at the bottom of society in *Tan Talks Traffic* are a typical example of this healing effect on the petty bourgeoisie. It is like Van Gogh painting miners and peasants: “They are eating potatoes earned with their own hands; this is the most beautiful scene.”

From November 2023 to the present (January 2015), I have been living in a county town in Yunnan, where I have deeply felt the unpretentiousness of the people of Yunnan and the healing offered by the proletariat.

“How to Form a Connection with the Simple Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Working Class at the Bottom of Society”

“An Answer: What Comes After Lying Flat, and How Do You Find Direction in Life?” and “Marx, Zhuangzi, and Psychology: Marxism from the Bottom Up”

1. Marxism’s observations and understanding of the petty bourgeoisie

Marxism has a historical record and a profound analysis of the weakness, vacillation, dependence, inner emptiness, and sense of superiority of the petty bourgeoisie. For example, Mao Zedong’s “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” offers an excellent analysis of the petty bourgeoisie. Marx’s trilogy on France provides even more classic analyses of class in action.

1. Labor, career planning, and psychological healing

Labor and psychology are fundamental subjects in management studies. From early Taylorism, which treated people like beasts of burden, to the Hawthorne experiments, which began to recognize that “people are human,” and then to the humanism advanced by Drucker, Fromm, Maslow, and others, which sought to “treat people as human beings,” these developments have been closely connected to economic cycles, world history, industrial upgrading, world revolution, progress in the social sciences, and so on. The renewed refusal to treat people as human beings, coupled with staunch opposition to labor unions, was connected to the Kondratiev downturn of the 1970s, the decline of the Soviet Union and the left, and the rampant spread of neoliberalism.

Does labor nourish people or torment them? This is a fundamental question. So when Marxism says that labor will be a human “need” in communist society, many people find it puzzling. How can work be something people need? Surely what people need is not to work.

On Xiaohongshu, we can observe how recent university graduates and young people aged 22–28 begin to leave their original environments—their families of origin, schools, and cultures—and encounter “real” society. They develop a stronger sense of self, greater confidence and self-efficacy, and begin to think independently. This is how labor nourishes people. Yet, on the other hand, during the “corporate drone” years from 25 to 35, work leaves them so tormented they can barely breathe.

If counselors are unfamiliar with even these basic life processes, how can they help clients?

1. Socialism cannot be built in one country, and no individual can become a Buddha or an immortal alone

Lenin said that socialism cannot be built in one country because no country can detach itself from world trade and global relations. A country, too, is the ensemble of social relations. It is impossible to build socialism by closing the borders and relying on domestic circulation.

Likewise, can someone retreat into remote mountains and forests and cultivate themselves into a Buddha or an immortal? Their food depends on the inexpensive carbohydrates supplied by modern agriculture. When they fall ill, they need aspirin and paracetamol produced by modern industry; they cannot possibly rely entirely on gathering medicinal herbs themselves. Their safety depends on modern China’s national defense and public security. Nor can they avoid the suffering of billions of people. Denying that one cannot detach oneself from society and modern industry is foolish and evasive.

Why is “the human being the ensemble of social relations”? Because the level of development of the productive forces determines the “essential nature of human life.”

The petty bourgeoisie always fantasizes about solving its problems through “financial freedom,” only to discover suddenly that the commercial properties it has hoarded are worthless, the homes it has accumulated have plummeted in value, and the currency it has stockpiled has depreciated. This is why Germans suffered a psychological collapse and embraced Hitler in the 1930s. And when petty-bourgeois people seek “financial freedom,” they can hardly avoid participating in exploitation within the larger capitalist cycle—what Lu Xun called the problem of “eating people” in *A Madman’s Diary*: perhaps there are still children who have not eaten human flesh. Save the children.

For example, a folk singer, talent-show singer, or Douyin livestream singer becomes famous with a “harmless, class-neutral” song, earns millions or tens of millions, and achieves financial freedom. They feel that they have neither harmed nor exploited society and that society owes them nothing. But they have not severed their relationship with society and its problems.

II. Looking Beyond the Scope of Psychology

1. Many problems are not psychological problems or matters for psychoanalysis at all

For example, the anger and aggression of workers and feminists are not unhealthy pathological problems, but normal reactions from healthy, ordinary people. Where there is oppression, there is resistance. “Anger is healthy” is a basic principle of psychoanalysis. What psychoanalysis studies is the “repression” and “passive aggression” that follow when anger goes unexpressed, such as a housewife’s outwardly normal behavior that carries resentment underneath.

Much “depression” is not unhealthy, inexplicable depression requiring deep analysis, but the exhaustion of healthy people for obvious reasons. They need rest, but a 996 work schedule leaves no time for rest. It is that simple.

Sun Yat-sen and Lu Xun abandoned medicine for writing and revolution because “studying medicine cannot save” the Chinese people. The public healthcare systems of China and Cuba were not gifts bestowed by medical students either; they were brought about by revolution.

This actually falls within the scope of historical materialism. The world advances through social revolution and the development of productive forces, rather than through the publicity, education, and agitation of elites and intellectuals. Many committed counselors and intellectuals still place their hopes in the efforts and sound thinking of elites, seeking to awaken and rescue the masses through independent online media. This is a fundamental difference between idealist and materialist standpoints.

Were Chinese peasants’ psychological problems alleviated by counselors? They were alleviated through the Taiping Rebellion, the Autumn Harvest Uprising, and the Agrarian Revolution; through chemical fertilizers, improved crop varieties, agricultural machinery, water conservancy, and light and heavy industry.

(Xiaohongshu @Anna: On the question of courage, I think this is also central to psychotherapy. Existential therapy is unsuitable for most people because they are still far from having courage; they may not even possess the foundations in their personality needed to have it.) From this perspective, much psychotherapy is often the study of that final push that helps a strong person achieve a breakthrough. For people with a fragile self, those who truly need help, it is less immediately accessible. This is also why serious public education about psychology is less popular than inspirational “chicken soup.” Too many people are malnourished and weak, and can only get by for the moment on chicken soup and rice porridge. Yet this widespread malnutrition cannot be helped through psychotherapy. It can only be addressed through social revolution. (A friend: The landlord sits at home enjoying the soothing ministrations of counseling. The peasants should first smash open the landlord’s granary, serve porridge to everyone, and redistribute the land. Let people eat their fill and stand up before anything else.)

1. Placing personal problems in their social context

Individualizing social problems is a form of social oppression: a culture that shames people as “losers.”

In response, Marxism places personal problems in their social context, easing individual pressure and self-blame, reducing people’s separation from the world, their antagonism toward society, and their resentment of it. It strengthens their sense of connection with the proletariat—the petty bourgeoisie severely stigmatizes “people at the bottom,” as in the saying, “Barren mountains and foul waters breed unruly people”—and deepens their connection with a “healthy community,” a community with a shared future for humanity: the proletariat of the whole world.

Disenchant society and its problems, lift the mysterious veil from society and the superstructure, and reduce fear, rejection, and feelings of inferiority toward things larger than oneself.

Previous article: “Personal Problems Are Often Social and Human Problems”

1. The “petty-bourgeois” turn in contemporary psychology

Counselors, clients, and academics overwhelmingly come from the petty bourgeoisie, especially the intellectual stratum. Clients who have this awareness, can afford substantial fees, and can find a qualified counselor are clearly drawn mainly from the moderately well-off and slightly affluent in major cities.

There is a classic joke in sociology: many sociological phenomena are actually phenomena among sophomores at elite Ivy League universities, because the volunteers in the researchers’ so-called “experiments” are all those sophomores.

There is even an interesting phenomenon: psychology, especially psychoanalysis, likes to study “afflictions of affluence”—in other words, “having a good life but not knowing how to live it, and making trouble for yourself.” For example, a young woman has a good boyfriend, job, and life, but something still does not feel right. After intensive deep analysis, the explanation turns out to be some early XX trauma or XX gene. Because these “afflictions of affluence” exclude present-day life issues and interpersonal problems, focusing instead on “deep issues,” “early issues,” and “genetic issues,” they make it easier to produce “academic results.”

But what most people face are not afflictions of affluence or problems rooted in early life. They are present-day problems: the difficulty of getting through life.

1. With 7 billion people struggling to survive, it is impossible to provide 700 million qualified counselors at a ratio of 10:1

Relying on counseling to solve social problems is unworkable even in theory. This is why Western management scholars and humanistic psychologists proposed “eupsychian groups” and “eupsychian management,” seeking healing through groups and healthy company cultures themselves, pursuing social democracy and “Owenism.” Of course, this too is utopian.

Marx and Engels were able to grasp historical materialism and become the teachers of scientific communism at a very young age because of the maturity and integrity of their personalities. From the perspective of historical materialism, it was precisely the development of the capitalist Industrial Revolution and of German culture that gave a small number of people the opportunity to develop mature, well-rounded personalities. (Marx and Engels both grew up in affluent, relatively healthy environments rich in cultural capital, and attended the University of Berlin, the best university in the world, at different times. The second episode of my series explaining Marx and Engels focuses on this point: “Fellow Rhinelanders, Fellow University of Berlin Alumni.”)

1. The influence of a sound worldview, outlook on life, and values

Petty-bourgeois people all know the saying: “Money made through luck is lost through effort.” Mistaken thinking comes at a price.

Sound understanding comes from a sound standpoint. Marxism-Leninism can help establish a sound worldview, outlook on life, and values.