Online Group Therapy
I. Online Speak-Bitterness Meetings
Speak-bitterness meetings, that “old” revolutionary term, remain alive and well in the cyberpunk online world of the 21st century.
One of Xiaohongshu’s functions is to serve as an online speak-bitterness meeting, across its comment sections and livestreams.
Ordinary people and workers from different regions, age groups, classes, and occupations.
Voicing suffering together, suffering in common, class suffering. Individuals’ pain, helplessness, and struggles are seen.
They even come to see that the dark sides of themselves they feel ashamed to speak of are also widespread social problems. See my earlier article, “Embracing the Dark Side.”
They realize that individual problems are social problems. They recognize the common ground in simple human nature.
They rebuild their sense of identity: as new women, as people who have awakened, as workers, as members of a class.
“Being seen” and “seeing all beings” are very important. In developing my own “Marx + Zhuangzi + psychology framework,” I also emphasize seeing ordinary people’s pain and struggles, and recognizing how precious it is that they still hold on to simple truth, goodness, and beauty under these circumstances. This is irrefutable evidence of the proletariat’s progressive character. See my earlier articles, “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness” and “How Ordinary People Can Connect with the Simple Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Working People at the Bottom of Society.”
II. The CCP’s Ideological Campaigns in the 1940s
I often recommend *The Vicissitudes of an Inner Journey*, which recounts how the Yunnan Army’s 60th Army rose in revolt, became the PLA’s 50th Army, and stood firm against the US military on the Korean battlefield. It shows human malleability, the underlying truth, goodness, and beauty of human nature, and the importance of the environment and systems of management in shaping people. Its account of ideological remolding and organizational restructuring offers much to learn from. One of its core elements was the “speak-bitterness meeting.”
The book records:
The cadres carrying out the work did not confine themselves to the four units originally specified in the outline—an accusation campaign, a speak-bitterness campaign, education on land reform, and education on attitudes toward war. Instead, they expanded them into “three campaigns” concerned with transformation and “three forms of education” concerned with building: a campaign of accusations against the old warlord system, a speak-bitterness campaign against feudal landlords, a campaign to develop class consciousness by bringing one’s thinking back to one’s class roots, and education on attitudes toward war, internal unity, and policies and discipline.
Soldiers who had joined the uprising reflected: “Only then did we understand that we were not slaves. We were human beings, and we should live as human beings.”
Officers who had joined the uprising expressed their admiration: “This accusation campaign is a good method! No army other than a people’s army could learn to do it.”
The accusation campaign was planned with considerable care. According to Wang Zhenqian, director of the Political Department, preliminary investigations were conducted in one company from each of three divisions to provide a basis for guiding the work as a whole and to make the troops’ ideological education more targeted. Before the accusation campaign began, each company’s political instructor went into the squads and platoons to speak with soldiers individually, identifying and selecting representative cases for public accusations. After preparing them, the instructors recommended them up through the chain of command. The accusation campaign usually began with a meeting at the regimental or battalion level, using “representative examples to lead the way” and creating a powerful momentum and intense atmosphere. It then moved on to accusations throughout the ranks at the company level. The venues for these meetings were all arranged in a solemn and dignified manner.
Once the accusations began, everyone who took the stage cried. Some covered their faces and wept; others wailed. Often, one person onstage would sob so heartbrokenly that they could barely speak, while the audience below dissolved into a suffocating chorus of sobs.
During the accusation campaign, the Northeast Military Region assigned several performing arts troupes to put on shows for the troops every day. Three operas—*The White-Haired Girl*, *A Vendetta of Blood and Tears*, and *The Wang Family Courtyard*—were performed repeatedly. Every performance drew a chorus of weeping from the audience. The plays were so close to their own lives that enraged officers and soldiers sometimes lost control. Some raised their guns on the spot to shoot the “villains” onstage; others rushed toward the stage to avenge Xi’er or Wang Dongcai.
- Democratic education exposing the autocracy and darkness of the old army came first
Take the preparations for the accusation campaign. At first, some companies assigned relatively abstract, general discussion topics such as “Why do we need democracy?” The soldiers either found them difficult to understand or had no interest in them. Following guidance from their superiors, the companies replaced these with concrete questions such as “What most disheartened you and filled you with hatred in the old army?” and “Was it for our own good when our superiors beat and cursed us?” Only then did everyone suddenly open up. - Class education exposing the landlord class’s exploitation and oppression of peasants in the old society came afterward
Because the vast majority of the soldiers who joined the uprising came from poor peasant families, their suffering in the old society and their suffering in the old army formed a single, continuous experience. When soldiers spoke of their suffering, they therefore often began with the exploitation and oppression they had endured at home at the hands of landlords and local tyrants.
According to incomplete statistics on accusations made in four battalions, two companies, and one training unit, 392 family members of officers and soldiers who joined the uprising had been killed through abuse by landlords and local tyrants, and 105 had been raped or forcibly taken into their possession. - Accusation: Squeezing people dry and press-ganging men into military service
Under the Kuomintang’s conscription system, recruitment was a prime opportunity for township heads, neighborhood heads, and conscription officials to extort money. The conscription rules stipulated “one conscript for every three adult men” and “two for every five.” Wealthy people could pay bribes to avoid military service. Those with money but no influence might pay their way out in the first year, only to be extorted again the next, until they had been squeezed dry. At that point, they still had to become soldiers. - Accusation: Slaps in the face and beatings with military canes
“How was that any life for a human being? We were beaten and cursed all day long, until the beatings left us numb.” “Soldiers are made through beatings”—this was a principle of command that officers in the old army believed in. - Accusation: Beating deserters to death and slicing them alive
- Accusation: Drinking the soldiers’ blood
III. Irvin Yalom’s Approach to Group Therapy and Its 11 Therapeutic Factors
Irvin Yalom is an existential psychotherapist I like very much, and he is also world-renowned. His approach to group therapy holds that:
- Group members come to realize that they are not isolated individuals suffering alone from psychological problems. They discover that many other people are also suffering and need help;
- Group members discover that, by listening to and understanding others, they can find resources and ways to address their problems;
- Through interactions in group therapy, therapists can observe clients’ problems directly, rather than relying solely on clients’ verbal reports;
- It can help clients recognize the characteristics of their own behavior and ways of relating to others more quickly and directly.
Yalom considers therapeutic change a highly complex process that emerges through the complex interplay of various human experiences. These interactions can be called “therapeutic factors.” Within the therapeutic experience, they can be broadly divided into 11 main factors: - Altruism:
Group members can improve their own self-esteem by helping other members, placing others’ needs before their own, and sharing aspects of themselves with the rest of the group. - Group cohesiveness
By being part of the group, members feel warmth and calm, experience a sense of belonging, and feel that they are valuable to the group. Whatever experiences or hidden sides of themselves they disclose, they can still receive unconditional acceptance and support from other members and no longer feel alone. - Universality
Group therapy helps members understand that they are not the only ones struggling with a particular problem: “We are all in the same boat.” It helps them understand that their situation is no worse than anyone else’s, that others have the same “bad” thoughts and unpleasant feelings, and that others also come from similarly unhappy and difficult backgrounds. Realizing that they are not so different from others gives them a sense of being “among their own.” - Interpersonal learning
Interpersonal learning arises from interactions among group members. Members discover how their words and actions affect others during these interactions. Through insight, they can recognize how they developed these particular patterns of behavior and interaction, and how those patterns affect their everyday lives. Through honesty, feedback, and mutual support among group members, they can improve their patterns of behavior and interaction. - Development of socializing techniques
Improving group members’ social skills; through giving, feeling greater trust in group members and others; understanding how they communicate with others; and having opportunities within the group to engage with other people. - Imparting information
The therapist or group members offer advice or suggestions to a member, or a group member provides specific guidance and suggestions about life problems, including different ways of responding to an important person in their life. - Catharsis
Catharsis means releasing pent-up emotional tension. Group members express their feelings verbally or nonverbally, thereby easing their distress. Catharsis can also mean expressing the insights and sense of freedom members have gained. Members can also express their thoughts, fears, feelings, and so on through crying, shouting, writing, and other forms. - Imitative behavior
After finding role models within the group, members consciously seek to learn from those who are better adjusted. When they witness other members bravely revealing hidden aspects of themselves and receiving support and understanding in return, that experience makes them willing to try the same. Through identification, members then adopt another member’s patterns of behavior or interpersonal style, or admire and imitate the therapist. - Corrective recapitulation of the primary family group
In some respects, the group experience allows members to relive and understand their upbringing within their families. It helps them resolve unfinished emotional issues involving parents, brothers, sisters, or other important people. In some ways, the group experience resembles a family experience, but this time it is more accepting and helps members understand how they grew up in their families. The group is like a family—some members or therapists play the role of parents, while others play relatives. Through the group experience, members come to understand how their past relationships with parents and relatives formed and developed. - Instillation of hope
Witnessing other group members improve can offer insight: members recognize that others have resolved problems similar to their own and see that these problems can be resolved. Seeing others improve is therefore encouraging. Knowing that the group can help people with similar problems, including oneself, inspires hope. - Existential factors
Understanding that life is sometimes unfair; understanding that some suffering and death are ultimately inescapable; understanding that, however close one is to others, one must still face life independently; facing life and death and therefore living more honestly, without becoming entangled in trivialities; and recognizing that one must ultimately take responsibility for how one lives, however much guidance and support one receives from others.
IV. Group Therapy on Xiaohongshu
We can see that what Irvin Yalom calls the therapeutic factors of group therapy had a tangible effect on ordinary soldiers in the Yunnan Army in the 1940s, and on ordinary internet users in the 21st century.
This illustrates the concrete application of psychology in society, culture, and management.
It is also a living expression of Marxism and Marxist psychology.
From my earlier article, “On Xiaohongshu, the Revolution Is Underway”:
Around issues such as psychological healing, cognitive growth, feminism, opposition to feudalism, and working life, large numbers of people on Xiaohongshu help one another and find healing. The people are helping and rescuing themselves. This is a vivid expression of people’s simple truth, goodness, and beauty, and of humanism.
Xiaohongshu has evolved from a “consumerist” app for buying beauty products through overseas shopping agents into what it is today. At the heart of this is its atmosphere of equality for women and solidarity among workers, its rejection of overbearing old men’s culture, and the presence of a left-wing culture.
Mass movements, spontaneous struggles, and Marxism-Leninism are all alive among the people. It is just that people do not observe, analyze, or understand them. Many young intellectuals shout every day about stirring up revolution, while revolution is quietly taking place among the people.
See my earlier article, “While Left-Wing Intellectuals with Master’s Degrees and PhDs Debate and Mock One Another Online, Vocational School Rappers Are Creating People’s Literature and People’s Music.”
As I have written before, the Paris Commune has never stopped.
Lenin’s theory of the vanguard has, in fact, been misinterpreted. Before the October Revolution, Lenin said on several occasions, “We Bolsheviks have already fallen behind the masses.” This is one of the statements in which Lenin most clearly demonstrated his stature as a master.
Intellectuals have always lagged behind workers and peasants.