Coping with psychological stresses through Confucian self-cultivation and Taoist self-transcendence

This dissertation is a report and analysis of common psychological stresses and coping strategies among college students in China. It is based on my field study conducted in 1991, during which I worked with students and college counselors from four universities in Beijing for a period of six months.; Structurally, this dissertation consists of three parts. Part One reviews research literature about stress coping and addresses the methodological issues of my field work in Beijing. Part Two reports my findings about the common psychological stresses and coping strategies that prevail among Chinese college students, exploring the influences of Confucianism and Taoism in the Chinese students' stress coping behaviors. Part Three discusses the cultural conflicts in applying Western models of therapeutic counseling in Chinese society and proposes a counseling model that is culturally appropriate for working with Chinese students.; The results of my field study generally indicate that the ways in which Chinese college students cope with psychological stresses are significantly influenced by Chinese cultural values of self and the self/other relationship. Specifically, this dissertation demonstrates that Confucian ethic of self-cultivation and Taoist ethic of self-transcendence play a major role in the Chinese students' appraisal of and coping with stress-inducing events, traits, and demands in life. It also shows that underlying both the self-cultivation and the self-transcendence models of stress coping is a dialectical harmonization of conflicts, which, consisting of schemata of mutuality, transformability, and unity, is an important goal and tool for effectively coping with various psychological stresses in Chinese society. Finally, the two models of stress coping complement each other and are used simultaneously by Chinese students.