A Chinese family: teaching and learning in a clinical case conference

Abstract

The authors show the interrelated processes of teaching and learning both for the Chinese student and the Western teacher. This article focuses on a clinical case conference as a co-constructed teaching and learning opportunity for Chinese therapists and Western teachers of family therapy. We present an account of a clinical case conference for family therapy students which occurred as part of a week-long training event, during the two-year continuous training programme in psychoanalytic couple and family therapy organised by Professor Fang Xin in Beijing. The first author, a Chinese family therapy student, made the family case presentation to her classmates and to the second author, a Western psychoanalyst as the discussant. The student introduced the referral to her of an index patient, a teenage boy who was refusing school, staying home to play videogames, and threatening suicide. She reported vividly on her consultation with the concerned mother, stern father, and rebellious adolescent son in a family group setting. Without process notes, the Western discussant could not comment on the presenter's analytic family therapy technique or move more deeply into the family unconscious. Yet, the material presented enabled the class to see how the boy had become the symptom bearer for his family, and at the same to learn about the strain of absence and the threat of death on a Chinese family. The article closes with a template for how to get the most out of a clinical case conference.