On the morning of September 16, 2021, Professor Zhao Xudong from Tongji University was invited to the campus and held a lecture on "The Integration of Psychology and Medicine – Inspiration from the German Model" in Yifu Building 309. The host of the lecture was Professor Guan Ruiyuan from the School of Health Humanities.

　　 Professor Zhao is a well-known psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who has made major contributions to cross-cultural transplantation of psychotherapy, intercultural psychiatric research and psychosomatic medicine. As one of the project leaders, he has been working since 1997 for the “Chinese-German Advanced Continuous Training Program for Psychotherapy” as the first world-class program for advanced psychotherapists in China, bringing significant skills and expertise back to this country.

　　 In the lecture, Professor Zhao first said that many psychiatrists hung on to the biomedical model of medicine, viewing psychiatry as pure applied science, leaving some patients turning to others for help. According to Karl Jaspers, psychology could be divided into "explanatory psychology" and "understanding psychology". The spiritual world of human as well as mental illnesses has not only biological mechanism and material basis, but also meaningful psychological information and connections, which need to be understood through empathy. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists should be neither irrational "wizards" nor impassive philosophers, scientists or craftsmen, but well-rounded, humane helpers, scientific-minded artists, finding a balance between skills and intuition.

　　 He pointed out that natural sciences, social sciences and humanities all had different academic cultures, different language systems and various tolerance for fuzziness. Their pursuit of "truth" also followed different paths. To understand psychology and its role in each of these three academic cultures, Professor Zhao led the students to explore the close relationships between medicine and psychology, and between psychiatry and social sciences, through the analysis of the similarity and relevance of their terms. On this basis, he shared with the students his current work in the curriculum formulation of medical psychology, and indicated its current problems--an unclear position, a loose combination of theories and practice, a small proportion of social humanities, and so on--and discussed the position and definition of medical psychology in China.

　　 During the second half of the lecture, Professor Zhao introduced the role of medical psychology in disciplines in Germany and its practice of psychosomatic medicine, and compared the similarities and differences between Chinese and American medical psychology textbooks. Combined with the developmental history of psychosomatic medicine in Europe and America, he gave a detailed description on how science and humanity played coordinately in the application of this decipline. He proposed that psychosomatic medicine was a new field with a interdisciplinary nature. By further presenting a three-level model of psychotherapeutic and psychosomatic training at Freiburg University, Professor Zhao elaborated on the inspirations for the integration of psychology and medicine in China based on our current situation. The speech ended in warm applause.

　　 Chen Chen：Applied Psychology