Freud's Currency

October 11, 2010

Freud's Currency

China is all over Monday’s newspapers. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal lead with articles on the Obama administration’s push at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings to pressure Beijing on the overvalued yuan. The Times and the Journal report that America’s pleas have not persuaded Europe and Japan to step up pressure on China over its currency.

The Middle Kingdom is also front-page news at the Washington Post, but not because of its currency. Even as U.S. efforts to push down the renminbi have failed, China is feeling America’s influence in the realm of psychology. The Post reports that “a small army of therapists in the United States” following the psychoanalysis theories of Sigmund Freud (“abandoned” here in America “in favor of antidepressant drugs and newer treatments,” reporter William Wan says) have been able to spread their gospel via Skype in China, where interest in Freud has soared “to new heights.” China’s mental health field is apparently “ripe for growth,” with a recent rash of high-profile incidents—kindergarten stabbings and factory-worker suicides—that has the government and business leaders “searching for solutions.”

And each paper has more: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Vietnam for the ASEAN defense ministers summit, where he will reportedly seek to improve U.S.-PRC military relations. Oklahoma’s Chesapeake Energy is teaming up with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to explore natural gas shale in Texas. And jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been allowed a visit from his wife, Liu Xia—who was then herself detained and put under house arrest.