S8 Ep146: 8/8 Trauma, Memory, and the Silence of "Eating Bitterness" — Tanya Branigan — Branigan characterizes the CR as a collective convulsion or "Maoist hysteria." Mental health infrastructure was historically underdeveloped in China, and psychology was official

8/8 Trauma, Memory, and the Silence of "Eating Bitterness" — Tanya Branigan — Branigan characterizes the CRas a collective convulsion or "Maoist hysteria." Mental health infrastructure was historically underdeveloped in China, and psychology was officially condemned as "bourgeois pseudoscience." The pervasive cultural idiom "eating bitterness" reflects fatalistic endurance of suffering without complaint. Severe trauma fractured survivors' memory systems, producing lasting psychiatric consequences including psychotic episodes and dissociative disorders. The national silence surrounding the CR results from both deliberate state suppression and the widespread personal psychological devastation experienced by millions of survivors.
1967