Rattled by suicides among students, each university has a counseling center.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has a multilevel accreditation system for those who want to shrink China, though some set up illegally, too.

Sure, part of psychology’s popularity is the impact of pop culture from overseas, with American and European movies and TV shows making self-examination, and the language of psychology, seem sophisticated and desirable.

And yes, the ordinary dynamics of life and relationships anywhere in the world may be enough to give anyone problems that require counseling. In that way China is like everywhere.

But specific to this part of the world is a particular combination of Confucianism and Communism that has made social and political repression very extreme at times.

China is ripe for the couch.

There’s the people’s dictatorship that began in 1949 with the Communist revolution, eventually causing the deaths of tens of millions in political campaigns and in starvation. That pain still cannot be freely acknowledged because the party that caused it continues in power and rules with an iron fist.

Then there is the regret, even torment, over that most intimate of issues: reproduction. Millions of women were forced to abort “out-of-plan” babies to not transgress the one-child policy that ran from 1979 to 2016.

Just this week I spoke to a woman, age 59, who still thinks with longing about the second baby she accidentally conceived 24 years ago, then had to abort, since she already had one child.