Why a China-US alliance will help save world from war, terror and social ills: a psychiatrist’s prescription for global harmony
Jack Westman argues a psychiatric case for building on the cultural overlap between China and the US to divert the world from its path of self-destruction, which has roots in the impact of past conflicts on children’s mental health
Jack Westman’s 476-page analysis of the human propensity for war is one of the more unusual contributions to the recent deluge of opinions on the world’s geopolitics.
Retired family psychiatrist Westman, a former professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health in the US, has spent most of the last 65 years quietly studying people’s mental health while helping to nurture the development of families, especially children.
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In June, the 90-year-old released the latest of his 188 publications, The China-America Alliance. It may be the most important application of his psychiatric expertise to date: his patient on the couch is humanity.
“This is my first and only book on international politics,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Madison city in the state of Wisconsin. “My professional life as a family psychiatrist has been devoted to resolving interpersonal conflicts and working with schools and communities to support child and adolescent development. The kind of psychiatry I’ve practised is political in nature.”
The book comes with a warning that today’s warring generation is on course to destroy themselves and the Earth. The angry and aggrieved now have access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons while the greedy have the technology to strip bare the earth’s resources and wreak permanent ecological damage.
