Emotions and Modern Psychology Studies: Development and Application of Traditional Chinese Medical Theories in Seven Emotions

Objective — To summarize the concept of the Seven Emotions Theory in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the characteristics of the disease, and the influence on the viscera, combined with the research results of modern psychology, this paper studies the etiology and pathogenesis of the Seven Emotions from the perspective of psychology to achieve the purpose of guiding clinical practice. Methods — Through consulting a large number of documents, analyze and understand the meaning of Seven Emotions Theory. By analyzing the emotion-related arguments of the mainstream schools of modern psychology, the basic emotion theory and the relationship between the Seven Emotions of TCM, the concept of TCM sentiment, and the relationship between TCM sentiment and basic emotions are explained. Through the systematic analysis of emotions, explore the relationship between the seven emotions of Chinese medicine. Results — Through research on the development of the Seven Emotions Theory and its etiology, pathogenesis, emotional disease syndromes, and emotional therapy in Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi Neijing) and other historical documents, we can discuss the significance of the Seven Emotions theory systematically comb the theory, and hope to guide clinical practice.Conclusion — In clinical diagnosis and treatment of diseases caused by emotions, it is advisable to consider the mutual influence of multi-emotional factors, whether it is a disease with other emotions, and whether multiple organs are injured, so as to better diagnose and treat disease syndromes.

Synthesis and Medicalization in Early Han Views of Mental Illness

Chapter 5 discusses the “syncretic” view of madness and mental illness in early Chinese texts. This view is mainly associated with the syncretistic texts of the early Han Dynasty, such as Huainanzi and Chunqiu Fanlu. The syncretists reject both the negative and positive views, arguing that a complex of nature, circumstances, and individual activity is responsible for most mental illness, and that the key to avoiding or eliminating mental illness is the undermining of conceptualization and elimination of desires. The syncretic view of mental illness and cultivation creates the groundwork for the development of naturalistic medical texts such as the Huangdi Neijing, constructed during the Han.

Explanatory Model of Mental Illness from the Perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The improvement of accurate management of mental illness has become an increasing concern in recent decades. Efforts to understand mental illness have progressed from treating the mind as an isolated system to involving both mind and body as an interactive response. This study attempts to express and ontologize the relationships between different mental illnesses and physical organ systems from the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In this paper, Natural Language Processing method was introduced to quantify the importance of different mental illness descriptions relative to the five Viscera and two bowels, Stomach and gallbladder through the classical medical text Huangdi Neijing and construct a mental illness network based on the TCM classic text. The results demonstrate that our proposed framework which integrates natural language processing and data visualization can enable clinicians to arrive at more comprehensive insights into mental health. According to the results of the correlation analysis for mental illnesses, viscera, and symptoms, the organs most affected by mental illness is the Heart, and the most two important factors to cause mental illness are Anger and Worry &Think. Moreover, the current findings promote the present comprehension of the association between the mind and body from the view of Traditional Chinese Medicine. We found the mental illness described in Traditional Chinese Medicine is always related to more than one organ.

Tracing the Origin of Zhu Danxi’s Xianghuo (Ministerial Fire) Theory

The theory of Xianghuo (lit. ‘ministerial fire’) was first recorded in the "Huangdi Neijing", and it was supplemented and perfected by later generations. During the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, Zhu Zhenheng refined it into "Xianghuo theory" to guide clinical treatment; modern scholars proposed the Xianghuo mechanism theory based on the corresponding characteristics of the Xianghuo theory to promote the clinical research in the Xianghuo theory. This paper discusses Danxi School's understanding of Xianghuo theory, and makes a rigorous research and summary in order to serve as a reference for Xianghuo theory.

Three Premodern Concepts of Disease

The concepts of health and disease have an impact on the efficiency of the medical system. Currently, there are no unanimously accepted definitions of health and disease, despite the fact that many investigations have attempted to capture their essence. Most of the available research about the concept of disease relies on the evidence-based disease concept of the modern medicine. That concept differs from the lay concept of disease or illness. In this research we use the cognitive linguistic approach to concepts, taking into consideration the way in which human mind processes the surrounding reality. Those processes are based on the universal principles because of the embodiment of cognition. Consequently, concepts are to some extent independent of time and culture. We have selected three premodern sources with sufficient information about disease to ascertain whether they have similarities in the comprehension of the disease. The first source is “Huangdi Neijing” “Suwen” part, from Chinese ancient medicine, the second one is “Hippocratic Corpus” from ancient Greece, and the third is “Otok” by Josip Lovretić from 19th century eastern Croatia. They are products of very different cultures and historical periods. Conducting comparison of features related to disease in the three sources, we have recognized that body, change, process and control are related to the common shared attributes critical for the concept of disease.

Body, Mind, and Spirit in Early Chinese Medicine

Medical texts especially of the Huangdi neijing 黃帝內經 tradition provide an important counterpoint to philosophical debates about the relation of body and mind in early China and in particular to the understanding of the “mind” (xin 心), since medical texts must address the role of the xin-heart as one of the visceral systems. This paper surveys accounts of both “mind” and “spirit” (shen 神) in the Huangdi neijing and proposes a view of a person in which cognitive and affective faculties are decentralized and corporeal, rather than being centered in the mind.