ABSTRACT

An early medical treatise on emotions can be found in the rst received medical classic, Huangdi neijing 哹ᑓޝ㏉ [Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor] (c. rst century bc – rst century ad; herea er the Inner Canon). is work sets out the theory of the ve major human emotions, known as the ‘Five Intents’ (wuzhi ӊᘍ), which was broadly followed by later physicians. e medical views of emotions seemed largely unchanged before mediaeval China. In the late imperial period, however, both medical theories and practices of emotional disorders underwent drastic changes. Firstly, physicians not only extended the ‘Five Intents’ into the ‘Seven Emotions’ (qiqing й᛻), but also expanded the category of ‘emotions’ (qingzhi ᛻ᘍ) and ‘mental states’ (shenzhi ⾔ᘍ) by including some other emotional disorders into their nosology. Secondly, some physicians even went further to reinterpret an old therapeutic principle, ‘announcing causes’ (zhuyou ⾓⭧) in terms of a psychotherapy-like perspective. No less important was the application of a healing art involving emotional manipulation and talking cures. erefore, when one sixteenth-century physician stated that ‘when emotions go extreme, no drug can cure [the resulting disorders]; [they] must be overcome by emotions’ (qingzhi guoji fei yao ke yu xu yi qing sheng ᛻ᘍ䚄 ᾫ䶔㰛ਥ᜾举ԛ᛻ओ), it signi es not only a quotation of an old saying from the Inner Canon, but rather a new perspective of emotional therapy.2 In late Imperial China, this treatment, with its appeal to emotional manipulation, was referred to both as the ‘Principle of Mutual Conquest of the Five Phases/Intents’ (wuxing/wuzhi xiangsheng zhi li ӊ㺂/ӊᘍ⴮ओҁ⨼), and ‘overcoming one

38 Psychiatry and Chinese History

emotional state by another’ (yi qing sheng qing ԛ᛻ओ᛻).3 Two recent studies identify it as ‘emotional counter-therapy’ or ‘therapy by counter-a ect’.4