MIND, BODY, AND ILLNESS IN A CHINESE MEDICAL TRADITION (MENTAL CONCEPTIONS, HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY)

The ultimate purpose of this study is to explore the conceptions of mental illness found in an influential Chinese medical tradition, the Huang ti nei ching. To understand the Nei ching's ideas of mental illness in its own, not modern psychiatric, terms I first investigate its basic orientations to the body, mind, and illness.;Many investigators, especially those who try to explain why Chinese "somatize" mental disorders, generalize that Chinese always regard man as a unity without differentiating between his mind and body. Close analysis of the language in the Nei ching reveals diversity and change in Chinese thinking about "the mind-body problem." Dominant levels of discourse do portray the mind and body as unified, but other levels of discourse treat mind and body as distinguishable, though still related, categories.;To provide a foundation for determining what are, and are not, conceptions of mental illness in the Nei ching, I present an overview of its idiom of illness, examining universals and cultural variables in its basic definition of illness, its description of symptoms, and its grouping of symptoms into syndromes and syndromes into higher-order classifications. I conclude that "culture-bound" mental syndromes, which strike psychiatrists today as peculiarly influenced by traditional Chinese medical beliefs, are not regarded as mental syndromes in this classic but rather as isolated symptoms or etiological explanations with virtually no connection to mental concerns. Conceptions of mental illness which are found in the Nei ching are often articulated in ways which mask their mental character. Only the k'uang syndromes are recognizably clustered and assigned a label which draws attention to their mental symptomatology. Whereas past research tends to equate k'uang syndromes with manic psychosis and assumes that they were grouped with other mental syndromes under a taxonomic category of mental illness, I discuss cultural differences between k'uang and such modern psychiatric conceptions.;The Huang ti nei ching is a heterogeneous collection of medical treatises originally compiled between the first century B.C. and first century A.D. This study focuses on the especially pristine and clearly organized T'ai su version of this tradition, comparing it with better-known versions.