Traditional Chinese Medicine And Psychoanalysis:Energy,Emotions And Mind-body Dialectic

Question and argument: The topic of the research is "Traditional Chinese Medicine and Psychoanalysis: energy,emotions and body-mind dialectic".The objective of this work is to bring out the nature of the main concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine stimulating the interest of psychoanalysis and vice versa.Specifically,the main topics are: energy,emotion,affection,body-mind.The body listens to its emotions and the consciousness uses them as a sign and symbol of action and reflection.Emotions are the interface of the energetic concept belonging both to the physical and to the mental,as in its Western meaning.Psychoanalysis and Traditional Chinese Medicine find their meeting point in the dual dialectic of the unity: the unconscious operation uses both the conservative logic and the transformative one,as well as Yin and Yang are an expression of the Dao.Even concepts such as instinct,emotions,energy and Qi are very similar and act as a bridge between emotions and organs in the psychoanalytic study of the body.Freud's and Einstein's contributions help us to deepen the definition of the concepts of "energy" and "space and time" given by Matte Blanco.In modern TCM qi is conceived as matter-energy-information.In Psychoanalysis,according to Chiozza functions and organs are unconscious ideas.The hypothesized concept of energy-information transmits messages and incarnate meanings —that the analyst investigates while studying the dynamics of mind-body and body-mind— to the ego.Hypothesising that mass is steadily connected to pure primary energy,the unconscious is a proof of it as it circumvents the dimensions of space and time,while the symbolic language is to be thought of as a concise codification of the energetic information.In the analytic approach the body dimension is interfaced with the psychic one through the emotions,that are closely connected with the organs both in Traditional Chinese Medicine and in some psychoanalytic scholars such as Chiozza.Research method: This research will be a combination of both theoretical and empirical.Since,theoretical models will be widely used in this research the researcher has decided to use a qualitative approach.For the theoretical foundation and analysis,the available existing literature will be investigated.The existing literature will include published journals,periodicals,related magazines,Internet websites and textbooks.Since this research will compare two different fields of study such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and psychoanalysis,which constitute two areas of knowledge belonging to two opposite cultures and therefore ways of thinking —respectively the Eastern and the Western,the researcher has adopted a comparative research method.Comparative research is a research methodology in the social sciences that aims to make comparisons across different countries or cultures.Comparative research,simply put,is the act of comparing two or more things with a view to discovering something about one or all of the things being compared.This technique often utilizes multiple disciplines in one study.When it comes to method,the majority agreement is that there is no methodology peculiar to comparative research.There are certainly methods that are far more common than others in comparative studies,however.Quantitative analysis is much more frequently pursued than qualitative,and this is seen by the majority of comparative studies which use quantitative data.A major problem in comparative research is that the data sets in different countries may not use the same categories or define categories differently.Also this research study has to face the same problem.These two approaches,indeed,were born and developed in different historical times and places by people with completely different mentalities and cultures.While psychoanalysis is a set of psychological and psychotherapeutic theories and associated techniques,created by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud at the end of 20 th century,Traditional Chinese medicine is a broad range of medicine practices sharing common concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,500 years.Conclusion: With Einstein physics opened a new road in the definition of the concept of "energy" and showed that mass and energy are made of the same substance.Matte Blanco suggests that the body,being a three-dimensional structure,could be a substructure of something having more than three dimensions.The emotions and feelings emerging from our body would contain the multidimensional characteristics of the thought in its birth state,which in turn would be connected with the three-dimensional matter of our body.Agreeing with the Taoist philosophy that expresses the time-space manifestation of the Dao through the yin-yang dialectic,the ordering principle can be linked to what Matte Blanco defines "multidimensional characteristics of the thought in its birth state".The cosmic man representing the macrocosm in his microcosm is the core of this research.As previously mentioned,in modern TCM qi is conceived as matter-energy-information.If we think that energy expresses information in the matter,then we can understand how emotions,which result in a change of state of body and mind,are a vehicle for information.Our in-depth analysis of the concept of energy in psychoanalysis and in physics as well as the meaning of qi in TCM,intends to propose a concept of energy-information transmitting messages and incarnate meanings,that the analyst investigates while studying the dynamics of mind-body and body-mind,to the ego.The psychoanalytic work is an opportunity people have to dialogue and discuss with the internal sensory stimuli,with the relationships we have,with the messages that our soul sends us.Deepening the work on the body in its deepest meanings enables us to open ourselves to the awareness that it is possible to live one's own body as a connecting body.The psychoanalytic process then becomes a broaden experience that allows mind and body to find themselves as a holistic unit.