Emotional Concepts

what is the ancient concept of emotions and how does it relate to modern Western clinical practice? In the book Emotions in Asian Thought, Chad Hansen contends the traditional Chinese concept of mind and action does not center on a mental/intellectual world populated by mental/intellectual objects set off against an external world of physical objects or matter. Nor does this concept contain the Indo-European distinction between cognitive and affective states. A single faculty/organ, the xin (heart-mind), guides action rather than separate faculties of heart and mind.

Giovanni Maciocia, in his textbook The Fundamentals of Acupuncture, widens this premise for the purpose of clinical practice. Maciocia notes the tradition of Five Emotions: anger, joy, sorrow, fear and rumination, as well as others, and explains their significance to the practitioner. The body-mind is not a pyramid, but a circle of interaction between the Internal Organs and their emotional aspects. Whereas Western Medicine tends to consider the influence of emotions on the organs as having a secondary or excitatory role rather than being a primary causative factor of disease, Chinese Medicine sees the emotions as an integral and inseparable part of the sphere of action of the Internal Organs.... Since the body and mind form an integrated inseparable unit, the emotions can not only cause a disharmony, but they can also be caused by it. Anger, according to tradition, affects the liver; rumination taxes the spleen; sorrow depletes the lungs; excessive joy affects the heart, and fear affects the kidneys.