The development of modern western psychology is inextricably linked with neuroscience. Although "psychological" is still used in Chinese to refer to people's emotional activities, it has become common sense that modern science believes that there is a unique causal relationship between the brain and emotional activities. As early as the 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) began to promote the "Brain Decade" research program. In today's popular "biomedical paradigm", various neurobiochemical hypotheses that began in the 1960s have also begun to be partially confirmed by research. Modern medicine has shown that people's mental activities such as emotions, memory and thinking are actually the communication process between neurons and activated nerve cells in the brain. Transmission between neurons is done by chemicals called neurotransmitters. There are more than 100 neurotransmitters, the most common being norepinephrine NE, dopamine DA, serotonin 5-HT, and GABA gamma aminobutyric acid. Psychiatric studies have found a link between these neurotransmitter abnormalities and psychiatric disorders. Although the causal relationship of pathogenicity is still unclear, various antipsychotic drugs in clinical use are based on the inhibition of neurotransmitters and their receptors to achieve efficacy. For example, symptoms in schizophrenia are related to abnormal dopamine function, while depression is related to abnormal function of serotonin 5-HT and norepinephrine. The human brain is really too complex, so modern scientific research on brain mechanisms related to emotions and mental activities is still in its infancy. Many experiments and hypotheses in psychology are based on gaps in the understanding of brain function. However, even if brain science develops again, can science exhaust all the mysteries of human emotions and psychology? There is still a big question mark written here. Therefore, psychology has a place to be used, and Chinese medicine also has a certain room for interpretation. "Inside Out" can also use brilliant imagination to bring salt to the cold brain science, and tell an adventure about the brain and emotions for children and adults. story.
Like everyone, the little girl Riley has such a headquarters to control emotions, memory and thinking in her brain. Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, anger (Anger) Five villains make up the control team for this command. These are the five basic emotions in psychology. Coincidentally, Chinese medicine also talks about five similar basic emotions, called "five spirits", which are anger, joy, thinking, sadness, and fear. In the Song Dynasty, it was derived into "seven emotions", adding more "worry" and "surprise". Except for thinking and disgust, which are far from each other, the others can correspond one-to-one with the five basic emotions of the film. Chinese medicine talks about "the principle of mutual growth and restraint of the five elements", and the five wills (seven emotions) are also opposite to the five elements. Anger belongs to wood, joy belongs to fire, sadness belongs to metal, "worry and thinking" belong to earth, and "fright and fear" belong to water. Therefore, the mutual generation and restraint of the five emotions should be in harmony with the law of the five elements (see Figures 1 and 2). In the movie, emotions are given a variety of colors, happy yellow, sad blue, fearful purple, disgusted green and angry red. The correspondence between these color symbols and emotions is more like a cultural symbol (such as English Blue It can also express melancholy), but there is no special scientific basis. But in the system of traditional Chinese medicine, the five elements are the law of the heaven and earth, and the color is free in it. The corresponding relationship between various colors and the five emotions can be seen in Figure 1. Of course, there is no scientific basis for the correspondence between colors and emotions, but people are willing to make similar associations, so that Mr. Le Jia has space to write a book.
Chinese medicine emphasizes the "unity of mind and body", and emotions are related to the body. Chinese medicine believes that the heart contains the spirit and is the center of psychological functions, while the kidney stores the essence and is the place where the vitality gathers. Literally, psychiatry is the study of "heart" and "kidney". Therefore, Chinese speaks of "psychology", while Chinese medicine speaks of heart. It is not necessarily known that the brain is the center of psychological functions. In traditional Chinese medicine, the brain is classified as the "extraordinary organ", which is "the sea of marrow, the house of shrewdness, and the mind of the mind." The rise and fall of mental power is directly related to the blood supply to the brain. Because of this, the mind is strong and the brain is strong. However, this explanation is still too crude and vague in the eyes of modern science. However, it also reflects that the "holism" of traditional Chinese medicine is different from the "organism" of "Western medicine". The "holism" refuses to talk about emotions in terms of emotions, and believes that the synergy of mind and body is the root of emotional problems. Therefore, dysfunction of the "heart and kidney" can also lead to mental problems. The "Nei Jing" advocates that "Heaven has five elements, which control the five elements, to generate cold, heat, and dry wind; people have five viscera, which transforms five qi to generate joy, anger, worry and fear." "Five zang organs" correspond to "five elements", and "five elements" The "five qi" are generated, and then transformed into the "five aspirations", that is, the five fundamental emotions. When Qi and blood flow smoothly, various emotions are coordinated with each other; on the contrary, when Qi and blood are not in tune, the "five elements" are attenuated, and "emotional disease" occurs. As Chen Xiufen, a Taiwanese scholar, said, "Differences from the modern medical epistemological standpoint of the separation of mind and body, the "Nei Jing" interweaves emotion, qi, and the accompanying physical diseases in holism, and contrasts with each other to form the perception of life."
In the film, "sadness" is a blue villain who is listless all day, in stark contrast to the star-like joy (Joy). Everyone loves Joy and hates Sadness. Even during Joy and Sadness's adventure, Joy at one point wanted to abandon Sadness entirely, but eventually realized that sadness is also an emotion that everyone must embrace. Only sadness can make others feel their vulnerability and get help. This is probably a central theme that runs through the film. Interestingly, embracing all kinds of emotions, even negative ones, is never a problem in the eyes of TCM. On the contrary, any kind of emotion, because it is in the relationship of the Five Elements, produces and restrains each other, it is precisely the one that is indispensable, that is, it cannot be wasted, nor should it be excessive. In particular, excessive emotions will damage the corresponding "five viscera", thereby damaging people's health. In turn, the "five aspirations" of a person originate from the "five elements" and are connected to the "five internal organs". The "five elements" have the principle of mutual growth and mutual restraint, and the "five wills" are no exception. The "five aspirations" are connected with the "five internal organs", and there is a pairing of "liver anger-heart joy-spleen thinking-lung worry-kidney fear". The "five wills" are out of balance, and then damage the five internal organs, but supplemented by the "five elements" principle of mutual restraint, the method of "emotional restraint" can be obtained, which is "anger hurts the liver. Sadness overcomes anger; joy and sadness, fear overcomes joy; sadness For the spleen, anger overcomes thoughts; for the lungs of sadness, joy overcomes sorrow; for fear of injuring the kidneys, thoughts overcome fear.” Combining the formula of traditional Chinese medicine and looking back at the movie, in an adventure, yellow Joy is pointing fingers at blue Sadness. From the beginning to all kinds of disgust with him to the final realization, Sadness is only submissive, which also coincides with the relationship between the two of them in the five elements of love and killing.
It is worth noting that when Joy and Sadness fell into the "long-term memory area" at the same time, the protagonist Reiley lost these two basic emotions, and when interacting with the surrounding environment, the fire-breathing Anger often jumped out to dominate the console . Reiley's symptoms are very similar to "depression". In other words, what modern psychiatry refers to as "depression" doesn't just refer to being depressed or sad. Rather, the patient even loses the ability to "grieve" and has no interest in the things around them. For children, the performance may be that they are easily provoked. Of course, the main point of treatment is to restore the patient's ability to be happy or sad, which is often achieved by drugs in the clinical treatment of "depression" today.
In TCM, dialectical treatment is based on four diagnosis and eight principles. For "emotional diseases", it is no exception. But in addition to drug treatment, there is also a characteristic therapy in traditional Chinese medicine, which is called "feeling over emotion". As the name suggests, since human emotions also follow the principle of mutual growth and restraint of the five elements, then by using the laws of the five elements, one can naturally "overcome emotion with emotion". Zhang Congzheng, a physician of the Jin Dynasty, came up with the "Emotional Manipulation Method" in "Confucianism and Family Affairs", and advocated that "grief can cure anger, and feel it with words of grief and pain; joy can cure sadness, and slanderous words can be used to make jokes. Amuse it; fear can control joy, fear with words that force sudden death; anger can control thinking; touch with insulting and bullying words; thinking can control fear, and rob it with words that worry about it.” The "emotional manipulation method" emphasizes the "language ability" of the healer, which is quite similar to the "talk therapy" in modern psychoanalysis. Zhang Congzheng himself is a master of manipulating emotions. He thinks too much about treating a wealthy wife. Zhang instigates his husband to turn into a "playful boy", who is addicted to alcohol all day long and spends his money. The woman was so angry that she miraculously healed her anxiety. Such examples are numerous in Zhang's "Confucianism". Although the method of "emotional manipulation" seems to be effective, it is difficult to practice. The reason is that this method requires doctors to have a high emotional intelligence, be familiar with various language expressions such as "threatening, fooling, amusing, and sad", and supplemented by the ability of virtual plots It can only be effective with the full cooperation of the patient's relatives and friends, which is not something that ordinary manpower can easily do. In some situations, the logic of "succumbing to emotion" is similar to witchcraft, which was called the method of "zhuyou" in ancient times. From a modern point of view, it has the characteristics of psychological suggestion, hypnosis and music therapy, and of course it is also based on the principle of five elements. The same is true for the origin of medicine, witchcraft, and divination in traditional Chinese society.
In addition to focusing on people's emotions, "Inside Out" also talks about memory, subconsciousness, and abstract thinking. Traditional Chinese medicine rarely speaks about these areas. It can be seen that the power of science lies in the accuracy and comprehensiveness of its explanations. In contrast, the "emotion theory" of Chinese medicine is more like a philosophical view, and its value lies in helping us to be human beings. The relationship between heaven and earth. Modern psychiatry emphasizes the use of a comprehensive "biological-psycho-social" model to understand the causes of mental illness, just like the five magical "Islands of Personality" of the little girl Riley in the movie. "Memory" lights up, and each core memory is not only the impulse and transmission of nerve signals in the brain, it also contains the bits and pieces of our life, the relationship and common experience with family and friends, and the relationship with society and even with our own soul. Communication cannot be ignored. Maybe that's why it's hard for scientific explanations to exhaust all the mysteries of human beings, but it also makes it more interesting for us to explore and imagine our own inner world, doesn't it?
References
Chen Xiufen. (2014).
Lin Keming. ( 1990). "The Relationship between Traditional Chinese Medicine and Mental Illness and Psychiatry" in "Culture and Behavior: Normal and Abnormal Behavior of Chinese Ancient and Modern" (pp. 77–92). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press
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