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“Exporting” psychoanalysis to China is a controversial undertaking: some think it is impossible, considering cultural differences; others believe that it is possible and promising. Among the supporters of this undertaking—in addition to people who ignore or understate cultural differences—are those who stress the interesting analogy between psychoanalytical practice and Chinese thought. Psychoanalysis could even provide a meeting point between the east and the west. In his book, China on the Mind, Christopher Bollas argues for a fruitful meeting of psychoanalysis and Chinese thought. He goes as far as claiming that through the study of Chinese thought “I was also learning things about psychoanalysis that I had never understood”.
Before beginning my analysis of Bollas's book, I would like to point to the fruitful convergence of ideas forwarded by Bollas, a psychoanalyst whose ideas stem from clinical work, and those elaborated by Francois Jullien. Jullien is not a psychoanalyst, but is a philosopher and a sinologist, and his arguments about psychoanalysis and Chinese thought are based on Freud's text. His essays “Cinq concepts proposés à la psychanalyse” refers to themes which—although underdeveloped in Freudian theory, as it is based on western thought—are, none the less, present and active in clinical work, and furthermore, represent openings to Chinese thought.
The similarities and differences in the approaches to these themes by these two authors makes their convergence and the analogies they present all the more interesting.
The first part of Bollas's book, entitled “Preconceptions”, examines some of the main texts which form the basis of much of Chinese (and, therefore, Korean, Japanese, etc.) culture, and which the author calls “mother texts”: the Book of Changes (I Ching), Confucius Analects, The Book of Songs (Shi Jing) and the Book of Rites (Li Chi). These ancient texts have a millenary history and have developed through the work of myriad commentators. Read t