Introduction

Freud and Wundt, both trained in physiology, were both influenced by the school of hard science dominated by Helmholtz, and both had deep philosophical and humanistic knowledge. But they embarked on two very different paths when they started their own schools. Wundt divided psychology into experimental psychology and his unique version of folk psychology, whilst Freud embraced hard scientific ambitions whilst inheriting and combining the previous traditions of philosophical psychology and those of the humanities and social sciences, using them to explore the hiddenness and mystery of human nature. For this reason, Freud and the subsequent schools of psychoanalysis have continuously attracted many questions about experimental science. On the one hand, through its unique clinical listening, it provides a new model of practice for us to find the uniqueness of the subject relative to family and society under modernity and under the tradition of theory of the subject that traces back to Descartes. On the other hand, through concepts such as unconsciousness, the Oedipus complex, and the death instinct, it has opened a brand new path for human beings to explore themselves, leading perhaps to approaches closest to human nature itself. This special issue that presents papers from the Department of Psychology, Tongji University, in cooperation with Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, is an echo of such a path pioneered by Freud, and aims to extend many of his paths of inquiry.