Description
What is a Healthy Mind and How Does It Become Ill?
with Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée
Mental health problems are viewed very differently in Classical Chinese thought, compared to how they are viewed in Western Psychiatry. The visible, clinical manifestations of irrationality are the same, but the analysis and approach are different. It can help us to reflect on what we call mental health, how we define it, and nourish our reflection on what it’s for, why we need good mental health and what are the foundations to being rational and wise.
Is not the wise man the one who has a sense of the meaning of life, follows the direction of life and who gives meaning to life? Mental health issues begin as soon as we deviate from this sense of life. These deviations are transient or take root in us, gradually or suddenly. They are harmful in varying degrees. Everything that moves our mind and our reasoning away from the natural order aggravates and roots mental ill-health in us and blinds us to its progression.
So what are the causes of mental health problems? There are a number of factors including our emotions, passions, desires (even the desire to do well), but also our thoughts, cogitation, situations, and so on. Often our physical ailments can lead to mental health complaints but can also eventually lead to the loss of our sense of self.
In these recorded seminars, Elisabeth explains this approach as described in the great classical texts, both Confucian and Taoist. She shows how one can prevent the loss of self and the loss of reason, by incorporating in oneself and in one’s daily conduct the great principles that organise and structure every form of life at all levels: cosmic, social, political, biological, personal, etc.
Every responsible human being must observe and cultivate himself to avoid the seeds of mental illness — even a slight inner disorder — and the beginning of a loss of self.
Elisabeth considers how this classical approach serves as a basis for the medical approach of what used to be called “madness”. This approach is very rich and has a certain depth. It is not limited to manic or depressive phases, even if these are also part of it. Anything that disturbs the natural order of yin yang exchanges of qi in a human being can lead to mental ill-health. This potentially involves any organ function and results in a wide range of mental disorders.
We will look at the interaction and inseparability of body and mind that characterises the classical Chinese vision, as well as the omnipresence of a cosmic order of life that governs human lives as well as all other life forms in the universe.
The most important starting point is how can we define good mental health? Here is Elisabeth’s personal approach and definition:
- Good mental health enables us to see, contemplate, study, understand and share the life in which we find ourselves, and to adapt to it according to our perception of its reality and our means of understanding it.
- Mental wellbeing therefore enables us to live, in ourselves and with others in our present, enriched and reconciled by our past experiences. It enables us to prepare for our future, but also to put ourselves in harmony with the reality of life, the world, the universe, in the moment as well as forever (whatever ‘ever’ implies)”.
- It enables us to maintain our relationship with others and to live without allowing our reality to be distorted either by our own emotions, passions or illnesses, or by those of others.
We have to keep our wits about us but we can only do this if we are anchored in what underpins each person’s reality. Man never lives alone; he is part of the fabric of being. He exists not only in society, but also always connected to the dead and the absent. Whatever affects others, affects him and vice versa. Nothing is isolated.
This series of seminars consists of six recorded online classes of 90 minutes as follows:
1. Living a Life of Sanity
The first lecture is on yang shen, nurturing life, to understand what a good life looks like. Elisabeth explores the two levels of yang sheng: nurturing one’s own life and nurturing the life of others through the same process. It is based mainly on classical non-medical texts.
2. Exploring the Wu Shen through Ling Shu Chapter 8
Nurturing life according to the definition in Ling Shu chapter 8. The importance and the meaning of the human heart-mind; the relation with the five aspects of spirits (wu shen) and the functioning of the mind. Elisabeth starts to explore how emotions in excess are the path to mental health issues.
3. Mental Illness in the Classics
In the third lecture we start to explore what is meant by mental disturbance or mental illness. We look to answer a series of questions about mental ill-health in classical Chinese medicine. What is the reason or the natural principles guiding all vital movements (li 理) in the non-medical and medical classical texts? How to find these vital movements and follow them more spontaneously, therefore value and enhance life? How do we let ourselves be diverted by desires and passions – and therefore turn away from life?
4, 5 & 6 Understanding the Pathophysiology of Elements, Organs and Qi
Lectures 4, 5 and 6 are a deeper study of each of the five types of emotion, in correlation with the five zang organs and the five Qi of the five elements. Elisabeth explores how each emotion can either nurture life or weaken and destroy it. It is important to look at how each emotion works specifically to disorganise the human life in the body, in other words the mind or the spirit. These three lectures will refer mainly to medical texts.
About Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée
Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée is a well-known researcher and translator of ancient Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, and author of numerous influential books in several languages. She is Dean of Study and Senior Lecturer in the European School of Acupuncture and a Member of the French Association of Chinese Studies (AFEC).
After studying philosophy, literature and classics at the Paris University where she completed her Masters degree in Classics and Philosophy, Elisabeth met Claude Larre s.j. who was working on his PhD thesis on the Huainanzi and translating the Laozi. As a result of his influence, she began to study Chinese and work with him on Chinese classical texts. She also studied modern Chinese with a native speaker and in 1974 spent a year in Taiwan to further her studies. She holds degrees in Chinese at the Paris University.
In the early 1970s she embarked on a study of Chinese medicine, together with Father Larre and Dr. Schatz, a western physician with an interest in oriental medicine and the classical medical texts, beginning the first study group of the classical medical texts in Paris which led to the foundation of the European School of Acupuncture in Paris in 1976.
Elisabeth and Father Larre started to offer lectures, seminars and conferences on Chinese classical thought in France and several European countries. In the mid 1980s, Elisabeth began to accompany Father Larre on his teaching engagements in both the UK and the US. Her knowledge of the medical texts combined to Father Larre’s subtle understanding of the background culture and philosophy produced a unique teaching team. They also worked together on the Grand Ricci dictionary, completing the first publication – two volumes of single characters – in 1999. The complete work of seven volumes was finally published, under her direction, just before Father Larre’s death in December 2001. Elisabeth has continued to teach worldwide, working with both medical and philosophical Classics.
Read more about Elisabeth on her website.
Other previously recorded CPD sessions with Elisabeth are also available for download.
