Shen - Psycho-Emotional Aspects of Chinese Medicine.pdf - Książki - peterjackpeter

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First published 2002

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Foreword

by Volker Scheid

Chinese medicine in China is referred to as ‘Chinese medicine’ ( zhongyi ).

Transferred to the West it changes into ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ (TCM).

Whence this emphasis on tradition, we might ask? The immediate histori-

cal events surrounding this choice are easy to trace and take us to China in

the 1950s. Charged with promoting their medicine abroad also once it had

been declared a national treasure a group of Chinese translators felt this

might be more easily achieved if the adjective ‘traditional’ was prefixed to the

indigenous designation. The label was accepted – in the main uncritically –

and proved to be a potent force in the promotion of Chinese medicine.

The more important second question is what this judicious assessment of

Western sensibilities says about ourselves and our relationship to Chinese

medicine. I believe that the label ‘TCM’ has been so successful because by

offering a double negation it holds out a treble promise. TCM offers itself up to

be non-Western and non-modern at the same time but also, and this is the cru-

cial point, as somehow universal and therefore more easily acquired by our-

selves. What could be more appealing to Westerners searching for alternatives

to their own way of running the world who do not, when all is said and done,

want to give up their own identity?

In the long run, however, one cannot have one’s cake and eat it. Just as the

rest of the world needed to westernise in order to utilise Western biomedicine,

we will only ever become meaningful participants of the Chinese medical com-

munity by becoming more Chinese. The first step in this direction would be to

let go of the ‘T’ in TCM, to consider it not as an asset but as a problem. And

there are, indeed, many problems associated with being traditional.

Western critics of Chinese medicine, for instance, point out that unlike

science, imagined as progressive and open to positive change, traditional

knowledge is closed, impervious to critique and therefore, of necessity, infe-

rior. Within the Chinese medicine community we face the problem of tradition

in other ways. As we become more familiar with what we assumed to be one

tradition, we discover that it is, in fact, made up of many different traditions,

schools of thought, and lineages of transmission. How should we relate to this

FOREWORD

plurality? How do we know what is important and what is not, what to develop

and from where to start?

But how to take this step considering that we have invested so much of our

identity in the ‘T’ in TCM? The best place, I suggest, is to accept that tradi-

tion is, in fact, a problem and not a solution, or more precisely a problema-

tique . A problematique is what the sinologist and historian Benjamin Schwarz

refers to as recurring issues in human history and culture. It is what the mod-

ern Chinese, drawing on Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, call a contradiction

( maodun ) and diagnose in every patient and situation. It is to apply the tools

of our trade – yin and yang and the knowledge of ongoing transformation and

an awareness of permanent change – not only to our patients but to ourselves

and to what we do.

Chinese physicians themselves have long been aware of the problematique

at the bottom of their tradition, the contradiction at the heart of their medi-

cine. On the one hand, the medical classics were the foundation of all medical

practice. On the other, the myriad manifestations of illness, newly emergent

diseases, and the changing nature of humans and society forever seemed to go

beyond what the classics had to offer. The manner in which physicians reacted

to this problematique has been as varied and diverse as the illnesses and dis-

orders they sought to cure. Some believed that the problem was insufficient

understanding of the classics by moderns, others that it was the insufficiency

of the classics in relation to the modern. Some argued for more scholarly dis-

course, others for the primacy of empiricism. Gradually, a number of rhetori-

cal formulas emerged around which a medical community could define itself

in spite of continued diversity of opinion on almost all concrete issues: ‘Study

the ancients without getting stuck in the old’ ( shi gu er bu ni gu ); or ‘Medicine

is opinion/intention’ ( yi zhe yi ye ).

I believe it is this shared orientation to commonly experienced problems

rather than an insistence on specific ideas or techniques on which any living

tradition (with a small ‘t’) is founded. If for biomedicine this shared orienta-

tion implies getting rid of the old to make way for the new, for practitioners of

Chinese medicine it has always meant to reinterpret the old so as to fit it more

effectively to the contexts of our lives. This attitude is rooted in empiricism and

sensitivity to the present as much as in scholarship and respect for the past.

And it is this attitude that has for many centuries allowed for the development

of tradition without the danger of ever losing it.

If we in the West wish to contribute to this process, to become a true part of

the tradition we so visibly claim to represent, we need to accept that innova-

tion and development, whether on the level of individual practice of Chinese

medicine as a whole, must proceed from the ancients before it can leave them

behind.

Elisa Rossi and Laura Caretto show us in exemplary fashion how this

might be done. First, they restore time and plurality to tradition by provid-

ing us with detailed expositions about the development of disease concepts

FOREWORD

and therapeutic approaches drawn from a wide reading of classical sources.

Unlike modern textbooks, who flatten this diversity by citing from these texts

as if they had all been written at the same time by authors who all shared

the same ideas, readers are thereby drawn into the problematiques of psycho-

spiritual disorders viewed from the perspectives of Chinese medicine. They

gain a profound understanding of the actual depth of our tradition but also of

its debates and unresolved issues as different authors disagree with each other

about fundamental points. We are thus forced to make up our own minds in

order to decide what is best for our own patients.

Here, too, Rossi and Caretto provide guidance but do not press us into

accepting their views. Treatment protocols and point selections are presented

as hypotheses rather than as being set in stone or delivered to us from on up

high. Drawing on their own clinical experience and that of others the authors

draw readers into a process of reflection that requires of them ultimately to

make their own choices.

Finally, once more most unusual in a contemporary Chinese medicine text,

Rossi and Caretto provide space for other contemporary authors, specialists

in their own fields, to supplement the main text through additional essays.

Again, the reader is informed but not presented with a single and singular

system of ideas.

‘ Shen ’ is therefore more than an acupuncture textbook or a clinical man-

ual for the treatment of psycho-spiritual disorders. By relating their per-

sonal clinical experience to a profound engagement with the medical archive

of Chinese medicine, the authors have created a model for how to develop

Chinese medicine in the West. This is an important achievement.

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