Confession:
I am in love with a book.
It’s a bit difficult to explain, I mean- if I were to say “I’m in love with a character in a book” that wouldn’t be too weird (just a little bit), but an actual book, it’s not very clear how that can happen.
I fell in love with The Seven Emotions from the first moment I started reading it.
As with all the books by Father Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallee, the philosophy, it’s depth and choice of words make it’s reading to a challenge. I find that each time I read a book by these authors, I gain a source of information but also a source that makes me wonder more and more, ask more questions, and leaves me with a good sort of confusion.
What is a good sort of confusion?
The sort of confusion that makes you read more and think more. That can only lead you to know more and mainly- it makes you understand.

The Seven Emotions aims to clarify the Chinese philosophy’s approach to psychology and health by analyzing old Chinese texts.
There aren’t a lot of books out there that talk about Chinese psychology.
The term “body-mind” is embedded so strong, that we hardly make the differentiation between them.
But sometimes you need to do. Sometimes there is a physical injury, and sometimes there an obvious emotional injury that needs to be addressed by a practitioner who understands the emotional state of the human spirit.
An important source for Chinese psychology is the well-known book Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies by Dr. Leon Hammer. Bob Flaws published the book Chinese Medicine Psychiatry, a book explaining various psychological matters to CM practitioners.
But it seems that Larre and Rochat do something different in this book. It seems they give a clear look at basic ideas of the human spirit.

Larre and Rochat speak of seven emotions- anger, fear, elation and joy, sadness, oppression, over-thinking and fright.
Each of these emotions is examined in relation to it’s element and organs in the body, and of course there’s a discussion about the Chinese character of the emotion.

As I read along I found more and more vital information about the different emotional states of my patients- but also of my own. In many parts of the book, I felt that Western psychology isn’t too far off than Chinese psychology. As an example, I quote the description of the character of the word sadness:

“In ‘bei’ there is the negation and the refusal of something. Of course, when something is very sad, for instance the death of someone you love, this is a natural opposition to that, a refusal which is a sign of your feeling and your affection. The only problem is the duration. Of this refusal and opposition to what is, lasts too long, that is bad, and that becomes the pathology of feeling. It is normal to act like this if something very sad occurs.It is not normal to continue to have this opposition to reality”.

However, as the introduction warns us, one must not mix between the Western psychology and the emotional psychology of Chinese Medicine. As they are sometimes the same, they are 2 different things.

The book is written beautifully.
It includes deep insights that are written very simply by the Chinese and are translated wonderfully  by Rochat and Larre.
The book is an important stop to all those who have CM on their mind- practitioner and philosopher.
It allows us to understand the emotions of the person standing in front of us, and gives us the chance to offer him the thing he truly needs on a deeper level.

The Seven Emotions by Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallee.
Published by Monkey Press.

Note it.