“Cleansing the Heart” in Contemporary China: A Historical Evaluation of the Psychologization of the <i>Book of Changes</i>

This article examines the contemporary therapeutic use of the Yijing (the Book of Changes ), a foundational text in Chinese divination and thought, from a global historical perspective. While Carl Jung viewed the Yijing as a tool to access the unconscious and treat neurosis, in China his ideas evolved into a means of reviving ancient teachings on the xin (heart) and reaffirming traditions of etiquette as alternatives to Western psychological models. My analysis focuses on the call for a “sinicization” ( Zhongguohua ) of Jungian psychology by China’s first fully trained analytical psychologist, Shen Heyong, and his students. This article argues that recovering spiritual and moral ideals of xixin (cleansing the heart) in the Yijing through the lens of analytical psychology informs a therapeutic approach that, while sidestepping the psychologization of subjectivity, supports cosmological and ethical notions of the self in China and beyond.