Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung By Carolyn Brown

major thrust was towards the external world, and in its psychological dimension had a collective thrust. Thus, a person’s “spirit,” one’s mental outlook in all of its dimensions, affected and was essential to the nation’s success.³¹ In fact, she noted, many revolutionary thinkers of the time believed that changing their countrymen’s thinking was essential to national rejuvenation. Lu Xun was not alone in this.³²

Larson’s interest lay in exploring the relationship of the individual to the state. Drawing on the same principle, one can broaden the focus to speak of jingshen or spirit as the point of interface with the external world more broadly and so understand the individual’s spirit as affecting all relationships. Consequently, if one takes seriously Lu Xun’s medical analogy and his intention of using literature as a means of changing spirits, jingshen, one might wonder how he might have understood that apparently unlikely enterprise. One might logically imagine that he had in mind an implicit therapeutic model; that he was envisioning the diagnosis—what was wrong with the patient; the etiology—what caused the illness; the course of treatment—how to arrive at the desired endpoint; and a definition of the cure—how a cured patient would think and behave. Further, one would suspect that he intended this not just or even primarily in terms of an individual’s psyche but that he was contemplating the collective impact of the mentalities of the Chinese people more generally. Directing attention to “changing spirits” opens the opportunity to shift the starting point of critical exploration towards a psychological inquiry with vast social implications—the first distinctive feature of my study.

Beginning with psychology in no way diminishes the necessity of historical context. It does suggest, however, that Lu Xun’s foundational concern, which is assumed in the commentaries but rarely named as such, is the suffering of China and the Chinese people, and by implication all human suffering. This imperative to understand its nature and how to stop it, or at least abate it, drove his work.³³ It underlies his every social concern—whether the devastating impact on individuals of the