Papers by Matteo Sgorbati
Review of General Psychology, 2025
This article examines the contemporary therapeutic use of the Yijing (the Book of Changes), a fou... more 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 heart 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.
Sinosfere 20, 2023
The discussion of the concept of the unconscious and Buddhist thought in the early 20th century i... more The discussion of the concept of the unconscious and Buddhist thought in the early 20th century is examined with a focus on the Chinese context. The periodical literature produced and disseminated in China by Buddhist monastics and lay practitioners shows that various ideas that later gained popularity in the West—such as the alignment of ālayavijñāna with the unconscious—were already debated. The encounter between Chinese Buddhism and psychoanalysis systematically underscored doctrinal elements related to rebirth and cessation. It is argued that this early and overlooked approach presents a significant departure from the prevailing psychologizing and naturalizing approach in the "Buddhist-psychology" dialogue dominant today.
Il revival dell’alchimia con Jung, 2020
According to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), “light” and “shadow” are two te... more According to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), “light” and “shadow” are two terms that often refer to psychic dynamics in particular that of the individuation, wherein light (das Licht) and enlightenment stand for consciousness while shadow (der Schatten) stands for a category unconscious contents. In them resonate speculative and esoteric motifs connected to previous spiritual practices, especially the alchemical ones, that read anew in therapeutic terms, and as a means for personal development, found a new position in contemporary culture. Analysing the metaphors of light and shadow in the Jungian reading of alchemical texts and terms like albedo and nigredo, the Cognitive Metaphor Theory will be taken into account, which in the last two decades has been applied, inter alia, to psychoanalytical interview and to analytical psychology as well. Although on the one hand the Cognitive Metaphor Theory contributes to the current therapeutic discourse on alchemy in the West, on the other hand the use of this theory for the interpretation of Jung’s works seems to fail in explaining those quasi-metaphysical concepts that most contributed to its revival.
La Cina nell’inconscio: teoria e prassi del dao secondo Jung, 2022
With the emergence of psychoanalysis came a discourse on China that contributed to the theoretica... more With the emergence of psychoanalysis came a discourse on China that contributed to the theoretical definition of the unconscious and psychotherapy. This study shows how Freud sees in Chinese writing a ‘primitive’ linguistic model for the interpretability of the unconscious, and how this become a premise for Jung’s later discourse on China. Jung comments several times on the Daoist works Daodejing and Zhuangzi, seeing in the dao a model for individuation as it is capable of regulating the compensation of psychic opposites. Through philological analysis it is argued that Jung conceives the dao in literary and normative terms as a “path” aimed at a goal (self-realisation), and how this is at odds with the daoist meaning of the dao as aimless (wuwei).
laNOTTOLAdiMINERVA: Journal of Philosophy and Culture, 2020
This article explores the connections between the Classic of Changes (Yijing) and analytical psyc... more This article explores the connections between the Classic of Changes (Yijing) and analytical psychology (fenxi xinlixue) in contemporary China. With the spread of Western modern science in late imperial China, old Chinese words were combined to create new terms that stood for new imported fields of study. This process enabled a mutual influence between the traditional indigenous concepts and modern ones, as well as the adoption of the “Chinese origins of Western learning” (Xixue Zhongyuan) formula as a paradigm for cross-cultural understanding. Taking the works of contemporary Jungian analysts Shen Heyong and Gao Lan as primary sources, it will be argued that in post-socialist China a similar trend can be observed in relation to the recovering of the Classic of Changes in connection to the spread of analytical psychology. This resulted in a dialogic hybridisation of Western and Chinese terms, which will finally be shown in relation to Jung’s theory of ‘synchronicity’ and the traditional indigenous notion of ‘harmonious unity of man with Heaven’ (tian ren heyi).
Books by Matteo Sgorbati
L'I Ching a Eranos. Wilhelm, Jung e la ricezione del Classico dei mutamenti, 2021
After the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經), an ancient di... more After the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經), an ancient divinatory and cosmological text that for over two millennia was regarded as one of the main works of Chinese thought, received a new interpretation thanks to the annotated translation made by Richard Wilhelm. Partially influenced by Chinese scholars embodying the late imperial ideology, Wilhelm saw in the Yijing a timeless book of wisdom that would bring spiritual renewal to the West. In Europe his ideal resonated with Carl Gustav Jung’s psychodynamic approach to religious texts from China. The catalyst for this intellectual history were the Eranos Meetings, held annually in Ascona Switzerland from 1933 onwards. Here Wilhelm’s view found fertile ground posthumously among some of the world’s most influential intellectuals, while Jung was hailed as the spiritus rector (guiding figure). As a result of these meetings new ideas and practices associated with the Yijing were made intelligible by and for people who for the most part had never travelled to China and had no access to the text in its source language. Examining several sources that span from 1910s to 1960s, some of them previously unstudied, this volume maps the progressive steps taken by Western scholars to adapt the Yijing to the growing authority of deep psychology, and offers a perspective on how the Chinese classic has found a new and modern identity. Preface by Amina Crisma and Vittorio Capetti.
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Papers by Matteo Sgorbati
Books by Matteo Sgorbati