When

June 13th – 09:00 -10:30

Kidnay and Psyche (Abstract)

The kidney has always been mystified in Chinese medicine mostly because of the fact that we have two single kidneys which are nevertheless one entity. It has always been regarded as the organ which enables man to correspond to heaven and earth. In the Yijing it is the Kan trigram which symbolizes the kidneys. The statements of the shuogua commentary about the nature of Kan were the source for the characteristics assigned to this organ in medicine. The  psychic aspects traditionally assigned to the kidney are the will zhi and anxiety kong. The will is function of strong  kidney Yang whereas anxiety being the manifestation of feeble will is characterized by lack of kidney Yang. Besides these two psychic characteristics we may also find mental depression as a typical kidney related emotional condition.  Mental depression may be interpreted as the result of weak kidney Yang and kidney Yin. The psychic aspects of the  kidney seen from the point of view of western medicine show evidence of the fact that there are a lot of implications of the kidney on the neuroendocrine level. The kidney in the sense of Chinese medicine may represent endocrine pivots and endocrine glands like the pituitary gland or the thyroid gland. Understanding these correlations between Chinese medicine and western medicine may have far reaching effects on the combined therapy with both medical systems. The kidney in the sense of Chinese medicine is an important organ which has to be taken into consideration for treatment and prevention of mental disorders.

Key words: Kidney, psyche, will, anxiety, mental depression, pituitary gland, endocrine pivots