Lu Xun and Jung’s Model of the Psyche

ABSTRACT

Reading Lu Xun through Carl Jung is a structural analysis of the short stories of Lu Xun, a founder of modern Chinese literature living in the early twentieth century. The study details correspondences between dynamic interactions among characters in Lu Xun’s short stories and structural components of C. G. Jung’s model of the psyche. Brown locates recurring intra- and interpsychic patterns in the stories, revealing the collective psyche of the Chinese people as Lu Xun’s psychoanalytic subject.

KEY WORDS:

• Carolyn T. Brown
• Carl Jung
• Jungian psychoanalysis
• Lu Xun
• modern Chinese literature
• psychoanalysis
• structural analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melanie Starr Costello

MELANIE STARR COSTELLO, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, historian, and senior Jungian analyst in private practice in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute-Zürich and earned her doctorate in the History and Literature of Religions from Northwestern University. Currently serving as a training analyst for the C. G. Jung Institute-Zürich, Dr. Costello has taught and published on the topics of psychology and religion, medieval spirituality, aging and clinical practice. Her study of the link between illness and insight, entitled Imagination, Illness and Injury: Jungian Psychology and the Somatic Dimensions of Perception, was published by Routledge. Correspondence: [email protected].