Junzi as a Tragic Person:
A Self Psychological Interpretation of the Analects

Adobe Acrobat Version

Hosung Ahn
University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology

Draft only: please do not cite without permission

I

Roger T. Ames, one of the leading Confucian scholars, states, “Confucius has probably affected the ways of living, thinking and dying of more people than any other person in human history. Among the world’s philosophers, he is a fair candidate for being the most influential thinker the world has yet known.”[1] Obviously, there are significant scholars to revive Confucianism in our age.[2]  Nevertheless, the influence of Confucianism has been dramatically decreased in modern times.

Confucianism was the official ideological system until recently in Korea. However, when I entered elementary school in the mid-1970s, Confucius was no longer the greatest thinker and teacher for Koreans. They believed that Confucianism should be overcome because it was old-fashioned and authoritarian. Generally, I agreed. Two decades have passed until I recognize Confucius as a great personality in the Analects.

Koreans lived in an oppressive regime in the late twentieth century. The period was characterized by a great reaction against liberation. Park Jung-hee, who grasped political power by a military coup in 1962, revised the Korean Constitution to prolong his dictatorship in 1972. Another military coup occurred just after Park was assassinated in 1979, and that dictatorship lasted until 1988.  Besides brutal oppressive measures, Park and his military successors utilized Confucianism to manipulate the Korean people in the 1970s and 1980s. John Duncan states,

The benefits that the Park and Chun regimes hoped to derive from the fostering of Confucian social virtues are, on one level, painfully obvious. The successful inculcation of such virtues as filial piety, proper order between senior and junior, and loyalty to the state would have been of unquestionable utility for maintaining the dictatorial political regimes of South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.[3]

He concludes, “[Confucian social ethics] are highly susceptible to abuse by such systems. This in turn raises serious doubts about the universal applicability of Confucian social values.”[4]  If I had read Duncan’s criticism in 1990, when I wrote a comparative study of Confucianism and Daoism from a sociological perspective as a thesis for my college graduation, I would have entirely agreed to his criticism.

When the military dictators promoted Confucianism as a means to manipulate people, it had already lost its vitality. Both the authoritarian government and the ordinary people wanted to achieve industrialization as soon as possible. It seemed that the shortest road toward industrialization was to imitate the West. Korean intellectuals eagerly introduced Western theories of social development.  Western social theories circulated then – whether Marxist, Weberian, Durkeimian, or Parsonsian – had one common feature called Orientalism.[5] The dichotomy of the West and the East overlapped that of the traditional (primitive or undeveloped) and the modern (civilized or developed).  Oriental societies were characterized by the inability to modernize themselves. For instance, Max Weber argued that Confucianism and Daoism could not introduce modern capitalism owing to their this-worldliness.[6]  In the intellectual circle, Confucianism was considered one of the primary obstacles in the road toward modernization and industrialization.[7]

In spite of the official promotion of Confucianism by the government-sponsored Confucians, most Koreans thought that Confucius was a stubborn and conservative moralist whose ethical codes had become old-fashioned and oppressive. When I wrote the thesis for my Master of Education in 1995, I analyzed the texts for moral education in Korean secondary schools. They were primarily Confucian. I reached the conclusion that Confucianism is explicitly authoritarian in Korea. I never considered Confucianism applicable to our contemporary situation. It was a dead tradition. Many years passed with that conclusion. 

However, I have gradually felt that I should read the Analects carefully. This renewed interest is connected to radical changes in my cultural and intellectual atmosphere. On the one hand, I have extensively studied psychoanalysis for the last several years. It leads me to evaluate Confucianism from the psychoanalytic perspective. On the other hand, I have investigated Korean or Asian cultural and religious systems in the context of postcolonial debates and multicultural celebrations from 1999 on in the United States. It urges me to reinterpret Confucianism from the anti-colonial perspective.     

Unfortunately, colonial and post-colonial enterprises from the nineteenth century on have destroyed the non-Westerner’s ability to narrate his or her own history in the mother’s tongue.[8] Without borrowing the master’s tongue, he or she cannot say who he or she is.[9]

The non-West has been entirely objectified losing its meaning-making powers. It seems that the hidden treasures of the non-West worlds can be found only by a Western method.  As far as psychoanalysis is one of the master’s tools,[10] a good psychoanalytic interpretation of the Analects, whether Freudian or Kohutian, makes me feel ambiguous and even ashamed. It perhaps deepens my being colonized.   

In this context, Jacques Lacan’s objection to ego psychology can be well applied to me:

[I]sn’t it clear that there is no way to discern which is the healthier part of the subject’s ego except by its agreement with your [i.e., the analyst’s] point of view? And, since the latter is assumed to be healthy, it becomes the measure of things. Isn’t it similarly clear that there is no other criterion of cure than the complete adoption by the subject of your measure? This is confirmed by the common admission by certain serious authors that the end of analysis is achieved when the subject identifies with the analyst’s ego.[11] 

Like the patient trapped in the ego psychological discourse, a colonized Korean scholar might be declared competent as far as he or she accepts that the West is the only universal and valid civilization. “Wait! Is Lacan a Korean?” This murmuring of a perplexed colonized man surely makes my following presentation tragic-comical from the beginning.

Nevertheless, I believe that the humanities could transcend the cultural locations of their origins. Ideas always advance by cultural mutations. Korean history of five millennia proves that a foreign cultural system could be constructive as long as it contributes to the life of the Korean people. Except aboriginal shamanism, most cultural systems in Korea, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity, have been imported from the outside. When people in a given cultural community survive long enough, a foreign cultural system is transformed as native.[12] Regardless of the pre-colonial subjugation of Korea to China, Buddhism and Confucianism became almost native cultural components of the Korean people and helped them to survive and flourish. Christianity and other Western cultural systems, such as democracy and psychoanalysis, could work likewise for Koreans.

I think that psychoanalysis is a human science that can be applied beyond the location of its origin. I am well aware that my faith in psychoanalysis would be blind and colonizing.[13] However, following my Korean ancestors who were joyful to test new ideas until they turned out to be useless and harmful, I want to fully explore the intellectual power of psychoanalysis.

Kohutian psychoanalysis, i.e., self psychology, will guide me while exploring new images of the ideal person in the Analects. My reading of the Analects here relies on the conviction that Kohut’s self psychology and Confucianism, at least resented in the text, have not a superficial but a structural similarity. Obviously, their systems have as many differences as similarities. Above all, Confucius and his disciples did not have a psychoanalytic method by which they could access to unconscious realms of a person’s psyche. Thus, the psychology of Confucianism is neither sophisticated nor systematized. Nevertheless, self psychological insights are abundant in the Analects.  Read and understood from the perspective of self psychology, the Analects could be interpreted as a pre-psychoanalytic self psychology.

Reading the Analects from the perspective of self psychology, I will concentrate on the psychological connotations of junzi (君子) expressed by the life and words of Confucius recorded by his disciples in the Analects. Confucianism can be summarized as the way to be a junzi. Wm. Theodore de Bary states, “[T]he Analects as a whole … has a central focus in the chün-tzu [i.e., junzi] and may best be understood from this vantage point.”[14] The disciples considered Confucius as the paradigmatic junzi.

The Analects has caused numerous textual and historical debates[15] since it was edited long after the death of Confucius. The disciples highly idealized Confucius. A historically exact depiction of Confucius is impossible. I do not deal with the question of the historical Confucius here. My primary concern is to show that Confucius, as an exemplary junzi, at least as recounted in the Analects, can be meaningfully understood from the perspective of self psychology. 

Junzi means the son of a king literally and a gentlemen ordinarily. In Confucianism, it is used to indicate a noble person who attempts to actualize Confucian cardinal virtues in concrete human relationships at any cost. A junzi has sometimes been considered a conformist or a traditional conservative. The impression mainly comes from Confucius’ high respect for the cultural achievements of the previous ages. However, when a tradition is ultimately idealized, it loses its historical factuality. Instead, a utopian and universal society emerges, and it functions as the reference point for criticizing the status quo.[16] Since every society is problematic compared with the ideal society, a junzi is destined to challenge his or her[17] society.  A junzi is not a person who follows social norms quietly without challenging them.  Thus, de Bary argues that a junzi is an intellectual resister. He states, “[Confucius was doubly burdened] to preserve all he could of the human culture by which sages and worthies had brought the Way into the world, while also transforming everything worldly that did not conform to that Way.”[18] A junzi, at least in the Analects, is a conscientious intellectual whose role is to criticize the main problems of the society.

I will explicate the concept of junzi in the Analects from the self psychological perspective.  To present the conclusion in advance, a junzi is a tragic person in the Kohutian sense. Like a tragic person, a junzi attempts to follow his or her ideals and values deeply anchored in the self even at the risk of his or her biological death.

II

Most Confucians have hardly succeeded in following the words of Confucius in Korea. As we see in Confucians of Choson Dynasty (1392-1910), the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), and the period of military dictatorship (1962-1988), they were far from a junzi who tries to live according to his or her Confucian ideals. Most of them were extremely conservative and authoritarian. For instance, whenever the Korean government or feminist organizations attempt to abolish or revise heavily patriarchal and andocentric laws, Confucians fiercely disagree as if such laws are the pillars of the ideal society.  They show stubborn indifference about women’s suffering. Generally, the Analects has been used to justify partial interests of the literati who can hardly be called junzi.  Only a few good Confucians in Far Eastern countries suggest the possibility of being a junzi in the real world. 

Confucianism was established as the ethical and political orthodoxy in Korea since the fourteenth century. It was inevitably made an abstract system of ethical codes, such as loyalty to king and piety to parents.  The original thoughts of Confucius were used to justify a rigid and authoritarian formalism. Courtesy (li, 禮) became the fundamental criterion of being a junzi instead of the innermost humaneness (ren, 仁).[19] Then, literary Confucians with strict moral facades were crowded in the traditional Korean society. If moralistic formalism is the core of the Analects, Confucianism cannot be used as a guiding cultural system[20] for the present generation. Moralistic formalism disconnected from a person’s deep psychological structures is not healthy in the psychoanalytic sense.[21]  Only social pressures and a persecutory conscience sustain such formalistic Confucian ethics. This might explain why Confucianism, which was reduced to moralistic formalism, has been rapidly abandoned with the introduction of other cultural systems, such as Christianity, Marxism, or capitalism. It is painful to observe that originally subversive ideas often become very oppressive in the following ages. 

However, moralistic formalism is not the core teaching of Confucius. Only when courtesy is the expression of the innermost humaneness is it considered one of the most important criteria of being a junzi.  Confucius himself severely criticized the externalized beauty and grandeur without the internalized quality of character. For instance, he stated, “‘Clever talk and a pretentious manner’ are seldom found in those who have the innermost humaneness.”[22]  Also, he stated, “Only when ornament and substance are duly blended do you get the true gentleman [i.e., junzi].”[23]  Confucius’ coherence of life is not based on his stubborn adherence to ethical codes imposed from outside, but it comes from his courageous loyalty to ideals and values deeply anchored in his self. This claim about Confucius’ life is clearer when we realize that ideals and values are not imposed ethical codes. In this article, I differentiate values and ideals from ethical codes. Kohut’s self psychology provides the justification for this differentiation of similar ethical phenomena.    

Kohut presented self psychology by revising Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud argued that conscience or the superego aims to curb vulgar expressions of sexual and aggressive impulses.[24]  For Freud, it is meaningless to differentiate genuine ideals and values of the self from ethical codes imposed from outside and internalized in the psyche.[25] Both were conceived as conscience or the superego. Freud primarily highlighted the superego’s function to regulate desires.  

Kohut, on the other hand, attempted to reformulate Freud’s theory of the superego, which enabled him to differentiate ideals and values from conventional ethical codes.[26]  For Kohut, the superego is not a psychological agent internalized from outside pressures. Rather, it is a container of ideals and values whose nascent form is found in the infant from the beginning. He calls it the idealizing pole of the self combined with its mirroring pole. The idealizing pole is concerned with a person’s search for security and guidance, and the mirroring pole is concerned with his or her urge for recognition and respect. The bipolar self begins its development naturally with its relationships with significant others – i.e., selfobjects – who are not differentiated from the infant. When the infant has good enough caregivers, the grandiose self that expects an unconditional recognition of its greatness from others naturally appears in the mirroring pole, and the idealized parent imago that is expected to expel all kinds of dangers and vulnerabilities also naturally emerges in the idealizing pole.[27] Then, they gradually mature.

From Kohut’s perspective, Freud mistakenly assumes that the idealizing pole is a secondary structure constructed to regulate the grandiose self and its primary narcissism in the mirroring pole. This is the inevitable corollary of Freud’s metapsychology that the infant before structuralizing psychological agents – the id, the ego, and the superego – is driven by sexuality directed toward the mother as the expression of primary narcissism. For Freud, the sole goal of normal psychological development is to redirect the sexual desires toward more acceptable objects, such as other women or sublimated activities.[28] From the perspective of Freudian metapsychology, Kohut’s idealizing pole is imposed from outside in order to regulate the mirroring pole that is compelled by unrestricted primary narcissism.[29]

However, Kohut argues that both the idealizing and the mirroring pole of the self exist from the first day of the infant. From the vantage point of a mature adult, both the grandiose self and the idealized parent imago may not be desirable owing to their unrestricted demands and exaggerated expressions. Nevertheless, basic human desires beneath them are not incestuous lust and destructive aggression, but they are the urge to be recognized and accepted (mirroring assertiveness) and the urge to follow a desirable guidance (idealizing enthusiasm). Kohut summarizes his psychology as follows:

[Self psychology] posits a primary self which, in a matrix of empathic selfobjects that is held to be as much a prerequisite of psychological existence as oxygen is for biological life, experiences selfobject greatness (assertiveness; ambition), on the one hand, and selfobject perfection (idealization of one’s goals; enthusiasm for one’s ideals), on the other hand. Drives are secondary phenomena. They are disintegration products following the breakup of the primary complex psychological configurations in consequence of (empathy) failures from the side of selfobjects, assertiveness becomes exhibitionism; enthusiasm becomes voyeurism; and joy changes into depression and lethargy.[30]

According to Kohut’s metapsychology, when the natural developments of the bipolar self are blocked by traumatic experiences, various pathological phenomena of the self emerge to the surface.

From the perspective of self psychology, a rigid adherence to imposed ethical codes and deeply anchored ideals and values are different. Their difference can be explained in terms of their locations in the psyche. While ethical codes are situated against the unrestricted archaic needs of the self, ideals and values are matured from the same archaic needs. A person may utilize ethical codes superficially without integrating them into the total personality in order to regulate the anxiety from his or her archaic grandiose self or from his or her archaic idealized parent imago. Psychoanalytically speaking, they are not cathexed sufficiently by narcissistic energy. Thus, he or she may always feel that ethical codes are external and foreign in spite of his or her ardent loyalty to them at any cost. In this respect, the function of imposed ethical codes in the psyche is mainly defensive.

On the other hand, the loyalty to ideals deeply anchored in the total personality characterizes a mature and coherent self. Even though the ideals are very similar to the imposed ethical codes, they are different in their psychological processes of structuralization. In the case of genuine ideals and values, just as meat becomes a part of the body through digestion, external values and ideals of admirable adults and cultural heroes are transformed into inner psychological structures by transmuting internalization.[31]  When internalized, the ideals and values are experienced as the constitutive part of the self from which a person draws narcissistically sustainable supports in the times of adversities. When a person’s ideals and values are sufficiently engraved upon the idealizing pole of the self, he or she can experience great spontaneity from his or her actions. The perfect stage of maturity in the idealizing pole in particular and the mature self in general is succinctly summarized by Confucius. “At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”[32]

For a person whose ideals and ambitions are fully incorporated in his or her total personality, a tragic dimension of human existence appears in connection to external and internal pressures. Just as a person won’t give up his or her life, he or she won’t abandon his or her ideals which are anchored in the idealizing pole.  When he or she is forced to choose either the biological (and sociological) life or the ideals, then, heroic death or severe persecution occurs. He or she wants to be loyal to his or her psychological structures called ideals in spite of his or her biological death. Kohut calls him or her a tragic person.[33] A tragic person is one who tries to follow “the pattern of his [or her] nuclear self,” i.e., ambitions and ideals integrated into the total personality, in spite of immediate dangers and risks.[34] When a person won’t give up “the compelling urge to realize the deep-rooted design of his [or her] nuclear self”[35] regardless of tremendous disadvantages including his or her death, the tragedy of the self appears. He or she accepts even his or her biological death as the necessary cost for following his or her nuclear self. “The innermost pattern of the hero’s [or heroine’s] self is struggling for expression and ultimately reaches its goal.”[36]

The tragic dimension of human existence is often dramatized through religious and artistic figures, and they sometimes become idealized as cultural heroes who are utilized for transmuting internalization of ambitions and ideals in the following generations. Kohut states,

[The effacement of the death of the tragic hero] is instead a necessary component of the hero’s achievement, for it is only in death that the hero’s narcissistic fulfillment attains permanence. The survivors weep about the hero’s fate, but the raised body of the hero as it is carried to the funeral pyre is not lamented as the remains of defeat would be. It is admired as the symbol of the hero’s narcissistic triumph which, through his death, has now become absolute.[37]

In connection with the destiny of the tragic person described by Kohut, it is intriguing to reflect on ‘happy’ tragic persons, such as Buddha or Confucian sages. They could be considered ‘realized’ persons. However, it is clear that their happy destiny –longevity and high respect – is only possible by favorable historical contingencies. If they had been born in an unfavorable situation, they would have been martyrs or unrelenting resisters. Both tragic and realized persons are characterized by their ultimate loyalty to the nuclear self.

III

The core characteristic of the Kohutian tragic person is almost identically expressed in the Analects. “The righteous and the noble people [as examples of junzi] do not give up the virtues in order to preserve their biological lives, but they are pleased to give up their lives in order to be loyal to the virtues.”[38]  In other words, a junzi would rather die than give up his or her ideals and values. In this saying of Confucius, there is a conspicuous correspondence of a junzi and a tragic person.

A skeptic would claim, “This similarity is only accidental. A couple of similar sentences do not guarantee that they have the same structures. You attempt to equalize them only based on some words or images.” This claim is reasonable and should be answered. Various descriptions of a junzi’s life will clear up the skeptic’s doubts.

In response to the skeptic, the most important task is to show that Confucian ideals and values are not superficially imposed on the consciousness of a junzi, but they are deeply structured in his or her total personality. If they are located only in consciousness disconnected from the deeper layer of the psyche, a junzi is shallow and artificial. His or her psyche could be explained by the concepts of repression and narcissistic vulnerability. He or she would show narcissistic rage against narcissistic injuries. Also, he or she would give up his or her ideals easily when difficulties confront him or her. Moreover, he or she would show pathological rigidity and accusation when he or she encounters ideological protest and objections.  On the other hand, if the ideals and values are structured as a junzi’s nuclear self, he or she would show the characteristics of a tragic person: empathy, creativity, humor and wisdom.[39]

Those whose ideals and values are situated on their consciousness superficially are called xiaoren [little people, 小人] as compared to junzi in the Analects. While xiaoren literally means little people, they are not pathological or deformed, but just ordinary. A xiaoren is not different from a junzi in his or her potentials. Confucius stated, “Has anyone ever managed to do Good [i.e., ren] with his whole might even as long as a single day. I think not. Yet, I for my part have never seen anyone give up such an attempt because he had not the strength to go on.”[40] The difference between a xiaoren and a junzi is stated in the following saying of Confucius. “While a gentleman [i.e., junzi] takes as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men [i.e., xiaoren] take to discover what will pay.”[41] Since a xiaoren searches for what is beneficial to him or her in changing situations, he or she cannot help but be vulnerable to the external vicissitudes. To borrow Kohut’s expression, he or she “quickly and opportunistically adjust[s] [his or her] convictions under the influence of external pressures.”[42] On the other hand, a junzi is determined to “be ready to die for the good Way.”[43] Kohut calls this determination courage. He states, “The culminate peace [in his death] achieved by the hero is … the ultimate ascendancy of a firm and life-affirming self.”[44] Confucius expresses the same idea. He states, “In the morning, hear the Way; in the evening, die content!”[45]  In sum, a junzi searches for “the achievement of a psychological synthesis at all costs.”[46]

The psychological resilience of a junzi against adversaries is abundantly presented in the Analects.  The first saying in the book reads, “To remain unsoured even though one’s merits are unrecognized by others, is that not after all what is expected of a gentleman [i.e., junzi]?”[47] This saying was uttered by a man of great ambition who wanted to correct the world but was not accepted by his contemporaries. Confucius sighed, “The Way makes no progress. I shall get upon a raft and float out to sea.”[48] He must have felt a considerable resentment. However, he was not haunted by narcissistic rage in reaction to a great narcissistic injury. Moreover, he would not yield his ideals in order to gain the recognition from others. He clearly stated, “Any thought of accepting wealth and rank by means that I know to be wrong is as remote from me as the clouds that float above.”[49] Even he taught to enjoy poverty and difficulties caused by the determination to be loyal to ideals. Confucius praised his disciple Yan Hui saying, “Incomparable indeed was Hui! A handful of rice to eat, a gourdful of water to drink, living in a mean street – others would have found it unendurably depressing, but to Hui’s cheerfulness it made no difference at all. In comparable indeed was Hui!”[50]  This selection of sayings of Confucius shows that a junzi, as exemplified in the life of Confucius, has a strong nuclear self that draws strength from ambitions and ideals as the two psychological structures of the self.

If a junzi is a tragic person in the Kohutian sense, we can expect that he or she will show positive characteristics of a person with a coherent self, such as empathy, creativity, humor, and wisdom. Here, I consider Confucius as the idealized junzi in the Analects. I will show that Confucius was an extraordinarily healthy person in the Kohutian sense.

To begin with, a junzi is an empathic person. Kohut argues, “Empathy is a mode of cognition which specifically attuned to the perception of complex psychological configurations.”[51]  Empathy enables a person to recognize psychological states of other people. Confucius’ emphatic responses are characteristic in his dialogues with his disciples. He was greatly attuned to their specific situations and problems. For instance, when people asked Confucius about filial piety (xiao, 孝), his replies were idiosyncratic to each questioner.[52] His flexibility does not result from an ethical relativism. Rather, Confucius wanted to help the questioner realize his (or her) specific tasks, though based on the same ideal.

Confucius summarized his teaching by shu (恕) that corresponds to empathy. Confucius said to his disciple, “My Way has one (thread) that runs through it.” His disciple replied, “Yes.” and explained to his colleagues, “Our Master’s Way is simply this: True consideration (shu).”[53] Shu is the maxim of “Do not give to others what I do not want to take.”[54] Also, Confucius states, “As for Goodness [i.e., ren] – you yourself desire rank and standing; then help others to get rank and standing. You want to turn your merits to account; then help others to turn theirs to account – in fact, the ability to take one’s own feelings as a guide – that is, the sort of thing that lies in the direction of Goodness.”[55] Commenting on shu, de Bary states, “[O]ne comes to understand what it means to be truly human through a process of introspection and self-examination, along with observation and understanding of others.”[56] This is exactly Kohut’s definition of empathy. A junzi functions as “an emphatic-responsive human milieu”[57] in the Analects.

Secondly, a junzi is a creative person. According to Kohut, creativity of a healthy person ranges from the ability to “perform a restricted range of tasks with zestful initiative to the emergence of brilliantly inventive artistic schemes or penetrating scientific understandings.”[58]  I think that Confucius was one of the most creative persons throughout human history. While Confucius always claimed that he was a simple transmitter of the tradition, he created a powerful ideological system that would be ardently utilized for almost three millennia. Throughout his life, he unrelentingly attempted to establish an ideal community for people. By transmitting cultural achievements from the past, he actually created a new culture. For instance, he said, “If out of the three hundred Songs I had to take one phrase to cover all my teaching, I would say ‘Let here be no evil in your thoughts.’”[59]  He succinctly presented a poetics with just several Chinese characters. Even though this poetics was often challenged and violated by many creative writers, it governed Chinese and Korean literature for a long time. Confucian classics were complied and edited according to this Confucian hermeneutic principle.

Also, Confucius stated, “Who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher.”[60] This maxim summarizes the Confucian concept of creativity. When the old cannot be applied to a present situation creatively, those who stick to it are just stubborn; when the new does not have any historical foundations, those who apply it to the present are dangerous. Confucius himself stated, “He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”[61] To learn is primarily to imitate tradition; to think is to examine it in a new context.[62] Thus, a junzi is a person who attempts to re-create tradition in the present context. I think that the recreation of tradition is a paradigmatic form of creativity.[63]

Thirdly, a junzi arguably has “the capacity for genuine humor”[64] in the Analects. Kohut states, “The coexistence of idealism and humor demonstrates not only that the content and psychological locus of the narcissistic positions have changed but also that the narcissistic energies are now tamed and neutralized and that they are following an aim-inhibited course.”[65] I think that humor is the opposite behavioral mode of narcissistic rage when a person responds to narcissistic injuries. A genuine humor constructively gathers the selves shattered by personally and impersonally inflicted narcissistic injuries. Like narcissistic rage, genuine humor is concerned with a person’s deepest self. Both rage and humor indicate that the person has profound emotionality. Confucians have been depicted as ultimately serious people with neither laugher nor tears. Thus, the statement that a junzi has humor might evoke emotional resistance from many Confucians. However, Confucius showed a profound emotionality throughout the Analects. For instance, when his most beloved disciple Yan Hui died unexpectedly, other disciples of Confucius gently rebuked him seeing his excess of sorrow. The Analects reads, “When Yan Hui died the Master wailed without restraint. His followers said, ‘You are wailing without restraint!’ He said, ‘Am I doing so? Well, if any man’s death could justify abandoned wailing, it would surely be this man’s!’”[66]  This moving anecdote of Confucius clearly shows that his emotions were rich and profound.

On the other hand, he expressed his joy very freely in the Analects.  If a subtitle were given to the Analects, it would be “Joy of Being a Junzi.” The first saying of Confucius reads, “The Master said, ‘To learn and at due times to repeat what one has learnt it, is that not after all a pleasure?’”[67] In Kohut’s metapsychological terms, pleasure in this saying should be replaced by joy. Kohut states, “Joy relates to experiences of the total self whereas pleasure [...] relates to experiences of parts and constitutes of the self.”[68]  Joy comes from the sense of achieving “a decisive firming of [the] self.”[69] I think that Confucius’ pleasure of learning is this Kohutian joy. Let’s imagine that Confucius welcomes us saying, “That friends should come to one from afar, is that not after all delightful?”[70] The Analects recorded another interesting anecdote. It reads, “When in the Master’s presence anyone sang a song that he liked, he did not join in at once, but asked for it to be repeated and then joined in.”[71]  Confucius must have been a person who expressed joy with pleasant movements of the body. When he was faced with considerable difficulties, his ability to enjoy became more conspicuous. When his disciple Zi Gong asked, “Is not ‘Poor without cadging’ good?” Confucius replied, “Not bad. But ‘Poor, yet delighting in the Way’ is better.”[72]

Thus, even though the Analects does not show Confucius’ humor clearly, he must have sublimated his narcissistic energies successfully and directed them to the firming of his ideas in spite of difficult situations. In sum, a junzi has a healthy and coherent self from which genuine humor emerges against narcissistic injuries.

Finally, a junzi is characterized, above all, by his or her wisdom.  Wisdom is, Kohut argues, “a cognitive and emotional position the attainment of which might be considered one of the peaks of human development, not only, narrowly, in the analysis of the narcissistic personality disorders, but in the growth and fulfillment of the human personality altogether.”[73]  He continues,

The achievement of wisdom is a feat that we must not expect of our patients, nor, indeed, necessarily of ourselves. Since its full attainment includes the emotional acceptance of the transience of individual existence, we must admit that it can probably be reached by only a few and that its stable integration may well be beyond the compass of man’s psychological capacity.[74]

I think that Confucius, the paradigmatic junzi, was a person of the highest wisdom. Confucius once told his disciple Zi Lu, “Why did you not say ‘This is the character of the man [i.e., Confucius himself]: so intent upon enlightening the eager that he forgets his hunger, and so happy in doing so, that he forgets the bitterness of his lot and does not realize that old age is at hand. That us what he is.’”[75] When we read this description keeping in mind the fact that Confucius was getting old without due respect and recognition by contemporary kings and even ordinary people, it gets more significant. He stated, “[E]ven if I am not accorded a State Burial, it is not as though I were dying by the roadside.”[76] Judging from his comment on his beloved disciple Yan Hui,[77] Confucius was sometimes in extreme poverty. Nevertheless, he hardly blamed his fate or others for his situation. Confucius stated, “I do not accuse Heaven, nor I lay the blame on men. […] Nevertheless, Heaven will know me!”[78]  The Analects is filled with sayings and anecdotes indicating that Confucius was a junzi of wisdom.   

It is quite obvious that Confucius had a mature and coherent bipolar self. In other words, he had mature ambitions and ideals that were well structured in his total personality. On the one hand, Confucius’ healthy self-esteem and ambitions in the pole of the grandiose self are conspicuous in the Analects. For instance, Confucius stated, “If only someone were to make use of me, even for a single year, I could do a great deal; and in three years I could finish off the whole work.”[79] 

On the other hand, his ambitions were well balanced by his ideals and values that were internalized from idealized parent imagoes, i.e., sage-kings in the previous ages. For instance, Confucius said about Yao, a legendary sage-king, “Greatest, as lord and ruler, was Yao. Sublime, indeed, was he. ‘There is no greatness like the greatness of Heaven,’ yet Yao could copy it. So boundless was it that people could find no name for it; yet sublime were his achievements, dazzling the insignia of the culture!”[80]  A junzi is a person who follows the example of the legendary sage-kings. Confucius summarized the great task of a junzi as follows: “He cultivates in himself the capacity to ease the lot of other people.”[81] Also, he said to his disciples, “[This is my wish.] In dealing with the aged, to be of comfort to them; in dealing with friends, to be good faith with them; in dealing with the young, to cherish them.”[82]  Confucius shows a harmonious maturity of ambitions and ideals that characterizes a junzi.       

The extraordinary maturity of Confucius is well expressed in his brief autobiography. All Confucians have used this as the ideal life cycle of junzi throughout the history of Confucianism. It reads,

At fifteen, I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.[83] 

According to this autobiographical comment, it seems that Confucius struggled to internalize ideals in his adolescence.[84] He must have felt that his life was guided by the internalized ideals around his thirties. In this period, he wanted to actualize his ideals by being a high officer who could influence the king. However, he hardly succeeded. This situation must have disturbed his narcissistic equilibrium very much. He had spent a long time to work through his shattered selves. Finally, he could follow his ideals regardless of external successes and failures around his forties. In his fifties, he recognized that he would not be employed to realize a kingdom ruled by a sage-king. Instead, he was determined to teach future generations. Judging from his relationships with the disciples, he was a great teacher. He showed the characteristics of a fully matured sage. He could respond to others without narcissistic vulnerabilities in his sixties. Then, he reached the final stage: a cosmic personality corresponding to the universe effortlessly.

IV

I have attempted to show that a junzi is a tragic person whose self is extraordinarily strong and coherent. However, the life of Confucius does not fit the overall image of a tragic person in the Kohutian sense. Confucius does not resemble Oedipus, Jesus, or Hamlet, who Kohut considered paradigmatic tragic persons. The final stage of Confucius is too harmonious and peaceful to be called tragic. Thus, a Confucian who believes that a person is perfectible would argue that Confucius is not tragic, but beyond tragic. Asian depictions of sages, such as Laozi, Confucius, or Buddha, indicate that the final stage of human development is not tragedy but a cosmic peace and harmony.[85] This apparent difference provides the chance to re-examine the concept of a tragic person in Kohutian self psychology.

Kohut’s depiction of tragic heroes is greatly influenced by the Western image of cultural heroes: Prometheus, Oedipus, Jesus, and so forth. They are the heroes who struggle against their destinies unto death. I think that several factors in Kohut’s personal history strengthened his idea of tragedy in human existence. One of Kohut’s key terms in self psychology is fragmentation. From existentialism to postmodernism, many intellectuals have paid careful attention to fragmented selves in the fragmented world.[86] Considering Kohut’s Jewish childhood in Austria where anti-Semitism rapidly spread like an epidemic, his immigration to America, his struggle to be an American psychoanalyst, and his profession to cure fragmented and troubled persons, his affinity with existentialist artists, such as Kafka, is not accidental. However, unlike modern artists and philosophers, Kohut never gave up the faith that a person can have a strong coherent self.  For Kohut, horrible and hopeless depictions of fragmented personalities were only disintegration products, whether genetic or psychological. Kohut, as a psychoanalyst, helped a fragmented, but still analyzable, person to structuralize a coherent and nuclear self in a creative way.

While the psychoanalytic structuralization of a fragmented self in self psychology hardly makes person a junzi, self psychology does not exclude the possibility that ideal persons can exist in the real world.  Kohut did not systematically attempt to deal with greatly idealized personalities.[87] He, nevertheless, occasionally suggested his opinions about persons far beyond psychoanalytic grasps.  The idea of tragic person could be an attempt to understand a person beyond the limit of the therapeutic psychoanalysis.   

To bring Kohut and Confucius together, I put them in an extended line of human development. Admittedly, this linear grasp distorts the complicated and dynamic aspects of human development. Nevertheless, it highlights a difference between psychoanalysis and Confucianism. A person can be located in the trajectory from pathological via normal to ideal development. Kohut usually deals with persons between pathological and normal development while Confucius targets persons between normal and ideal development. Confucianism and psychoanalysis have different targets. Psychoanalysis usually considers the ideal realm of personality to abnormal or pathological.[88] Kohut carefully avoids psychoanalytic reductionism by not arguing that the present theoretical framework of self psychology can explain idealized persons exhaustively. However, his explanation of great personalities is rare and fragmentary.   

Confucianism, by the term of junzi, suggests the possibility of personal perfection in our imperfect environmental situations. As I briefly suggested above, this ‘perfect’ person, like Confucius, would be pleased to die if he or she is forced to give up his or her deep-rooted ideals. In this respect, realized/perfect person in the Analects and Tragic Person in self psychology have very similar – or even the same – psychological constellations.

I have deciphered the Analects from the perspective of self psychology. A more detailed comparison between psychoanalysis and Confucianism will contribute to a deeper understanding of person. Judging from the understanding of junzi as a tragic person, the characteristics of healthy and pathological personalities conceptualized by Kohut would be cross-culturally appropriate. I believe that various self psychological themes can be significantly applied to other key aspects as well as junzi in the Analects.