초록 열기/닫기 버튼

In their daily lives, with varying degrees, many Chinese college students are stuck in the predicaments of lacking life meanings and values. They have a strong sense of loneliness and meaninglessness, not knowing what they are living for. If such ethical predicaments are not solved efficiently and timely, then they 1may result in very serious psychological, mental or even physical problems. In fact, the so-called ‘empty heart disease’ (空心病) is not a kind of psychological or mental disease, but rather a ‘perplexity’ in mind which is very commonly seen during the growth of the youth. Based on the philosophical theories and methods, the trained philosophical workers can provide suggestions and guidances towards people’s concrete problems and situations, so that people can obtain larger space and also better capacity of thinking; by doing so, the perplexities that trouble the people will thus be hopefully solved, achieving the purpose of ‘disambiguation’. In the philosophical counselors’ opinions, it is the human beings themselves that give meanings to their lives. Therefore, to solve the ‘empty heart disease’ problem, we can not depend on just preaching or inculcating externally; rather, we should encourage and inspire the college students to reflect on the purposes of their lives and their self-identities, so that they can afterwards recreate and develop their values and senses of meanings. Finally, the differences of ‘empty heart disease’, ‘noogenic neurosis’ and ‘existential neurosis’ are discussed in this paper, while an analysis of the boundaries between the need for psychotherapy and the need for philosophical counseling in relation to the three ‘diseases’ is also made.