Is Zhu Yuanzhang a tyrant? Why don't his generals live long?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor, was not only one of the outstanding politicians in China history, but also a rare tyrant. There are two main explanations for his series of atrocities in middle-aged and old age: one is the theory of depravity, and the other is the theory of political needs. The former emphasizes that Zhu Yuanzhang's killing heroes is the limitation of small farmers' thought, the degeneration of emperors' thought and the degeneration of peasant rebel leaders. As the latter, it is emphasized that Zhu Yuanzhang's killing heroes is the skill of emperors, the consistent trick of politicians and the inevitable result of political struggle. As a psychologist, Zhu Yuanzhang has always had a strong interest in historical figures and tried to re-understand these figures from the perspective of psychology. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, has always been my focus. After sorting out and studying the historical materials that recorded Zhu Yuanzhang's deeds in detail, I think that compared with other founding emperors, Zhu Yuanzhang's psychological quality is the worst, with serious psychological obstacles and split personality. In this regard, I want to use the "eight-fold-Bird's split personality conjecture" to summarize Zhu Yuanzhang's psychological distortion process, which mainly includes three hypotheses: (1) Zhu Yuanzhang suffers from severe neurosis; (2) Zhu Yuanzhang's neurosis led to his split personality; (3) Zhu Yuanzhang's psychological defense mechanism for killing heroes is to do justice for heaven. Zhu Yuanzhang (A.D. 1328- 1398) suffered from neurosis due to his seizure of political power. He was seriously lacking in self-confidence, paranoid and prone to delusions. Born in poverty, he was forced to become a monk in Huang Jue Temple in his early years. He experienced changes in the world, and later joined Guo Zixing's men, and soon became a soldier. Zhu Yuanzhang was good at tapping talents, and soon gathered a group of senior consultants, such as Li Shanchang, Song Lian, Liu Ji (Bowen) and others. They made suggestions for Zhu Yuanzhang, so that Zhu Yuanzhang not only overthrew the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, but also swept away other peasant rebels one by one, and established the Ming Dynasty on 1368. Sadly, when Zhu Yuanzhang started the world, he was able to recruit all the world's outstanding talents and appoint subordinates with confidence. When the world was certain, he began to worry that the civil servants would look down on him and the military commanders would usurp his throne. Over time, Zhu Yuanzhang showed typical anxiety neurosis, such as serious lack of self-confidence, paranoia, extreme sensitivity, paranoia and so on. In order to alleviate his anxiety, Zhu Yuanzhang took pleasure in cleaning up court officials and killing officials and people. For example, he invented the punishment method for court staff. From the prime minister to the common people, no one can safeguard human dignity. Many people actually "stand under the staff", and those who died without the staff ended up physically disabled and determined, and were sent to Fengyang or other remote counties in the border state for exile. Only in the ninth year of Hongwu (A.D. 1376), there were more than 10,000 officials in Fengyang. In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang also created (restored) many inhuman criminal laws, such as Chinese New Year, scrubbing, diarrhea, peeling, stabbing to death, castration, knee-lifting, tin snake swimming and so on. , more cruel than all previous kings. In the thirteenth year of Hongwu, a Hu case occurred in the court. Hu is the son-in-law of Li Shanchang, the founding hero, and a former prime minister of Zuo. During his tenure, it is understandable that he was killed by Zhu Yuanzhang for his own selfish interests, ganging up to frame dissidents, embezzling money and plotting evil deeds. However, Zhu Yuanzhang took this trip to implicate the whole family, which led to the Hudang DaYu, which lasted for ten years and killed more than 30,000 people, among whom more than 20 family members made contributions. It also involved the killing of Li Shanchang's family, the demotion of Song Lian's family, and the death of Song Lian himself in exile. Zhu Yuanzhang's suspicion of literati also reached the point of nervousness. Lin, a scholar in Zhejiang, wrote a table thanking people for their salary, saying that "if you do something, you will be respected by the constitution", while Xu Yikui, a professor in Hangzhou, said in the congratulatory table that "under the skylight, you are a natural saint and should do something for the world". Zhu Yuanzhang actually thought that "under the sky" meant that he was a bald monk and "doing something" meant that he was a thief and ordered them to be executed. As a result, Daxing Wenzi Prison made ministers and scholars cautious and silent, but Zhu Yuanzhang got great psychological satisfaction from it! All these show that Zhu Yuanzhang's mentality is extremely distorted and lacks the mind that a generation of wise kings should have. The split personality caused by excessive anxiety is rooted in Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety about political achievements and excessive anxiety about the throne. The root of Zhu Yuanzhang's neurosis is the anxiety of political achievements and throne. Psychology defines anxiety as anxiety, uneasiness and extreme tension caused by social factors. Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety about achievements is to build an absolutely equal society, compared with Yao Shun, where there are no tycoons and corrupt officials. Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety about the throne is manifested in his fear that important officials in the imperial court will gradually overhead his power and even fool him. The interaction of these two kinds of anxiety made Zhu Yuanzhang live in a sub-health state of high anxiety and tension for a long time, and his personality became increasingly paranoid, eventually reaching a split personality. It stands to reason that Zhu Yuanzhang jumped from a poor monk to the founding emperor of a huge empire. He should be as confident as Qin Huang Hanwu and Tang Zongsong Zu. However, Zhu Yuanzhang's personality tragedy lies in the fact that quick success and instant benefit are bound to encounter setbacks in reality. Instead of self-criticism, he takes it out on his subordinates, kills people at every turn, implicates the nine clans, and expects to punish troubled times with severe punishment, which will only increase his frustration in the end. In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang felt inferior as he got older. He doesn't believe that the team of Prime Minister Tang Taizong's cloth clothes will be completed from beginning to end, and he doesn't believe that Song Taizu's "a glass of wine can make people sit back and relax. Therefore, the higher his political achievements, the higher his anxiety about the throne, which strengthened the conflict between imperial power and relative power, leading to the complete abolition of the phase later. Zhu Yuanzhang had an obvious personality fracture before and after ten years of Hongwu, commonly known as "great change in temperament" or "a completely different person" Psychologically, this is a typical manifestation of personality split, which generally means that a person's personality characteristics have undergone structural changes. At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang became quite narcissistic, showing lack of empathy, stubbornness and paranoia. This is very different from Zhu Yuanzhang in his early years! As a result, Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety in his life experienced a U-shaped trajectory-the anxiety of survival in his early years, the anxiety of achievement in his later years and the anxiety of imperial power. It built Zhu Yuanzhang's "spiritual prison", which kept him in trouble. In response, Zhu Yuanzhang's way of doing things in his life has also undergone a U-shaped change-he used martial arts to destroy his opponents in his early years and also used martial arts to eradicate his opponents in his later years, leaving behind all Confucian ideas of governing the country, such as benevolence, loyalty and forgiveness! A strong mental defense mechanism supported him to eradicate dissidents by cruel means and kill more than 10 thousand people at will. The so-called psychological defense mechanism generally refers to a person's efforts to reduce inner anxiety and balance inner conflicts. So what is the psychological defense mechanism of Zhu Yuanzhang's cruel murder? This is not only a question for historians, but also an exploration by psychologists. According to historical records, Zhu Yuanzhang suffered from severe insomnia in his later years. He often gets up at night to watch the celestial phenomena and visit the 28 constellations, which will violate the Heavenly Palace. During the twenty-six to twenty-eight years of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang first killed the general aquamarine, involving more than fifteen thousand people, then forced Xu Da to eat the steamed goose he sent to die, and then forced Fu Youde to commit suicide, falsely accusing Liao Yongzhong of stealing a dragon robe and being imprisoned to death, even born to die, an idle man at home. Therefore, in just three years, Zhu Yuanzhang wiped out the remaining elders who had fought side by side with him. In this regard, historians have always believed that this is because Zhu Yuanzhang knew that he was dying, so he accelerated the pace of eradicating heroes. But my bold guess is that Zhu Yuanzhang was so crazy about killing people because he watched the celestial phenomena at night in those years and found that the Heavenly Palace was guilty. Only by killing the hero can we nip in the bud. So I boldly assume that Zhu Yuanzhang's madness in killing heroes in his later years is because he firmly believes that he is adhering to God's will and doing justice for heaven, so he succeeded! This is the outstanding performance of rational thinking, and it also gives him the courage to kill! If this is the case, Zhu Yuanzhang's wanton killing of liegeman is not only caused by personality distortion, but also by superstition or psychological suggestion, which fully proves his cruelty! Zhu Chong Ba period and Zhu Yuanzhang period had two completely different personalities. Zhu Yuanzhang's personal tragedy lies in that when he is full of inferiority, he is still somewhat confident, but when he should feel confident, he feels particularly inferior. In other words, when Zhu Yuanzhang was also called Zhu Chongba, he was quite tenacious, confident, humble and generous. Although he is only a general of the Red Scarf Army, he is widely expected. But since Zhu Chongba changed his name to Zhu Yuanzhang, he has become more and more sensitive, fragile, willful and cruel. Therefore, Zhu Chong Ba and Zhu Yuanzhang are two completely different personalities, which is a sharp contrast between Ren Jun and a tyrant. This is not so much the result of the king's political power or imperial power thought, but rather the personal personality tragedy of Zhu Yuanzhang! More than 250 years ago, the German mathematician Goldbach discovered an interesting phenomenon: any integer greater than 5 can be expressed as the sum of three prime numbers, and each even number not less than 6 is the sum of two prime numbers (numbers that can only be divisible by itself), which is the later Goldbach conjecture. The famous mathematician Euler thinks this conjecture is correct, but it can't be proved. But this has attracted the attention of many mathematicians throughout the ages and tried to verify it, including Chen Jingrun, a famous mathematician in China. Similarly, my conjecture of "emphasizing eight-Bird's split personality" seems to be established in theory, but it needs a lot of historical data to prove it, especially Zhu Yuanzhang's records of health, medication and aftercare in his later years, and the astronomical records of Hongwu from 26 to 28 years. Only in this way can we treat Zhu Yuanzhang's health status in his later years and its influence on decision-making, and also restore Zhu Yuanzhang's historical innocence. More importantly, I put forward the conjecture of "emphasizing eight-Bird's split personality", trying to explain that Zhu Yuanzhang's transformation from benevolent monarch to tyrant is more the result of psychological action than the need of pure political struggle! In other words, it is much clearer to analyze Zhu Yuanzhang's behavior in his later years from the perspective of psychology than from the perspective of politics and history. This is a blank place in the history circle of our country. Speaking of it, Zhu Yuanzhang himself was a victim of his "spiritual prison" because he finally repented before he died: "I am not as good as the ancients." At the end of this paper, I strongly hope that my colleagues in the field of history can pay attention to my point of view, so as to explore together and open up new methods and new ways of historical research. (The author is a doctoral student at Harvard University and an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong) ▲ Zhu Yuanzhang's life, his life trajectory is from humble to rich, but his mental journey is from self-confidence to inferiority. This is mainly caused by his great achievement anxiety and power anxiety. The former has brought him an extremely heavy psychological burden and a small sense of accomplishment at work. The latter brought him a great loss of security and fell into the quagmire of doubting everything. It can be said that these two anxieties caused Zhu Yuanzhang's personality tragedy and made him one of the few tyrants in the history of China. Therefore, when we look at Zhu Yuanzhang's life, we should not only look at his background and events, but also look at Zhu Yuanzhang's personality changes. Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to be a benevolent king and a tyrant, which had profound psychological reasons. ▲ Zhu Yuanzhang has three main anxieties in his life, namely, survival anxiety, achievement anxiety and power anxiety. Among these three kinds of anxiety, the former was once real, but it was completely eliminated; The winner emerged in the struggle for the world and shaped Zhu Yuanzhang's historical image and status; The latter is basically illusory, but it has been repeatedly exaggerated. In other words, Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety about survival made him suffer from human sufferings and developed a character of hating evil as enemies. Zhu Yuanzhang's anxiety about achievements made him constantly challenge himself, improve himself and achieve unprecedented self-realization; Zhu Yuanzhang's power anxiety made him extremely paranoid and suspicious, even indiscriminate and unreasonable!