The first Chinese word he mentioned meant to carry a burden or to bear heavy pain.  Chinese is a picture language in the sense that the characters used to spell words are actually pictures of a sort.  The image or character for ‘bearing heavy pain’ shows a heart with a dagger sticking in it.

The second Chinese word he mentioned was the word for psychology.  Interestingly, the first character of that word also shows the heart, but there is no dagger.

In American culture we sometimes refer to a painful situation by saying it was “like he stuck a knife in me.”  Or we might say “it breaks my heart” when we experience a painful situation.  As we say it we sometimes act out the image by clutching our chest and grimacing as if experiencing the stabbing knife or the breaking of our heart.

We feel the stabbing pain.  We know the experience of a broken heart. 

In those situations we seek out supportive people – family members, good friends, colleagues, ministers – to help us remove the knife and stitch up our emotional wounds.  In many cases this meets our need, we recover from our painful experience, and life goes on.

But sometimes we don’t have a support system to turn to.  Or sometimes the brokenness we feel is so severe that we develop more challenging psychological problems or concerns.  When that occurs it is time to call a good therapist who will listen to you and provide you a place to talk about and think about your painful and confusing experiences.  A good therapist can help you remove the daggers and stitch up your emotional wounds.

That is the goal of psychology – we want to take daggers out of hearts.