Impairment of Seven Emotions
The seven emotions refer to joy, anger, anxiety, contemplation, grief, fear and terror which are different responses of the body to the environmental stimuli and are normal psychological activities. Normally the seven emotions will not cause disease, but sudden, violent or prolonged emotional stimuli, beyond the range of physiological activities, will cause disorder of qi activity and disharmony of visceral yin, yang, qi and blood which consequently lead to disease. Since the seven emotions are endogenous and directly affect visceral qi and blood, the internal disorder caused is called "internal impairment due to seven emotions".
The seven emotions are the physiological responses of visceral qi, blood, yin and yang. Different visceral qi, blood, yin and yang differ from each other in moving styles, leading to different emotional responses. In Huangdi Neijing, the seven emotions are matched with the five viscera：the heart governs joy, the liver governs anger, the spleen governs contemplation, the lung governs grief, and the kidney governs fear. Terror and anxiety are also closely related to the activity of qi in the five zang-organs.
The attribution of the seven emotions to the five zang-organs is not absolute. On the one hand, the same viscus may produce different emotional responses because of different pathophysiological states. For example, excess of liver-qi causes anger while deficiency of liver-qi brings on fear; excess of heart-qi brings on joy while deficiency of heart-qi leads to grief; etc. On the other hand, the seven emotions are exclusively dominated by the heart. In fact all the emotional activities are controlled by the heart and all the emotional responses are the manifestations of heart-spirit.
The following is a brief generalization of the effect of the seven emotions on the activity of qi. Excessive joy relaxes the activity of qi; excessive anger drives qi to move upwards; excessive contemplation stagnates qi; excessive grief exhausts qi; fear drives qi to move downwards; excessive terror disturbs qi; and excessive anxiety depresses qi. The following is a brief description of the characteristics of the seven emotions in causing disease.