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This is a sophisticated text about the transmission of trauma, the economy of desire, and the generation of subject, developed in a contemporary urban context. 1. Intergenerational transmission of trauma and compulsive repetition The core psychoanalytic tension of the novel lies in how the two protagonists transform the unspoken historical trauma into the dynamic structure of the current relationship. Jiang Yuchun: The Historical Burden of the Melancholic Subject Jiang Yuchun's trauma has typical "pre-linguistic period" characteristics: illegitimate child status, black family experience, mother's death from illness, and the objectified existence of being "fostered" by Jin Dongcheng. Judging from the framework of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholy", Jiang Yuchun has been in a state of melancholia rather than mourning for a long time - he was unable to complete the separation from his mother, nor could he completely externalize and abandon Jin Dongcheng as a "bad object". This explains his core stance in relationships: passive, accommodating, self-effacing. He participates in sex like a bystander and acts as a buffer zone in the power field of Jin Shan and Jin Dongcheng. This is the clinical manifestation of melancholic subjects turning their aggression inward. Jin Shan: Self-injury as symbolic discourse Jin Shan's behavior of using bricks to injure himself when he was in junior high school is the key to understanding his mental structure. This is not simple self-injury, but a kind of symbolic self-injury: when language cannot convey the existential anxiety caused by his gay identity, the body becomes the signifier. Looking at it more deeply, this constituted a kind of compulsive repetition - he later continued to replicate this pattern of "making wounds - showing wounds - asking for a response" in relationships: biting Jiang Yuchun, provoking in front of his father, and using extreme behavior to test the boundaries of the relationship. He is reenacting the original scene, trying to gain a sense of mastery through repetition, and transform the passive traumatic experience into an active narrative. 2. Variations and Triangular Structure of the Oedipus Complex The "equilateral triangle" dining table scene at the beginning of the novel is a highly condensed Oedipal device. Parent-child-object triple In the traditional Oedipus, the son establishes his subjectivity through identification/competition with his father. However, in this text, Jiang Yuchun's position has undergone an erotic shift: he is not only the object of his father's desire (the little pet brought by Jin Dongcheng), but also the object of his son's desire. This transforms the classic narrative of patricide and mother-marriage into a more complex dual structure of same-sex competition and erotic investment. Jin Shan's possessiveness towards Jiang Yuchun must be understood as a seizure of his father, phallus. Jiang Yuchun is the symbol of Jin Dongcheng's "taste" and "power". By possessing him, Jin Shan is actually performing a kind of symbolic castration - not killing his father, but seizing his father's object of desire, thereby proving that he has the same desire ability as his father. The repeated occurrences of "competition" and "competition" rather than "love" in the novel are a direct manifestation of this dynamic. Mei Hong's Absence and the Transfer of Maternal Function The absence of Jin Shan's mother creates an empty maternal position. Interestingly, Jiang Yuchun assumes this function to a certain extent: he is the container of emotions, the regulator of relationships, and the bearer of trauma. Jin Shan confides in him and seeks comfort from him. This need for maternal empathy is eroticized, forming the alternating emotional rhythm of "tenderness and violence" in the novel. 3. From narcissism to object love: Jin Shan's emotional development Jin Shan's spiritual development trajectory can be regarded as a case of difficult transition from primary narcissism to object love. Emotional isolation and strong superego Professor Yang commented on Jin Shan's inhuman calmness and rigor, and pointed out that he lacked ordinary people's empathy. This points to the excessive development of a superego - Jin Shan used reason, legal regulations, and logical debate to build a solid defensive wall to strictly isolate the impulses of the id (aggression, dependence, chaotic emotions). It was no accident that he chose law and psychology: the former is the incarnation of rules, and the latter is a tool through which he attempts to objectify and scientificize himself. The paradox of "making love" Jin Shan participated in the hypnosis experiment in an attempt to "plant a seed of love in the hearts of people who are unable to love." This is a typical narcissistic solution: he does not believe that love can occur naturally, but tries to produce love through technology (technē). This exposes his deep relational pattern of treating others as objects of self-extension rather than as independent subjects. He asked Professor Yang what love is. The answer is important because it points to a physical, pre-rational, and uncontrollable reaction. This is the state that Jin Shan fears and needs the most: losing control. Jiang Yuchun as a "transitional object" Winnicott's concept of "transitional object" can be appropriated here: Jiang Yuchun became Jin Shan's bridge from "omnipotent control" to "recognition of the other". Jin Shan initially tried to control Jiang Yuchun (surveillance at the school gate, dominance in sex, information blockade), but in Jiang Yuchun's diary, silence and occasional resistance, he gradually encountered an other who could not be completely assimilated. Jiang Yuchun's "secrets"—those untold pasts—form a kernel that maintains Jin Shan's impenetrable density, which is precisely the prerequisite for love to occur: love begins with acknowledging the unknowability of the other. 4. Power, pain and eroticization: the dynamics of sadomasochism Sexual relations in the novel are imbued with an exchange of pain and control that cannot simply be reduced to pathologizing but should be read as a relational language. 1. Pain as a communication medium Jin Shan's biting, suppression, and mark on Jiang Yuchun's neck, as well as Jiang Yuchun's "little animal-like resistance driven to death" constitute a pre-linguistic communication system. In theory, sadomasochistic relationships often serve a boundary-testing function: confirming one's own physical boundaries through pain and confirming the intensity of the other's presence through surrender. For Jin Shan, the marks on Jiang Yuchun's skin were his way of writing sovereignty; for Jiang Yuchun, bearing these marks and showing them to Jin Dongcheng (the bite marks on the side of his neck) was a performance of dual loyalty - surrendering to Jin Shan and demonstrating to Jin Dongcheng. Role fluidity in BDSM structures It is worth noting that the two men are not fixed in positions of power. Jin Shan "surrendered and gave him the initiative" on the bed, and Jiang Yuchun "was very good at seducing people." This role fluidity suggests that they are exploring a de-Oedipalized relationship model: not a fixed active/passive, father/son, control/submission, but a fluid economy of desire in negotiation. This is perhaps the novel's most radical subtext: an inequality that does not rely on equality in fixed positions of power. 5. Hypnosis, free will and the subconscious: Lacanian interpretation The hypnosis experiment in which Jin Shan participates is the meta-narrative device of the entire novel, with a strong Lacanian flavor. Hypnosis as surrender to the "big other" Lacan believes that the subject is essentially structured by language/the Other, and free will is a misrecognition of the imagination. Jin Shan tried to "implant" the feeling of love through hypnosis, which in itself is a dramatization of Lacan's proposition: love is not the subject's independent choice, but the effect of the discourse of the big other. What's even more ironic is that Jiang Yuchun later admitted that he had also participated in the "tracking" of this experiment—which meant that both of them were trying to objectify and digitize each other, but in the process encountered the return of the Real: overflowing emotions that could not be captured by the experimental parameters. The paradox of free will At the end of the novel, Jin Shan said: "Even if they have lost their free will in this crazy love, they are still willing, because this happens to be the choice they each made based on their free will." This accurately touches on a core paradox: the so-called free choice of the subject is precisely the identification with the determined structure. Love here is not the affirmation of free will, but the acceptance of being thrown into relationship - a freedom that is deeper than "free choice": the recognition of one's own unfreedom. 6. Identity, writing and the formation of subject Jiang Yuchun's diary: from being written to writing by oneself Jiang Yuchun's diary is the key medium for the generation of his subject. Initially, he was a transparent person with "no name and no identity", who was written by Jin Dongcheng and Mei Hong (given identity, money, and living space). The diary represents his attempt to write himself—to wrest himself from the narratives of others. When Jin Shan read the diary sentence about falling in love with him, an important identity shift occurred: Jiang Yuchun was no longer a puzzle that Jin Shan needed to decipher, but a subject who also possessed immanence and secrets. Jin Shan's "comedy" turn Jin Shan suggested, "Let's not play a tragedy, but a comedy." This is actually of great significance. The tragic structure is determined by fate/paternal law (Oedipal inevitability), while the comic structure presupposes negotiation, contingency and becoming. From insisting on "truth" to accepting "good life", Jin Shan actually completed the transition from philocentrism (the pursuit of an ultimate answer, an absolute power position) to relational survival. He no longer tries to "defeat" his father or "unravel" Jiang Yuchun's secrets, but learns to coexist with uncertainty. The value of this novel is that it shows how love works as a trauma cure, not through "healing" or "integration," but by acknowledging the irreparability of trauma and creating a space between two people for shared vulnerability. The relationship between Jin Shan and Jiang Yuchun began with their respective symptoms: one is a control freak who is emotionally isolated, and the other is a melancholic who hides himself. Their love is not the elimination of symptoms, but the mutual recognition and rearrangement of symptoms. Just as the two people confirmed each other's tears and smiles in the snow at the end of the novel - those emotional expressions that cannot be rationalized and controlled - ultimately constitute the most real encounter between the subjects. In this sense, the novel is not only a love story, but also a psychological allegory about how the subject rebuilds itself on the ruins of relationships.