YAN Yuan,a greater thinker in the early Qing Dynasty,discovered his real parentage during the funeral of his adoptive grandmother. At the same time,he transferred his intellectual direction from admiring CHENG-ZHU to "returning to" Confucius-Mencius. From the perspective of psychohistory,the phenomenon that these two changes happened at the same time was not accidental at all. YAN always expected to be a sage but was greatly depressed by his adoptive grandfather. Meanwhile,he had unconsciously suspected the doctrine of ZHU Xi for a long time. The discovery of his real parentage offered him an opportunity to solve the identity crisis through finding his origin in the bloodline as well as in the intellectual lineage. In addition, YAN faced the problem of not having an heir all his life. These ethical problems caused the interplay of YAN's awareness of the bloodline and that of the intellectual lineage.