Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. PATTERNS OF ENGAGEMENT– HINDU
PERSPECTIVES
Nothing quite reveals the failure of psychoanalysis to engage with religion, spirituality and
the sacred than its relationship with Hinduism. While Hinduism extends beyond the
geographical boundaries of India, and India is not exclusively Hindu, it does provide a clear
focus for the study of psychoanalytic engagement. India, a society and culture steeped in
mythology with its multiplicity of gods and goddesses, has proved to be barren soil for
psychoanalysis, as ‘psychoanalysis in India is virtually stagnant’ (Mehta 1997: 459).
Reviews of the history of psychoanalysis in India provided by Akhtar (Akhtar and Parens
2001; Akhtar 2005; Akhtar and Tummala-Narra 2005; Akhtar 2008), Hartnack (Hartnack
1990, 2001, 2003), Kakar (Kakar 1978, 2005), and Mehta (Mehta 1997) highlight reasons
for this, further contextualized by histories of psychotherapy and mental health (Neki 1975;
Agarwal 2004). 305 Biswas helpfully explores the noted Hindu philosopher, poet and mystic,
305 Psychoanalysis had an early and promising start in India when the first Psychoanalytic Society was
established in 1921 (recognized by the IPA in 1922) by Girindrasekhar Bose, a medical doctor in Calcutta,
becoming the first non-Western analytic society and was dominated by Bose until his death in 1953. As a
celebration of Freud’s 75 th birthday (in 1931) Bose sent an ivory figure of Vishnu, the Hindu god - creator,
preserver, restorer, healer and life-giver - that Freud gave an honoured place on his desk. Yet in 1930 Freud
confessed to Rolland ‘I shall now try with your guidance to penetrate into the Indian jungle which until now,
an uncertain blending of Hellenic love of proportion, Jewish sobriety and Philistine timidity have kept me
away’ (quoted in Burke 2006: 297). Despite Freud’s literary and cultural awareness of some aspects of
Hinduism he came up against the insurmountable obstacles of religion, mythology and the goddess in multiple
forms and resisted Bose’s attempts to integrate the mythological dimensions of Indian culture with
psychoanalysis. A Kleinian influenced training was established in Bombay by Servadio in 1945 and these two
centres have shaped psychoanalysis in India, where there are still less than 40 psychoanalysts. To put this in a
context, the UK with a population of 61 million has 300 psychoanalysts, a ratio of 1 in 200,000 per head of
population. India has a population of 1.1 billion with 40 psychoanalysts, a ratio of 1 in 28,000,000 per head of
population.
Neki, a Sikh scholar and poet, regarded as a leading psychiatrist in India, has integrated religious beliefs and
practices with psychiatry and places psychoanalysis within this wider context offering a two-fold classification
of psychotherapy. There are the ‘Mystico-metaphysical traditions’ composed of Buddhist traditions, Yogic
traditions and Bhakti (devotional) traditions, alongside ‘Medical traditions’ composed of the Hindu tradition
represented by Ayurvedic principles, and the Unani tradition which deals with emotions, mental states and
their effects on the body and their applications. In addition there was the ‘British tradition’ that introduced a
western system of medicine to India and psychoanalytic forms of psychotherapy. Neki sees a decline in
psychoanalytic psychotherapies that dominated from 1920-1965, and the emergence of Indian psychotherapies
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