Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

in its own right, and modify modes of psychoanalytic therapy to help Indian patients’
(Akhtar and Tummala-Narra 2005: 19).
Contemporary overview – psychoanalysis
Contemporary psychoanalysis since the mid 1990s, primarily through the influence of
Kakar and Akhtar, has begun to engage more creatively with Hinduism. 307 This movement
requires ‘a genuine respect for intracultural viewpoints and interdisciplinary input’ (Akhtar
2005: xix) in order to prevent an ongoing pathologizing of each other. This has resulted in
new forms of theoretical and cultural engagement (Kakar 2009).
Firstly, there has been a trend of comparative engagement, where psychoanalytic concepts
and Hindu ideas can be seen as offering ‘parallel truths’. Freud's ‘Nirvana principle’ allied
to his death instinct resonates with the concept of Nirvana in Hinduism (Akhtar 2005), 308
although the term is more commonly used in relation to Buddhism. Freud’s ‘oceanic
feeling’ arose out of conversations with Rolland, influenced by the Bengali mystic and
Vedantic Hindu teacher Sri Ramakrishna, leading Akhtar to conclude ‘the Indian mystical
tradition was a background conceptual source for Freud's death instinct. This may have
been part of why the concept appeared alien to Western minds’(Akhtar 2005: xviii). 309
Kapadia uses the story of Trishanku found in the Bhagwat Puran to illustrate the dilemma’s
experienced by borderline personalities (Kapadia 1998). Reddy finds similar
307 Homans identified the importance of Kakar’s ideas as early as 1984, applying religious and psychoanalytic
insights from the East and the West (Homans 1984).
308 This is disputed by Cordess who sees these terms having different meaning when placed in their respective
contexts. ‘The conjunction of concepts is speculative and stimulating but has not helped to engage the
sympathies of those of a more empirical and pragmatic turn of mind’ (Cordess 2006).
309 ‘Other writers remain extremely sceptical with regard to the interest of the concept, judging it to be too
speculative and a source of confusion’ (Widlocher and Bernstein 2006).
143