Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Despite these recent developments overall Hinduism is still a remarkably absent partner in
theoretical dialogue with psychoanalysis. Spezzano and Gargiulo’s examination of
spirituality and religion in contemporary psychoanalysis while having chapters from
Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Zen Buddhist perspectives, relegates Hinduism to two
passing references allied to Buddhism in one chapter (Spezzano and Gargiulo 1997).
Freud’s early knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita was filtered through a Eurocentric paternal
colonialism that has remained in the psychoanalytic world until recent times. Only as
contemporary psychoanalysis has adopted pluralistic approaches, informed by wider social,
cultural and global issues, has Hinduism come to offer to psychoanalysis some of its
mythological richness. As Symington concludes,
Each culture, each religion, each nation has a facet of the truth … and when I say
“truth”, I mean practical wisdom as a guiding light in our dark and complex world
… Hinduism has endowed the world with a contemplative understanding of the
unifying nature of the world, yet it failed in the field of practical action (Symington
2004a: 208f.).
Psychoanalysis allied to religious tradition and spiritual practice offers a partnership in
Kakar’s vision of mutual engagement. ‘The “spirit” in this book is not the “luminous
cloud” of the mystic that floats ethereally in mysterious regions of human stratosphere but
one that swirls among the crags of human passions-above all, desire and narcissism, which
line our depths’ (Kakar 2009: 6).
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