Hartnack, Vishnu On Freud's Desk PDF

Vishnu on Freud's Desk: Psychoanalysis in Colonial India
Author(s): CHRISTIANE HARTNACK

Source: Social Research, Vol. 57, No. 4, Reception of Psychoanalysis (WINTER 1990), pp.
921-949
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Vishnu on
Freud's Desk:
Psychoanalysis BY CHRISTIANE
in Colonial India* / HARTNACK
/jlMONG Freud's Greek, Roman, and Egyptian stat

cobra-headed ivory carving of Vishnu stands out. It is
earth-colored but white, not an antique and not Medi
nean. It was sent to Freud by the Indian Psychoanal
Society on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday,
gave it "a place of honor" on his desk, to symbolize the "p
conquest it [psychoanalysis] has made in foreign count
This was Freud's view then. Now, from a distance of over
years, this statuette also stands for the story of a failed at
at an intercultural exchange about psychoanalytical con
The objective of this paper is to describe the early recep
of psychoanalysis in India, and to present Freud's atti
toward his followers in the first non- Western country w
psychoanalytical society was formed. While central psych
lytical techniques like the method of free associatio
dream analysis were applied in British India, it will be
that psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method and as a c
theory was not easily received in a culture with philoso
and scientific traditions, religious beliefs, myths, and cul
mores quite distinct from those of Central Europe.
Instead of the nuclear father-dominated family that
1 Sigmund Freud to Girindrasekhar Bose, Dec. 13, 1931, in Tarun Chandra

"Development of Psychoanalysis in India," International journal of Psychoan
(1966): 431.
SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Winter 1990)
922 SOCIAL RESEARCH
and his patients took for grante

Indian psychoanalysts and their
families with several mother a
complex communication patterns w
over and emotional importanc
Further, the formative cultural im
dynamics in psychoanalytic theory
two settings. Androcentric monot
Judaism and Christianity, are
Moslems. India's Hindu majorit
pantheon and gives goddesses an
The different gender constellatio
played a complicating role. Freud
great extent on the basis of the
educated, urban, middle-class
psychoanalysts' clientele, on t
entirely male. There were politic
analysis in India began in a colon
urban men had primary access t
patients thus belonged to that sect
to the foreign colonizers. This m
same time confronted with Indian and British cultural values
and behavioral norms. Required to adjust to cultural standards
which defined them as inferior, even effeminate, early Indian
psychoanalysts and their patients found a way out of their
particular situation by using imported psychoanalytical meth-
ods to assert their own cultural identity. In contrast to Freud's
claims for the universality of his concepts, Indian psychoana-
lysts affirmed their cultural particularity. Thus a closer look at
their work and Freud's reactions to it presents a unique
opportunity to learn more about the explicit and implicit
cultural assumptions of classical psychoanalysis.
2 Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
VISHNU ON FREUD'S DESK 923
The Indian Psychoanalytical Society
At the Seventh International Psychoa

Berlin in 1922, Ernest Jones introdu
association in the following words:
I have the pleasure of announcing that an I

ical Society has been formed in Calcutta un
Dr. Bose and with a membership of twelve. A
this Society was organized showed remar
were familiar with Dr. Bose's knowledge of
an excellent book he has written, we decide
Society the provisional acceptance as a const
Association. . . .3
A connection formed in student days at Oxford University is

partly responsible for the fact that the rather obscure Indian
Psychoanalytical Society was recognized by the International
Psychoanalytical Association even before the French one. The
superintendent of the European Mental Hospital in Ranchi,
Bihar, between 1919 and 1934, Owen Berkeley-Hill, was an
old friend of Jones and an early supporter of psychoanalysis.
Encouraged by Jones, he had already joined the American
Psychoanalytical Society in 1911, and the British (then called
London) Psycho- Analytical Society in 1913. From 1910 onward,
Berkeley-Hill also published occasional articles about psycho-
analysis in the Indian Medical Gazette*
Although this friendship aided the recognition of the Indian
society, the actual motor behind its formation was a Bengali
medical doctor and psychologist, Girindrasekhar Bose. Bose,
who had obtained his medical degree at the University of
Calcutta in 1910, had come in contact with psychoanalytical
3 Ernest Jones, "Seventh International Psychoanalytical Congress, Berlin 1922.

Minutes of Business Meeting," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 4 (1923): 236.
4 Ernest Jones, "Owen Berkeley-Hill, 1879-1944," International Journal of Psychoanal-
ysis 25 (1944-45): 177; for further details, see Christiane Hartnack, "British
Psychoanalysts in Colonial India," in Mitchell G. Ash and William R. Woodward, eds.,
Psychology in Twentieth-Century Thought and Society (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), pp. 233-251.
924 SOCIAL RESEARCH
publications not through Berkele

early interest in hypnosis. He cl
patients in his psychiatric practice
since 1909. In 1915, he joined the
of Psychology at Calcutta Unive
psychoanalysis from 1917 onw
psychology. He soon gathered
interested students, colleagues, r
who discussed psychoanalytic p
home of the well-to-do Bose join
these meetings described the a
follows:
There was a Club at 14 Parsibagan, the Calcutta residence of the

Bose brothers, an Adda in Bengali would be a more fitting term,
for it was bound by no formal rules and regulations. Among its
members could be counted many great names, artists, poets,
journalists, historians, literateurs, medical men, psychologists
and scientists. It was known as the Arbitrary Club, but we called
it Utkendra Samiti in Bengali which being rendered into English
would read as the Eccentric Club. Along with tea, chess and
cards, members would hold discussions on all possible subjects
under the sun. . . . The atmosphere of the Club was at that time
surcharged with the electric current of psychology and
literature.5
In this group, Bose also discussed his dissertation in

psychology, The Concept of Repression, which he completed in
1921. As will be shown in the following section, in this, as in
later publications, he blended Bengali Hindu thought with
Freudian concepts.6
On January 22, 1922, Bose founded the Indian Psychoana-
lytical Society. In the course of the first year of its existence,
the membership rose to fifteen. Among them were seven
5 Sailendra Krishna Law, "Girindrasekhar Bose/' in Indian Psychoanalytical Society,

"Special Issue on Bose," Samiksa, 1955, p. 9.
6 On Bose, see: Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in India," pp. 427-428;
Indian Psychoanalytical Society, "Special Issue on Bose," Samiksa, 1955; Devajyoti Das,
Girindrasekhar Bose [in Bengali] (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parisat, 1971).
medical doctors, five of whom were in the Indian Medical

Service, part of the British military. Another seven were
psychologists, five from the Department of Psychology at
Calcutta University and one each from Patna and Dacca. The
remaining member was a Bengali businessman. Two members
(Berkeley-Hill and R. C. McWatters) were British army
officers.7
When Bose wrote to Jones to request the recognition of this

group in Calcutta as a member of the International Psychoan-
alytical Association, Jones must have felt a certain ambivalence.
Most participants at these meetings had shown more interest in
than commitment to psychoanalytical work, and Jones viewed
those few among them who had published on psychoanalysis
with a certain skepticism. In a review of The Concept of
Repression, he had said that Bose laid "especial and unwonted
stress on the tendency to polarity in the human mind."8
Moreover, as his correspondence with Freud shows, he had
questioned the psychoanalytic value of Berkeley-Hill's writings.
On November 25, 1920, for example, Jones wrote to Freud in
regard to Berkeley-Hill's article, "The Anal-Erotic Factor in
the Religion, Philosophy and Character of the Hindus":
It is a pity that Berkeley-Hill is not better, but I should be sorry

to refuse it altogether, for he is very sensitive and I asked him to
write it for the Journal (he is a close personal friend of mine);
also one should remember that he has done much for PSA in
India and made a serious financial sacrifice to help the Press in
its early days.9
Berkeley-Hill's financial support was not limited to the
7 Indian Psychoanalytical Society, "Report," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 4

(1923): 249-252, 518-519.
8 Ernest Jones, "Review of 'Concept of Repression' by Bose," International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 2 (1921): 453.
9 Jones to Freud, Nov. 25, 1920, Jones Archive, British Psycho- Analytical Society,
London, CFG/F02/26. Hereafter referred to as Jones Archive.
926 SOCIAL RESEARCH
Psychoanalytic Press. As Vince

biography of Jones, he referred
like jewelry dealers, to Jones.10
In 1922, Jones invited Bose to joi
International Journal of Psychoanal
to have been a symbolic gesture, a
journal. In the thirty-two years th
Bose remained on the changing list
only one article to that journal.
publish a selection of seventeen
Press, but this attempt remaine
request that he revise his most
Theory of Mental Life," for pub
Journal of Psychoanalysis.15 There
did not do so. One reason might h
publishing in English. Bose justifie
works are of any worth, . . . the
foreigners in their languages. No
work in Bengali for the benefit of
alone in this respect. His Indian co
that journal. Only the Britis
Psychoanalytical Society, Berk
Daly, published several articles in
Psychoanalysis and attended som
International Psychoanalytical Asso
functioned as a kind of transmission belt between the
European and the Indian psychoanalysts.
Though Indian psychoanalysts were hardly visible inter
tionally, they gained influence in India. In the 192
10 Vincent Brome, Ernest Jones: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1983), p. 162.
11 Jones to Freud, Dec. 22, 1922, Jones Archive, CFG/F02/26.
12 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Duration of Coitus," International Journal
Psychoanalysis 18 (1937): 235-255.
13 Bose to Jones, May 28, 1945, Jones Archive; Freud to Bose, Jan. 1, 1933, in Si
"Development of Psychoanalysis in India," p. 43 1 .
14 Chandak Sengoopta, "Explorer of the Psyche," Statesman (Calcutta), Jan. 11, 1
p. 14.
psychoanalysis was much talked about

educated Bengali elite in Calcutta. Acces
considerably to spread Freudian concep
choanalysis even through radio broa
articles.15 The membership of the Indi
Society rose to thirty-five, fifteen m
associates, in 1934; by 1945, the membe
sixteen members and fifty-four associ
those members of the society who h
practicing psychoanalysis, and who did no
analysis.16
As elsewhere in the mid-twenties, the question of lay analysis
was discussed in Calcutta. Although the society's most active
members were all M.D.s, it was decided that psychologists and
others could also be licensed as practicing psychoanalysts,
provided they had been accepted as candidates and trained
according to the society's statutes.17 In 1932, the Indian
Psychoanalytical Society formally opened the Indian Psycho-
Analytical Institute. With this came the requirement that
candidates had to complete a minimum of two hundred
sessions of personal analysis before analyzing at least two cases
of one hundred sessions each under the guidance of either
Berkeley-Hill or Bose. Candidates had to read the available
psychoanalytical literature in the society's library (located in
Bose's residence), and also had to attend Bose's lectures on
abnormal psychology at the Department of Psychology at
Calcutta University. From 1933 onward, the Indian Psychoan-
alytical Society was in charge of an outpatient clinic at the
15 "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 5

(1924): 121-122; Manmath Nath Banerjee, "Indian Psychoanalytical Society,"
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Imago 14 (1928): 286-288; Chandra Suhrit
Mitra, "Some Problems of Psychoanalysis," Calcutta Review, Tuly 1932, pp. 32-44.
16 "Reports of Proceedings of Societies: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," Interna-
tionaljournal of Psychoanalysis 16 (1935): 259-261; "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical
Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 27 (1946): 92-94.
17 "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9
(1928): 392; Banerjee, "Indian Psychoanalytical Society," pp. 287-288.
928 SOCIAL RESEARCH
Carmichael (now R. G. Kar) Medic

in 1940, one of Bose's brothers don
facility with a few beds, the Lumb
the society.18
The Indian Psychoanalytical Societ
own journal. This was, however,
then, the members of the society p
Journal of Psychology. When Sa
society's official publication, Ind
which meant that the members from Dacca and Lahore were
no longer included. In 1953, Israil Latif, then the most active
psychoanalyst in the newly founded Republic of Pakistan,
started the Journal of Psychoanalysis there. However, only four
issues appeared, mainly because he emigrated to Britain and
there was no one left to coordinate such activities. Samiksa is
still published, and the Indian Psychoanalytical Society's
headquarters continues to be at 14, Parsibagan Lane, the house
that still belongs to the Bose family. However, even more
remarkable than these architectural reminders of his work,
and the traces of Bose's organizational skills in the formation
of the first non-Western psychoanalytical society, are his
contributions to psychoanalytical theory.
Bose's "Indianization" of Psychoanalytic Therapy
The core of Bose's psychoanalytical theory is that he ascribed

to wishes an essential duality. In his view, a conscious wish is
always accompanied by the opposite, subconscious one. There
are other oppositions as well; for example, one wish is passive
and the other active, or one is object-related and the other
subject-related. Thus a conscious wish to hit another person,
which is active and object-related, is associated with a
18 "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis

14 (1933): 373-377; Sengoopta, "Explorer of the Psyche," pp. 5, 14.
repressed, unconscious subject-related w

According to Bose's theory, such wishes
as the Freudian "drives" do, and they
but continue to exist until fulfilled.20
Bose consulted Pandits (Brahmin priests) to gain a better
understanding of Sanskrit texts containing psychological
insights. These efforts resulted in the publication of his own
translation of a Yoga text (Patanjali's Yoga Sutras), several
essays on Hindu psychological knowledge, and frequent
references to ancient Indian wisdom in his general psychoan-
alytical writings.21 It is thus not surprising that his psychoana-
lytical theory mirrored Hindu spiritual and philosophical
principles. For example, he did not perceive individuals as
essentially isolated from other individuals and in conflict with
the outer world and within themselves, but as potentially
united with other human beings, animals, plants, and nature.
This essential bond as part of a unity between subject and
object makes it possible for the patients to identify with the
objects of their wishes, that is, to imagine what it is like to be
hit, or to be of the opposite gender.22
An example may clarify the resulting therapeutic approach.
"Case No. 441" suffered, among other problems, from
impotence. Based on the patient's free associations, Bose
analyzed this as an expression of "a wish to be female." He
19 Girindrasekhar Bose, "A New Theory of Mental Life," Indian Journal of Psychology
8 (1933): 122-123; idem, "Nature of the Wish," Samiksa 5 (1951): 203-214; idem,
"Analysis of Wish," Samiksa 6 (1952): 1-11.
2 As Deborah P. Bhattacharyya has shown, this view is closely related to indigenous
views in rural Bengal. Cf. Deborah P. Bhattacharyya, Pãgalãmi: Ethnopsychiatric
Knowledge in Bengal, South Asian Series, no. 11 (Syracuse: Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs, 1986).
21 Girindrasekhar Bose, "Yoga Sutras," Samiksa 11 (1957): 44-63, 157-185,
217-237; cf. references to Vatsayana's Kamasutra in Bose, "Duration of Coitus," pp.
238, 252; for a more comprehensive list of Bose's publications, see Alexander
Grinstein, The Index of Psychoanalytic Writings, vol. I (New York: International
Universities Press, 1965), pp. 211-213.
22 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Paranoid Ego," Samiksa 2 (1948): 9-20; Bose, "New
Theory of Mental Life," p. 112-1 13.
930 SOCIAL RESEARCH
then assigned to the patient a k

himself as a woman and to try
desires. Once the patient succee
asked him to shift back to a ma
to a woman's, and so on, until he
This indicated to Bose that the pa
his "wish to be female" any long
to Bose, is the result of a conf
repressed wishes, and the essenti
to liberate these repressed forces
Bose placed great emphasis o
language. All his analyses wer
mother tongues (in most cases
he made a full transcript of pa
compared with later association
grammatical changes, for exam
active, or the use of double negat
love my wife."24 He claimed th
associations that patients came up
the existence and importance o
further that symptoms connecte
the unconscious would not disapp
made conscious by analysis and
interpretation. Based on this o
so-called see-saw method which
opportunity to express or even
wish.25
Bose not only differed from

fundamental cultural and philos
ing his psychoanalytical method
23 Girindrasekhar Bose, "Opposite Fantasie

Journal of Psychology 10 (1935): 36-41.
24 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Free Associat
Journal of Psychology 1 (1926): 191; Bose, "
"Opposite Fantasies," pp. 32-36.
25 Bose, "New Theory of Mental Life," pp.
of Freud's psychological claims dir

found no evidence for castration f
patients. In fact, Bose did not mentio
discussion of this notion of Freud's was
he did not treat many women, and t
appear to have been European. Howev
wish to be female" was very comm
patients.26 Considering the setting i
and 1930s, such claims could be seen i
desire to belong to the Zenana, the se
world imagined to be all Bengali, un
and conflicts induced by foreign ru
thus be interpretated as a kind of m
intended to establish a masculine iden
where, in the public sphere, British o
men for being effeminate, and men w
not only be their elder male relatives bu
mothers.27
Bose's version of the resolution of the Oedipus conflict also

reveals a pattern quite different from Freud's. In Bose's view,
the conflict between son and father is resolved not by the son's
succumbing to the father's authority but, on the contrary, by
the son's ability to overpower, that is, castrate him:
I do not agree with Freud when he says that the Oedipus wishes
ultimately succumb to the authority of the super-ego. Quite the
reverse is the case. The super-ego must be conquered and the
ability to castrate the father and make him into a woman is an
essential requisite for the adjustment of the oedipus wish. The
Oedipus [conflict] is resolved not by the threat of castration, but
by the ability to castrate.28
26 Cf. Bose to Freud, Apr. 11, 1929, in Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in

India," p. 430.
¿ Cf. Kakar, Inner World; Ashis Nandy, "Woman versus Womanliness in India,"
Psychoanalytic Review 63 (1976): 301-315.
2 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish,"
Samiksa 3 (1949): 237.
932 SOCIAL RESEARCH
This "feminization" of the supereg

differences in the sociocultural se
and Bose's views derived. The "s
clientele related to authorities withi
to the imposed colonial structu
formulated his ideas about the r
complex as a reversal of the colon
with the height of the Indian civ
against British rule. Although
prominent participant in that m
family actively supported the str
The minutes of the Indian Psych
further, that members discussed a
by Berkeley-Hill with Mohandas G
least in the mid- 1920s contacts exist
of the Indian Psychoanalytical S
anti-British movement.30
Photographs of Bose always show him in Bengali garb. The
image that one gets from these, from letters, obituaries,
interviews with people who knew him, and last, but not least,
from his publications, is that of a moderate Bengali nationalist,
who combined the flair of a Guru, that is, spiritual teacher, with
the authority of the doctor of science and the Western-trained
medical doctor that he actually was. Even members of the
Indian Psychoanalytical Society spoke of him as their Guru.51
Those who knew Bose personally pointed out that there was a
radiance about him that helped him to establish a rapport with
patients immediately. He was not a real Guru, and his patients
knew it. They came to him convinced that his access to the latest
Western knowledge could cure them. Thus they flocked to his
29 Information based on personal communications with a member of the Bose

family and a relative of a former patient, Calcutta, September 1988.
30 Mahatma Gandhi, "Hindu-Muslim Unity," in Collected Works, vol. 20 (Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Trust, 1968), pp. 89-90.
31 E.g., Rangin Haldar, "Art and the Unconscious, Indian Journal of Psychology 10
(1935): 195.
practice as individuals, not as a selec

family, and they agreed to Bose's therape
how strange they appeared to be. Yet the
alien. As Bose was one of them, and
essentials of their own culture, they ac
techniques such as free association and
more easily.
Indian Cultural Interpretations with Psy
In this section I will leave the historical reconstruction of

psychoanalysis in British India and move to a topical
presentation of some central issues. The focus here is on three
questions about which there were considerable differences
between European and Indian psychoanalytic writings: colo-
nial politics, religion, and oedipal themes.
Colonial Politics and Psychoanalysis. Late nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century Indian literature, especially in Bengal, which
was colonized the longest, portray problems of the political and
psychological situation in colonial India in great detail. For
example, Gora by Rabindranath Tagore, an often-cited novel,
depicts the psychological problems of assimilation to the
foreign ruling class.32 Even the title Gora (one of fair
complexion) is a derogatory term for white man or European;
as a person's name, it stands for the tensions in combining the
indigenous with the colonial world. Against this cultural and
literary backdrop, it is not surprising that at the height of
anticolonial tensions, in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively,
some Indian psychologists and psychoanalysts also focused
their attention on political issues.
In 1923, Bose's definition of mental disease, for example,
specifically exempted anticolonial political activism: "If we
32 Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, tr. W. W. Pearson (London: Macmillan, 1924).
934 SOCIAL RESEARCH
assert that whatever is again

individual is a diseased condition,
same type of difficulty. The sens
leads us to self-destructive act
patriot and martyr."33 Haridas
"India's Psychological Reaction
theory of opposite wishes to In
involvement in World War II
situation showed the existence o
hand, Indians wanted Britain to
they were ambivalent about this
also be a chance to get something
had supported Britain on the ant
An extremely cynical critique
the political situation was expre
In the great Bengal famine of 19

underwent the most harrowing
dustbins for weeks on end, and wa
their own parents. ... It is not un
following the orthodox Freudian
dustbin as a symbol of the female
As India's independence came n

Hindus and Moslems replaced th
British colonizers. In 1947 and
Psychology became a forum for
reflections. Some publications, l
"The Psychology of Culture Con
structures of the mind. D. M. Datta, one of the authors,
described the colonized Hindu as a split personality whose
European and indigenous ideas were locked up in two
33 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Reliability of Psychoanalytic Findings," British Journal

of Medical Psychology 3 (1923): 115.
34 Haridas D. Bhattacharya, "India's Psychological Reaction to the War," Indian
Journal of Psychology 16 (1941): 85-98.
35 V. Narvane, "Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis," Indian Journal of
Psychology 23 (1948): 69.
different compartments, wearing the

beneath the Western tie. He concluded that this dual
orientation had the effect that Hindus imitated a lot but
assimilated very little, and that the imitations were not logically
linked up with preexisting ideas but that European ideas and
indigenous ones are locked up in two "logic-tight compart-
ments." In Datta's view, this dual orientation caused by the
repression of one culture by another produces psychopatho-
logical phenomena found in individuals. In extreme cases of
cultural repression, there may be "social insanity." Datta's
intention was not only to show how cultural clashes led to
individual and social conflicts, but he had therapeutic
recommendations as well. These included understanding the
roots of the conflicts as well as reeducation.36
The colonial situation in India was not only analyzed from

an Indian perspective; there were also scattered publications
by the British colonial officers who were members of the
Indian Psychoanalytical Society on this theme. Daly used the
nationalist symbolism of fighting to save the "mother/land"
from rape by Muslim and British conquerers in a racist and
paternalistic essay entitled "The Psychology of Revolutionary
Tendencies." Daly concluded that Indian political activists like
Gandhi suffered from the basic psychological problem of not
accepting the father's- that is, British- authority, and that all
they wanted was to return to the pre-Oedipal symbiosis with
the mother. But "the golden land of plenty," like "his happiness
at his mother's breast, 'the cow of plenty,' is no more."37 His
recommendation to the British government was to act like wise
parents, who themselves constitute a bridge over which their
children may be guided into adult life. In his article "Hindu
Muslim Unity," the one which was discussed with Gandhi, Berke-
ley-Hill also made suggestions for psychological solutions
36 D. M. Datta, "The Psychology of Culture Conflict in the Light of Psychology of

Insanity," Indian Journal of Psychology 23 (1948): 13-20.
3/ Claud Dangar Daly, "The Psychology of Revolutionary Tendencies," International
Journal of Psychoanalysis 11 (1930): 198.
936 SOCIAL RESEARCH
of serious political problems a

suggestions, these were remote fr
ley-Hill argued that the core of t
and Moslems is that the Hindu totem animal, the cow, is
slaughtered by Muslims, after "Mother India," the Indian soil,
was conquered by them. He therefore proposed that "any
reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims would demand as
a cardinal feature some form of ceremonial in which cows
would be killed and eaten, either actually or symbolically, by
Hindus and Muslims in conclave."38
These publications show an interesting disparity in the
psychoanalysts' gaze in the colonial situation. The work by
Indians leaves out an explicit perspective on the colonizer;
although they internalized colonial rule, they remained
concerned about themselves, and did not objectify the British
rulers. Berkeley-Hill and Daly, on the other hand, made
Indians the objects of their psychoanalytical reflections, but
reflected neither on themselves nor on the psychological
situation of the British population in India. This is all the more
remarkable as the treatment of colonial madness was Berkeley-
Hill's professional career; he worked with British patients in
the European Mental Hospital in Ranchi. In fact, both groups
instrumentalized psychoanalysis, each in its own way. Indian
or British reality, identity and pride were the static elements;
psychoanalysis was functionalized, and at times changed, to
give evidence of this.
Religion and Psychoanalysis. Another important cultural differ-

ence between continental Europe and British India was that
religion as a separate realm did not exist in Hinduism, as there
was no movement of secularization. In striking contrast with
Freud and most other Western psychoanalysts, their Indian
colleagues did not express any distinctly antireligious attitudes.
38 Owen Berkeley-Hill, "Hindu Muslim Unity," International Journal of Psychoanalysis

6 (1925): 287.
On the contrary, they identified positive

and some Indian intellectuals who were
to Freudian concepts rejected psychoan
with their religious beliefs. Specific ex
light at a meeting in Calcutta on Dece
homage to Freud after his death. On
speakers there, S. C. Chatterjee, critiz
product of monotheistic Judeo-Christi
with one-sided gender projections toward
these godless religions [Buddhism, J
Vedantism] are concerned," he conclud
theory has no application, since none of them can be
characterized as a Father religion. . . ."39 Another participant
at that meeting, C. N. Shah, pointed to a further dimension of
difference between India and the West. For him, the notion of
the cyclic rhythms of cosmic activity, in which the individual
life is but a tiny part, was incompatible with the this-wordly
concepts inherent in Freudian thought:
. . . according to Indian philosophy [,] life took its origin from

the infinite life, and in the end it merges itself into the infinite
life. It originated from beyond the state of this individualized
life and it will return to a state beyond the individualized
existence. . . . Freud states what he has to say about death
instinct for this one life only; he does not believe in the wheel of
rebirth; while Indian philosophy defends its position by
assuming the existence of rebirths.40
Other Indians did not reject psychoanalysis out of hand, but

tried to combine psychoanalytic concepts with Hinduism. An
example is Sarasi Lai Sarkar's article, "A Study of the
Psychology of Sexual Abstinence from the Dreams of an
39 S. C. Chatterjee, "Freud on the Future of Religion," Indian Journal of Psychology 15

(1940): 143.
40 C. N. Shah, "Freud's Theory of Instincts," Indian Journal of Psychology 15 (1940):
181.
938 SOCIAL RESEARCH
Ascetic/'41 In this, he presented

year-old who had become an asce
and who projected his filial as well
his Guru. Gossain, a well known Indian Guru in the late
nineteenth century, had asked this young man to keep a diary
of his dreams and show it to him. Sarkar had obtained both the
dream diary and a transcript of the Guru's dream interpreta-
tions, and argued in this article that Gossain had already made
use of dreams as a way to the unconscious long before Freud
did. He did not mention, however, that the respective goals
were different. Whereas Freud used dream interpretations to
help the patient gain insights into his or her unconscious to
improve the individual's mental health, Gossain used his access
to the Chela's (disciple's) unconscious to help him on his
spiritual path.
In the article, "Hindu Family and Freudian Theory,"
Banerjee also argued that psychoanalysis provides scientific
proof that Hinduism is superior to other religions. After giving
examples of the absence of repression in Hindu children,
especially in weaning practices, he wrote that "in the orthodox
type of the Hindu joint family conditions obtain which are in
consonance with the mental hygiene tenets of modern
Freudians."42 Hinduism, however, goes beyond adequate
childrearing. Banerjee placed his view of Hindu life into a
larger, transpersonal perspective which smoothed "the angu-
larities of individuals in every direction."43
Given the importance of religious activities in the lives of
Indians, and their differences from Christian imagery and
rituals, it is not surprising that the British members of the
Indian Psychoanalytical Society, Berkeley-Hill and Daly, also
tried to analyze Indian religious functions. The issues they
41 Sarasi Lai Sarkar, "A Study of the Psychology of Sexual Abstinence from the
Dreams of an Ascetic," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 24 (1943): 170-175.
42 Manmath Nath Banerjee, "Hindu Family and Freudian Theory," Indian Journal of
Social Work 3 (1944): 183.
43 Ibid., p. 181.
claim to have uncovered range from t

goddess Kali as a manifestation of the Hi
to the "neurotic" Hindu personality s
med's father complexes.44 These public
that, by portraying Indians' religious
and neurotic, they concluded that the
of Indians is inferior to that of Europea
to justify colonial rule. As I have pointed
these writings by British members of th
ical Society contributed to stabilizing e
tures.45
If British members of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society

expressed such anti-Hindu views, we may understand the
Indians' desire to search for ways of praising their religion as a
way of defending their cultural identity. This continues in
postcolonial, contemporary India. Kakar, for example, pre-
sents a view of religious healers, not as enemies, but as
colleagues of psychoanalysts.46
Oedipal Themes. A wide range of views on the Oedipus complex

can be found in Indian literature. Narvane radically de-
nounced the Oedipal conflict as the product of a particular
historical development in Western culture that was different
from that of India: "Dialectical materialists cannot accept the
universality of the Oedipal complex. They regard it as having
44 Owen Berkeley-Hill, "A Short Study of the Life and Character of Mohammed,"
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 2 (1921): 31-53, idem, "The Anal Erotic Factor in
the Religion, Philosophy and Character of the Hindus," International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 2 (1921): 306-338; Claud Dangar Daly, "Hindu-Mythologie und
Kastrationskomplex," tr. Peter Mendelsohn, Imago 13 (1927): 145-198; idem, "A
Hindu Treatise on Kali," Samiksa 1 (1947): 191-196.
45 Hartnack, "British Psychoanalysts in Colonial India," esp. pp. 24 Iff., 245ff. For a
more general view of the colonial situation, see Francis G. Hutchins, The Illusion of
Permanence: British Imperialism in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967);
Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies I (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982); and
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
TO Sudhir Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into India and Its
Healing Traditions (New York: Knopf, 1982).
940 SOCIAL RESEARCH
been determined by a particu

particular stage of social devel
rejection of Freud's concept wa
the social formation of gender
continued to be an important t
lysts.48
Manifestations of a boy's desires for unity with the mother
are definitely found in Indian psychoanalytical publications. In
his publication, "The Working of an Unconscious Wish in the
Creation of Poetry and Drama," Rangin Haldar shows the
recurrence of preoedipal desires in Tagore's poetry, for
example in verses like the following: "O earthy mother, may I
pervade this earth of thine- ... to flow, to flow- waving,
murmuring, quivering, gliding, shedding, breaking, thudder-
ing, flushing- to flow in light, in joy, out over the whole
earth."49 Both the poems and the analysis leave out a conflict
between father and son altogether. They are concerned only
with the son's attitude toward his mother, his longing to merge
with her.
The intensity of the mother-son relationship is a prominent

theme in Hindu myths, and perhaps the most interesting
aspect of the work of Indian psychoanalysts on the family
drama. Several publications imply that in Indian literary texts,
the focus is not on the son's perspective- that is, his jealousy of
the father's access to the mother- but rather on the father's
anger about his wife's devotion to their son, and his rage about
the son's access to the female object of desire. N. S. N. Sastry's
article, "Symbolism in Hindu Gods," portrayed the dramatic
attempt of the father to kill his son whom he has never seen, as
47 Narvane, "Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis," p. 69.

Cf. Sudhir Kakar, "The Person in Tantra and Psycho-Analysis," Samiksa 35
(1981): 85-104; idem, Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1989).
y Rangin Haldar, "The Working of an Unconscious Wish in the Creation of Poetry
and Drama," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 12 (1931): 196.
he had been away for a long time. The

cut-off head of their son with an elep
brings the son back to life.50
Similarly, A. K. Ramanujan's recent anal
and legends emphasizes the perspective
as in Freud's concept, of the younger g
the difference in the flow of aggression
myths, he writes that the Indian and Gr
not differ in the basic pattern: (a) like
sexes attract, across generations. But t
direction of aggression or desire. Ins
mothers and overcoming fathers (e.g
fathers suppressing sons . . . and mother
Indian psychoanalysts' work on the O
more complicated when they left t
described the actual family situation. Man
the long-time secretary of the Indian Psy
for example, pointed out that there is
attachment for the child in Hindu join
found in the West: "In connection with t
Oedipus situation surrogate substitut
mother and the father play an import
sisters, maid servants, nurses or any oth
likely to be involved in the sexual s
substitutes. . . ."52 In a recent essay on t
fathers and sons in India, Kakar returns to the theme of the
multiplicity of parental figures, and evokes a hydra-like image
of the father: "The boy's fury at being separated from his
mother is not directed toward his father alone; it is diffused
against all the male authority figures who are collectively
50 N. S. N. Sastry, "Symbolism in Hindu Gods," Indian Journal of Psychology 19 (1944):

190-193.
51 A. K. Ramanujan, "The Indian Oedipus," in Lowell Edmunds and Alan Dundes,

eds., Oedipus: A Folklore Casebook (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 252.
52 Banerjee, "Hindu Family and Freudian Theory," p. 183.
942 SOCIAL RESEARCH
responsible for taking his moth

symbolically, that in Indian my
of the 'good mother,' Sita, has no
A psychosociological study of d
in Bengali culture by Manisha R
the importance of a girl's father
whom she has to give up when
father, grandfather, brother
relatives in his home. Her ow
importance to her emotionally, a
position in her husband's alien f
Bose's view of the dissolution of the conflict also differed
considerably from Freud's.
Writings by Indians about this theme are so diverse that it
would be worthwhile to focus on Oedipal conflicts in Indian
culture as a topic by itself. Besides a closer look at the work of
Indian psychoanalysts mentioned here, the publications by
Daly and other foreigners like George Devereux, J. D.
Mitchell, Robert Goldman, and Alan Roland would further
enrich the discussion.55
Freud's Correspondence with Psychoanalysts in India
What were Freud's reactions to such assertions of cultural
53 Sudhir Kakar, "Fathers and Sons: An Indian Experience," in Stanley H. Cath,

Alan R. Gurwitt, and John M. Ross, eds., Father and Child: Developmental and Clinical
Perspectives (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 420.
54 Manisha Roy, "The Oedipus Complex and the Bengali Family in India," in
Thomas R. Williams, ed., Psychological Anthropology (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp.
123-134.
55 Claud Dangar Daly, "Der Kern des Ödipuskomplexes," tr. Helene Rieff,
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 21 (1935): 165-181, 389-418; George
Devereux, "The Oedipal Situation and Its Consequences in Epics of Ancient India,"
Samiksa 5 (1951): 5-13; J. D. Mitchell, "The Sanskrit Drama Shakuntala and the
Oedipus Complex," American Imago 14 (1957): 389-405; Robert P. Goldman, "Fathers,
Sons and Gurus: Oedipal Conflict in the Sanskrit Epics," Journal of Indian Philosophy 6
(1978): 325-392; Alan Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a
Cross-Cultural Psychology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1988).
specificity, which seemed to contradict

ity and scientific lawfulness in psych
Carl Gustav Jung's psychoromantic
Freud never expressed great sympathy
On the contrary, in a letter to Feren
after two Bengalis, first a philosopher
Tagore, had visited him: "My need
present fully satisfied."57 When the
Society sent him the statue of Vis
beginning of this essay, along with a S
of thanks did not reveal any interest i
of the gifts.58 He also commented
Rolland's enchantment with India in a letter to him in 1930: "I
shall now try with your guidance to penetrate into the Indian
jungle from which until now an uncertain blending of Hellenic
love of proportion, Jewish sobriety, and philistine timidity have
kept me away."59
To some extent, the distance and lack of interest that Freud
expressed in regard to India were reciprocal. In 1922, Bose
sent him an imaginative painting by a family friend in which
Freud looked like a British colonial officer. This amused
Freud; as he wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé, "Naturally, he
makes me look the complete Englishman."60 Whatever Bose's
motivation behind this present was, such a portrayal reflected
the way Bose saw Freud, as not essentially different from the
colonizer. Moreover, as is obvious from Bose's publications, he
56 Jung's fascination for India lasted until diarrhea hit him in Calcutta in 1938; this
purged him of his exotic romanticism in regard to Indian culture. Cf. Carl Gustav
Jung, "The Dreamlike World in India," in Collected Works, vol. 10 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1964), pp. 515-524; idem, "What India Can Teach Us," Asia 39
(1939): 97-98.
s/ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 3 (New York: Basic Books,
1957), p. 128.
58 Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in India." d. 431.
59 David James Fisher, "Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland: The Terrestrial
Animal and His Great Oceanic Friend," American Imago 33 (1976): 38-39.
Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas- Salomé: Letters, ed. Ernst Pfeiffer, tr. W. and E.
Robson-Scott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 114.
944 SOCIAL RESEARCH
deviated from classical psychoa

clearly disliked Freud's emphasis
his theory. In an essay on Freu
Freud maintains that so long as

value on child sexuality and tran
factors of repression described by
the system psychoanalysis and one
led to the impression in certain
system is an esoteric one with Fre
References in Freud's correspon

the Indian Psychoanalytical S
changed letters with at least t
Psychoanalytical Society: Sarkar,
surgeon, who lived in Malda, We
founding members of the India
decided to become an associate m
as he had not undergone a train
been eager to follow Bose's exa
Freud about his work. The min
mention that "Dr. Sarasilal Sarkar read his letters from
Professor Freud, stating that the great old man at the age of
seventy-five took considerable interest in the contributions
from workers from distant India."62 However, their correspon-
dence appears to have lasted for a short while only, and was
terminated by Freud.63 The correspondence with Daly was
destroyed when a bomb hit his residence in London in an air
raid in World War II. This is especially unfortunate, as their
exchange may have shed some new light on Freud's perception
of female sexuality. Daly had been Freud's patient in the 1920s
and had undergone a training analysis with him in 1935-36.
61 Bose, "Sigmund Freud," in his Everyday Psychoanalysis (Calcutta: Susil Gupta,

1945) p. 254.
62 Indian Psychoanalytical Society, "Report," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 13
(1932): 269.
63 Freud to Bose, May 12, 1929, in Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in India,"
p. 430.
According to John Rickman, the cor

Daly's original contribution to psycho
menstruation complex.64
Luckily, the correspondence betwee
saved, because Bose made copies of
Against the backdrop of their cul
similarities, it is worthwhile to take a c
Despite all their differences, Bose an
ences of discrimination due to not b
ethnic group, and both were caugh
assimilating to and rejecting the cult
dominant groups. However, due to th
and political environments in which th
their orientation into opposite directio
marginalized and socially insecure, sou
tion in radically original, universalistic
gender, and religion could be subsum
hand, was not only well established and
to a culture that could not deny its diff
ruling class and lived in a time when
more and more proud of being diffe
defend particularistic positions.
On January 31, 1929, Bose sent Freu
lytical articles of his, and wrote in the
he would like to draw Freud's attent
Oedipus wish, as he differed consider
views. Freud's reactions to these public
He basically defended his own theory a
but tried to balance his criticism:
I am not convinced by your arguments. ... I still think you

underrate the efficiency of the castration fear. . . . But I confess
I am by no means convinced of the validity of my own
assumptions. We have not yet seen through this intricate
64 John Rickman, "Claud Dangar Daly, 1884-1950," International Journal of

Psychoanalysis 31 (1950): 290-291.
946 SOCIAL RESEARCH
Oedipus matter. We need more obser
Bose's answer to Freud showed

self-confidence but also his awareness of cultural differences.
In fact, he questioned Freud's assumption that his concepts
had transcultural validity:
Of course, I do not expect that you accept offhand my reading

of the Oedipus situation. I do not deny the importance of the
castration threat in European cases; my argument is that the
threat owes its efficiency to its connection with the wish to be
female. The real struggle lies between the desire to be a male
and its opposite the desire to be a female. . . . My Indian patients
do not exhibit castration symptoms to such a marked degree as
my European cases. The desire to be a female is more easily
unearthed in Indian male patients than in European. . . . The
Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image and
this is fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that
much of the motivation of maternal deity is traceable to this
source.66
Freud obviously did not like to argue about this issue, and
answered: "I am fully impressed by the difference in the
castration reaction between Indian and European patients and
promise to keep my attention fixed on the problem of the
opposite wish which you accentuate."67
One would expect this to be the end of the correspondence.
However, the exchange took yet a different turn after Bose
sent Freud his essay, "A New Theory of Mental Life." On
January 1, 1933, Freud wrote in a tone rather different from
65 Freud to Bose, Mar. 9, 1929, in Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in India,"

pp. 429-430. Other sources for the Freud-Bose exchange are: "Bose-Freud
Correspondence," originally published in Samiksa 10 (1956): 155-166; reprinted in
Indian Psycho- Analytical Society, Bose-Freud Correspondence (Calcutta: Indian Psycho-
Analytical Society, 1964), and in C. V. Ramana, "On the Early History and
Development of Psychoanalysis in India," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association 12 (1964): 110-134.
66 Bose to Freud, Apr. 11, 1929, in Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in India,"
p. 430.
67 Freud to Bose, May 12, 1939, ibid.
before, even though he repeated his ea

theory of opposite wishes:
The first letter of this new year goes out

essay you were so kind to send me and am
it. The contradictions within our current p
are many and deep-going, and I reproach m
given attention to your ideas before. ... It
effort to overcome the feeling of unfamilia
with a theory so different from the one pr
is not easy to get out of the accustomed
don't take it amiss when I say the theory o
strikes me as something less dynamic than
could not have been evolved from the stud
material. . . . Nor could I make the concess
viewpoints in our psychology are out o
ready yet to stand up for my objections.
and undecided. I see that we did neglect th
of opposite wishes from the three source
and female), ambivalence (love-hate) a
active-passive. These phenomena have to
system to make us see what modificatio
necessary and how far we can acquiesce to
By reproaching himself for not havi

Bose's ideas earlier, Freud implied that in
of their correspondence he was basicall
another foothold for psychoanalysis in t
his earlier letter, this one is impressive f
concern. Nevertheless, he did not try to
Indian cultural context, as had Bose, wh
intercultural exchange on psychoanalysis
not ready for a dialogue, but insisted on
that resembled a monologue. He consid
pieces out of Bose's theory that he cou
having to change anything in his
psychoanalytical knowledge thus becam
intellectual raw material to be used where and when needed.
68 Freud to Bose, Jan. 1, 1933, ibid., p. 431.
948 SOCIAL RESEARCH
Differences between European a

claimed to have noticed remained undiscussed.
Freud's proposal to work Bose's findings into his system was

never carried out, and in the final letter of their correspon-
dence, dated October 25, 1937, Freud concluded with a
renewal of his ambitions: "... psychoanalysis is young and will
certainly progress uninterruptedly till no doubt can exist about
the value of its contribution to the science of psychology."69
Such attitudes were not unique to Freud, but to some extent
characteristic for a European man at the turn of the century,
and shared by his disciples. In 1953, Ernest Jones wrote on the
founding of the Pakistani Journal of Psychoanalysis:
It has been said that the findings of psychoanalysis must vary

with social cultures. Analytic work in Asia has the great
opportunity of testing this assertion, of ascertaining how social
customs and institutions can influence the earliest development
of character. . . .70
However, when Latif arrived in England a few years later with

two big boxes of case material that he had gathered in
twenty-two years of work with Indian and Pakistani patients,
Jones appears to have shown no interest in it.
Confronted with the challenge to explore the "dark"
continents of their time- the unconscious, women, and the
non-Western world- Freud focused on the first, admitted his
difficulty in working on women, and remained disinterested in
an intercultural exchange that went beyond a confirmation of
his own expansionist strivings. Unlike anybody before or after
him, Freud enlightened aspects of the unconscious. However,
his work on women and on other cultures reflected prominent
stereotypes of his time by presupposing that European men
are the measure to which all human beings are to be
compared. It was not a time when voices of the objects of study
69 Freud to Bose, Oct. 25, 1937, in Ramana, "On the Early History and
Development of Psychoanalysis in India," p. 133.
70 Cited in Latif to Jones, July 13, 1955, Jones Archive, CLA/F23/02.
could expect to be listened to, except in

ways. Thus, just as Freud was too boun
his time to overcome then-contemporar
did not question European hegemoni
psychoanalysis remained Eurocentr
chance to learn from colleagues abroa
to his ideas, and who could have contri
"dark aspects" in his own theory. The i
desk remains a lonely trophy of a conq
fully articulated.
* For essential information on the Indian Psychoana

I would like to thank B. K. Bose; I am also grateful to
during all stages of research and writing, and to Su
Patel, and James Walkup for their careful reading of

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Vishnu on Freud's Desk: Psychoanalysis in Colonial India

Author(s): CHRISTIANE HARTNACK

/jlMONG Freud's Greek, Roman, and Egyptian stat

1 Sigmund Freud to Girindrasekhar Bose, Dec. 13, 1931, in Tarun Chandra

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Winter 1990)

and his patients took for grante

The Indian Psychoanalytical Society

At the Seventh International Psychoa

I have the pleasure of announcing that an I

A connection formed in student days at Oxford University is

3 Ernest Jones, "Seventh International Psychoanalytical Congress, Berlin 1922.

publications not through Berkele

There was a Club at 14 Parsibagan, the Calcutta residence of the

In this group, Bose also discussed his dissertation in

5 Sailendra Krishna Law, "Girindrasekhar Bose/' in Indian Psychoanalytical Society,

medical doctors, five of whom were in the Indian Medical

When Bose wrote to Jones to request the recognition of this

It is a pity that Berkeley-Hill is not better, but I should be sorry

Berkeley-Hill's financial support was not limited to the

7 Indian Psychoanalytical Society, "Report," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 4

Psychoanalytic Press. As Vince

psychoanalysis was much talked about

15 "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 5

Carmichael (now R. G. Kar) Medic

Bose's "Indianization" of Psychoanalytic Therapy

The core of Bose's psychoanalytical theory is that he ascribed

18 "Reports: Indian Psychoanalytical Society," International Journal of Psychoanalysis

repressed, unconscious subject-related w

then assigned to the patient a k

Bose not only differed from

23 Girindrasekhar Bose, "Opposite Fantasie

of Freud's psychological claims dir

Bose's version of the resolution of the Oedipus conflict also

26 Cf. Bose to Freud, Apr. 11, 1929, in Sinha, "Development of Psychoanalysis in

This "feminization" of the supereg

29 Information based on personal communications with a member of the Bose

practice as individuals, not as a selec

Indian Cultural Interpretations with Psy

In this section I will leave the historical reconstruction of

Colonial Politics and Psychoanalysis. Late nineteenth- and early

32 Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, tr. W. W. Pearson (London: Macmillan, 1924).

assert that whatever is again

In the great Bengal famine of 19

As India's independence came n

33 Girindrasekhar Bose, "The Reliability of Psychoanalytic Findings," British Journal

different compartments, wearing the

The colonial situation in India was not only analyzed from

36 D. M. Datta, "The Psychology of Culture Conflict in the Light of Psychology of

of serious political problems a

Religion and Psychoanalysis. Another important cultural differ-

38 Owen Berkeley-Hill, "Hindu Muslim Unity," International Journal of Psychoanalysis

On the contrary, they identified positive

. . . according to Indian philosophy [,] life took its origin from

Other Indians did not reject psychoanalysis out of hand, but

39 S. C. Chatterjee, "Freud on the Future of Religion," Indian Journal of Psychology 15

Ascetic/'41 In this, he presented

claim to have uncovered range from t

If British members of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society

Oedipal Themes. A wide range of views on the Oedipus complex

been determined by a particu

The intensity of the mother-son relationship is a prominent

47 Narvane, "Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis," p. 69.

he had been away for a long time. The