Clinical Work and Cultural Imagination*

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1982

Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Language, Society and Culture in Asian Contexts, 2014

Conventionally, it is believed that a healthy nation is a productive nation. Health of the people of land is critical for the nation’s economic future. Swami Vivekananda once stated - “All healthy social changes are the manifestations of the spiritual forces working within, and these are strong and well adjusted, society will arrange itself accordingly.” Hence, any change in the society ought to be healthy and it is influenced by the inner religious power. Philosophy offers one to access the means to attain the state of ultimate bliss and possible ways to get rid of grief. In Indian culture, ‘virtue’, ‘wealth’, ‘desire’ and ‘liberation’ are the four highest pursuits of human excellence. Interestingly, Indian medical system, the Ayurveda, begins its seminal text, with a discussion on the four highest pursuits. Essentially, this medico-philosophical dimension forms an integral part of Indian culture. Thus, the loop between medicine, philosophy and culture becomes apparent. It is said that ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. Ayurveda adds to this - ‘a healthy body with a healthy mind’. This is achieved through specified sacraments, food customs, which is part of indigenous culture. The medico-philosophical, psycho-social, philosophico-cultural dimensions are the factors that sustain the cherished Indian cultural values. When the subjects are healthy, the nation is progressive. In this paper, an effort is made to discuss the medico-philosophical dimension of sixteen sacraments, food culture and cāturmāsya (penace during rainy season), from a medical perspective.

Original version of the interview published on the italian journal PSICHE, 1/2008 (Geografie della psicoanalisi)

Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 2018

The issue of culture in Indian psychiatry has endured increasing neglect with the burgeoning biological paradigm. This viewpoint debates and demystifies the connotation of “culture” in mainstream psychiatry. As a template to infer dominant thinking in mainstream psychiatry about culture, DLN Murty Rao Oration in 2011, “Indianizing Psychiatry – Is there a case enough?” by Avasthi (2011) (published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry) has been used. Engaging a broad interdisciplinary view helps unravel the inherent biases in psychiatry and opens up space for analysis of the Indian psyche from a different philosophic tradition and ways of researching it. Effort here is to open up dialog with cultural psychiatry, make efforts to involve traditional and folk therapies, and use available theoretical and empirical resources within cultural psychiatry for a refined practice of psychiatry in India.

"‘India Analysed’,is a sincere effort by philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo to explore Sudhir Kakar’s view on political culture, present status of psychoanalysis, spirituality, traditionality and modernity, sexuality and Indian mythology. Through his conversation with Kakar, Jahanbegloo attempted to display a common linkage in the replies Kakar gave in response to his probing quests. The present book is divided into five chapters which can be categorized into two sections viz., firstly, information about Kakar’s early life and professional struggle where Kakar’s interest in Freudian psychoanalysis and Eriksonian notion of psycho-social development intercepted into cultural contexts, and secondly, Kakar’s experience of societal phenomenon from perspectives displaying his critical skills in Freudian psychoanalysis and its contemporaries. This book reveals debates on issues such as modern and traditional morality in an individualistic and collectivistic society like India where the cultural notions of sexuality are manifested in the conundrum of religious mythology. This manifestation of sexuality seems to be alive in the psyche of people who try to balance between glittering western axioms and traditional monolithic values. Some other significant books authored by Kakar such as Colors of Violence, Mad and Devine, The Indians, The Ecstasy, Mira and Mahatma etc., also becomes the subject of conversation between Kakar and Jahanbegloo. Kakar’s scepticism about the universality of any theory showed"

Annual Review of Critical psychology (ARCP) 10, 2013

Written from two different locations, two different continents, this paper reflects the authors' political and social engagement with the issue of normalization of oppression, and medicalization of distress and social suffering, as seen in particular practices of psychology and psychiatry in India; a sub-continent in which neither authors are currently located. The paper reflects a shared concern about the mobilization of certain kinds of oppression as 'normal', as normalised; oppression that remains ungrieved for; oppression in the guise of help and liberation; oppression of women by women, and by men; oppression through medicalization of the idioms of distress. The paper in this sense offers a re-reading of why psychology practiced through western-centered or uncritical, apolitical lenses, is fated to generate scholarship that glosses over political struggles, multiplicities and complexities, cracks and edges. Bypassing the imposition of a linear narrative, this paper, as a disjointed performative space, encourages a deconstructive reading; a reading 'in between', an 'in between' reading; both of the paper, of psychology, and of the socio-political scenario in which psychology and psychiatry in India are put to work. The paper is part of conceptualizing a shared project of de-centering and de-familiarizing psychology and psychiatry, and how they are currently thought and practised in particular contexts, within the contours of complex social structures in India.

An historical and critical overview of the most influential psychoanalytic studies of Hinduism to date. The author identifies three hermeneutical dimensions within each of studies: the explanatory-reductive, cultural-interpretive, and religious-integrative. Several major works are presented in historical sequence and supplemented by psychological case studies from the author’s own ethnographic research and clinical practice, in order to illustrate and problematize the orientation of each work

Ethos, 2008

In this article, I honor Jerome Bruner's meaning-centered and person-centered approach to the study of cultural psychology by describing aspects of the cultural psychology of suffering in and around a Hindu temple town in Orissa, India. I also outline the ''big three'' explanations of illness (biomedical, interpersonal, and moral) on a worldwide scale and recount some of the many meanings associated with the word health, as in the English language survey question ''How would you rate your overall health?'' [cultural psychology; explanations of illness; meanings of health; Orissa, India] Jerome Bruner is famous for his meaning-centered and person-centered approach to the study of cultural psychology (see, e.g., Bruner 1986Bruner , 1990Bruner , 1993. 1 In this article, I seek to honor the life and work of my former teacher with a thickly substantive (and partly analytic) article on the many meanings of health for people in Orissa, India, where I started conducting research on cultural psychology while still a student taking courses with Jerome Bruner at Harvard University during the late 1960s.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2020