The Impact of Culture on Psychoanalysis
Dominik S. Mihalits
Jaan Valsiner PhD
Abstract
The impact of culture in Psychoanalysis is a well-known phenomenon to many therapists in
their clinical praxis, whereas its significant value of how it enters into therapeutic work has
not been thoroughly studied. A look into cultural traditions of a society different from
European into which psychoanalysis has entered as a therapeutic praxis can reveal the bases
for transcultural therapeutic work. A comparison of Indian therapeutic perspectives with
European theories of Psychoanalysis is here accomplished using Indian concepts of
personality and reflections by Indian psychiatrists with the focus on identifying cultural
factors that could illuminate future transcultural therapeutic work.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 2
1
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4
1.1
When transculturality comes into being ...................................................................... 5
1.1.1
Understanding an old Society within modern Prospects ...................................... 5
1.1.2
Introducing the Indian Way of Healing................................................................ 5
1.1.3
The History of Psychoanalysis in India ................................................................ 7
1.2
Identifying Indian Personality ..................................................................................... 8
2
Method ............................................................................................................................. 13
3
Empirical Approach ......................................................................................................... 14
4
Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 15
5
References ........................................................................................................................ 16
6
Additional Material .......................................................................................................... 19
3
1 Introduction
Living in a global connected world we need to keep in mind that transcultural work should get
increasingly into the centre of psychologists’ attention. The general understanding of diverse
personality concepts including cultural pluralism at all levels—that of psychotherapy
practices, in therapist-client relations, and in the minds of the clients—are all inherently
dialogical phenomena (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004). At the same time, concepts of
therapeutic positioning—starting from the initial concept of psychoanalysis by S. Freud—do
not emphasize such dialogicality. Thus we might get at first sight an impression of
disappointment how all the well-developed sophistication of psychoanalysis could fit into
other cultural traditions as it begins transcultural practices. Therefore the present thesis is
aimed at clarifying the relations between Indian cultural traditions and Occidental
Psychoanalytic perspectives.
This thesis is set up within the framework of cultural psychology. It should be made clear
that it is not written from the perspective of Psychoanalysis itself, but starts from a broader
understanding of the human psyche in its cultural context. Psychoanalysis in transcultural
settings appears here as an object of inquiry, rather than its tool. As Alan Roland puts it,
Culture and sociohistorical change are with rare exceptions the missing
dimensions in psychoanalysis. It is not that psychoanalysis has been uninvolved
with culture. But it is usually more of a one-way street to see what light
psychoanalysis can shed on various areas of culture, rather than how culture
influences psychoanalysis in its theory and therapy. Roland (1996, p. xii) .
India and its splendorous multiperspective myriad of cultural traditions should therefore
lead forward as a good example. Nearly no other nation exists like present-day India which is
engaged with ways and forms of healing in such a long tradition, trying to invent systems for
explaining mental suffering and techniques for abatement, following Kakar (1982). Having
the linkage to S. Freud, who says in his book Traumdeutung cited via Freud (2000) that „Die
Traumdeutung aber ist die Via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten im Seelenleben“ (p. 577)
– which means in a more or less free translation that interpreting dreams is the best way of
understanding unconscious life of soul, which therefore is needed to understand human
psyche. Looking at India opens up a huge range of possibilities: modern medical doctors,
vaids, which are to be seen as traditional doctors, hakims out of Islamic unani tradition,
chiromancists, specialists in horoscopes, herbs lore, fortune tellers, magicians as well as
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shamans are all to be found spread out over whole India. All this is followed by sadhus,
swamis, maharajs, babas, matas and bhagwans who are in the opinion to be responsible for
soul’s health in a mythic spiritual ancient way.
1.1 When transculturality comes into being
1.1.1
Understanding an old Society within modern Prospects
Anthropologically India can be understood as a melting pot of diversity as Chatterji, Pusalker,
& Dutt (1958) describe a various number of peoples: Eolithic Negroids from Africa; the
Proto-Australoids as well as Austric peoples; with various implications Mongoloids from the
Far East; the Indo-Europeans – not only Nordic, but also Mediterranean, Alpine and Dimaric;
Aryan – both as Indo-Aryan and Iranian – as well as Proto-Hellenic and also historical
Helenic; and many more races, too numerous to take them all into account but important to
keep in mind approaching the thematic of research.
Beside anthropologically being different from Europe, India is internally rich in various
traditions. Ramanujan (1990) writes that there is no single Indian way of thinking.
Furthermore every region, caste and language has its own specific worldview. But still he
claims “under the apparent diversity, there is a reality, a unity of view point, a single super
system…” (pp. 41-42) when we talk about Indian psychology. This might appear paradox at
first, but recognizing the huge change of modernisation and westernization which took place
in the last centuries, still Indian characteristics got preserved and are to be seen as an
inevitable part of Indian societies characteristics. An ancient multisystemic society which is
maybe outlasting that long because of using terms of inclusion instead of segregation when it
comes to human’s psyche. Therefore even the word psychology and its use as a branch in
knowledge doesn’t exist in ancient India’s philosophy, regarding to Rao (1962). A
phenomenon we should also keep in mind going deeper into matter. Within the next chapters
it will be made clear that it is not only about the subject psychology or psychoanalysis this
thesis will deal with. Furthermore it is about understanding as Kakar and Kakar (2006) write
that in Indian society it is about behaviour itself and not about the inner attributes referring to
behaviour as we might understand it in the western hemisphere.
1.1.2
Introducing the Indian Way of Healing
Comparing the Indian way of healing to European traditions might seem to be an endless
topic when going into socioanthropologic as well as ethnographic description. Therefore a
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meta-theoretical approach might be favoured. Doing research in the field, it doesn’t take long
to realize the difference between European and Indian traditions lies in the way of
understanding life. European patients often claim the loss of mythology and religion in life
what they call a kind of partly damage of their personality, not being able to mobilize spiritual
emotions any more as it was possible in former times. Kakar (1982) mentions it as the saint
disappearing within the cure (p. 31).
The importance of mythology, religion and history of a culture gets lost and is to be
understood as a loss of personal identity in European patients. That for India seems to be a
journey through time compared to Europe, what would also explain the increasing “consume”
of eastern religions as well as yoga and Ayurveda in European countries. Speaking about
India doesn’t mean to understand it only in a European more than less “romantic” way of
“getting back what we might lost”. We might find a track by taking into account that India is
also to be known as a highly integrated and professional country with leading technology. So
where can be the difference detected, which opens up the possibility staying in touch with
saints and mythology in Indian population? It is a matter of inclusion instead of separation
which opens up the impression that access to our possibility of the Indian journey through
time will not be ebbing.
The Indian way of healing has to be understood as a holistic one. The central idea of Indian
healing traditions is not about being idealistic in any purpose, it is dedicated to the possibility
of bringing effort of cure to the client, being satisfied maybe even without knowing exactly
how it worked out. In contrast, the tradition of dualistic ways of thinking in Europe has left its
mark on the contemporary situation of dealing with the person. What cannot be understood as
part of the personal self has to be seen as an outer perspective, an outer position. Dualistic it
seems in the way of differentiation between the subject and the object, and it is. This feature
is present in psychoanalysis does as well. “Therefore psychoanalysis could be understood as
the therapy of modern western individualism” (p. 7), as Roland (1996) says. But this need not
disturb the ongoing process of this thesis if we look at Radcliffe-Brown (1952) who writes:
The most usual way of representing […] unity in duality, [e.g.] linking two groups into
one society, is by pairs of opposites… as in the philosophy of Heraclitus [or in the
Chinese philosophy]… and the dictum is that yang and yin together are required to make
a unity or harmony (tao) as in the union of husband and wife, or the union of winter and
summer to make a year… The conception of unity in duality has been used by man not
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only in the establishment of systems of cosmology but also in organising social
structures. (p. 114)
Let’s use this input of thinking in duality in between Indian and European perspectives
for getting closer into touch, finally finding into one conclusion by oscillating movements.
The following should be visualized by figure 1:
Figure 1 European and Indian Oscillation in comparison
Therefore unity will be found throughout segregation of perspectives which should be fixed
together through modifying psychoanalytic approaches to lead to a universal transcultural
understanding including dialogical perspectives.
1.1.3
The History of Psychoanalysis in India
Girindrasekhar Bose was working in Kalkutta since 1909 in the sense of psychoanalysis and
wrote his dissertation about the “concept of repression”. 1920 he wrote to S. Freud what
referred to a lifelong letter correspondence between them. In 1922 the Indian Psychoanalytic
Institute was founded by Bose, since 1930 candidates get educated there as well as since 1947
“Samiska” the first Indian psychoanalytic journal was published in English. Bose was in the
opinion that Freud’s oedipal development was not appropriate for the Indian population
psyche. He emphasized the identification of men with their mother and saw individuals in
general less separated from each other. Because of cultural differences due to religious shaped
traditions of trusting in authorities likewise Gurus as well as economic reasons have lead
psychoanalysis to be able existing in Indian metropolises only. The big geographical as well
as cultural distance, for example Bengal versus other regions, needs to be seen as leading
when it comes to different developments in Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai. Psychoanalysis
didn’t gain ground being part of the scientific community at universities as well as becoming
part of the world of medicine. At the same time there could also be found a various number of
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prominent Indian psychoanalysis working abroad in Europe and America. (Summarized and
translated out of List (2009).)
The Indian Psychoanalytical Society counts actual 33 members (as constituted March
2014, source: http://www.ipa.org.uk). This number stayed in the last decades nearly the same.
Out of a personal opinion – psychoanalysis rarely exists in India: As I remember the
invitation to congresses as well as personal meetings with psychiatrists it looks like the name
S. Freud has crossed their minds through the books used in education but rarely more can be
found.
1.2 Identifying Indian Personality
My theoretical perspective in this thesis will allow me to show the limitation in
therapeutic work without the use of dialogical perspectives. “More specifically, we shall have
to explore how psychoanalytic theory and practice is profoundly related to Northern European
and North American cultural values and philosophical assumptions involving individualism.”
(Roland, 1996, p. 5) The psychoanalytic treatment by S. Freud was invented to cure neurotic
functional diseases by bringing the unconscious parts of personality into conscious
surroundings. Therefore he used the technique of free association, which should be discussed
and explained a little bit further: In Freud’s understanding that means that the patient is lying
down at a couch. The use of the couch is to get an easier access to the patient’s regression.
The therapist listens to the patient’s story and asks afterwards what it brings to the patients
mind, what he or she associates freely. This opens up a central position in understanding the
concept of western personality. Freud’s free association can only take place or better say
effort in patient’s behaviour because of the use of egocentric perspective which gets offered
by the patient. This individualism used in giving answers is indeed needed to proclaim
therapeutic progress. But why does it need to be that way? Taking into account that the
personal free association needs to belong to the own psyche it makes it impossible not using
yourself as the middle point of investigation in therapy. Hypercritics could go the step ahead
by asking why does the free association need to be connected to the patient’s psyche? Here
the only honest answer can be that it is impossible to give a concrete and correct answer. I
cannot prove that this necessity is given in general. But still, out of a phenomenological point
of view, psychoanalysis is working because of the reflection of the personal perspective. The
necessity of linkage therefore can be shown that we see that it works. What we still don’t
8
know is what happens if this central egocentric perspective is not given, as I claim to see it in
Indian society.
Investigating Indian Hindustan society and having interviews with people in different
economic positions they often felt curious about my “European” way of asking questions.
Indeed not about the questions itself which mostly belonged to the topics of personality,
identification and cultural surroundings with a little outcast on how other nationalities get
recognized. They were surprised that I was interested in their personal opinion. Therefore I
mostly got different answers as I was presuming: In a wide range the output of answers was in
between myths, native tales and society regulations, likewise “how a real gentleman” would
behave in a certain situation. It was more about storytelling than giving personal and concrete
answers on a theme. Nevertheless I would not say that information was less or in any kind not
enough exhausting for scientific development. Information was simply provided in a different
way. The following example may explain the matter of content in a better way. It is out of a
myth collection of Ramanujan (1983) mainly done in Karnataka State southern India, the
same area the interviews for this thesis were made for investigation. The stories of the
collection were recorded by nonprofessional storytellers, women who look up for children
and prepare their food in the evening (possible to compare them to a western Nanny). The
selection of this tale is not only about showing the style of Indian answers, it should also
handle on to Freud’s Oedipus thematic. Indeed this tale shows the counter position of
Freudian Oedipus by pushing the story into the mirror perspective by substituting male and
female positions and giving Jocasta the mother of Oedipus the leading character:
A girl is born with a curse on her head that she would marry her own son and beget a
son by him. As soon as she hears of the curse, she wilfully vows she’d try and escape
it: she secludes herself in a dense forest, eating only fruit, forswearing all male
company. But when she attains puberty, as fate would have it, she eats a mango from a
tree under which a passing king has urinated. The mango impregnates her; bewildered,
she gives birth to a male child; she wraps him in a piece of her sari and throws him in
a nearby stream. The child is picked up by the king of the next kingdom, and he grows
up to be a handsome young adventurous prince. He comes hunting in the self-same
jungle, and the cursed woman falls in love with the stranger, telling herself she is not
in danger any more as she has no son alive. She marries him and bears a child.
According to custom, the father’s swaddling clothes are preserved and brought out for
the newborn son. The woman recognizes at once the piece of sari with which she had
swaddled her first son, now her husband, and understands that her fate had really
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caught up with her. She awaits till everyone is asleep, and sings a lullaby to her
newborn baby:
Sleep
O Son
O Grandson
O Brother to my husband
sleep O sleep
sleep well
and hangs herself by the rafter with her sari twisted to a rope. (Ramanujan, 1983, p.
237)
Kakar says in a lecture given in October 2013 in Berlin, Germany that the mango can be seen
as a universal sign of fertility in Indian myths as well as he claims the analogy to the female
breast for nurturing the child. It therefore is commonly used in Indian tales, especially ones
with oedipal character. This oedipal counter-position can be seen as a direct indication for the
need of the dialogical way of thinking in two ways: At first in describing the tale itself where
inner perspectives get into dialogue with outer perspectives as the girl tries to prevent fate
from coming true: She faces her needs of being a woman with sexual interests in men and
hides so in the woods while at the same time the tale shows us that it is impossible to face all
outer perspectives. She still gets pregnant! At second the understanding of psychoanalytic
ideas in a transcultural way – we have here the possibility to see cultural differences in
oedipal structures as contemporaneous having a superordinate look at it – we recognize
oedipal structures as still existing.
Another interesting example can be found in the book of Genesis (19:30-36). Positions of
Oedipus are not made clear to the point as the moral understanding is different in Christian
and Muslim religion. The story about Lot, who was living in Sodom and Gomorra offering his
daughters to the plebs as he tries to take care about his by God sent guests not becoming
victims of sexual abuse. As the story continues the city of Sodom and Gomorra gets destroyed
and Lot and his daughters survive. Now being the only ones able to care about their offspring
the story continues the following:
30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters
with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two
daughters.
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31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in
the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may
preserve seed of our father.
33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay
with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger,
Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also;
and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and
lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.
Figure 2 Albrecht Altdorfer: Lot und seine Töchter
(SHOULD PICTURE GET EXTRA DESCRIPTION – IF YES, IN WHAT WAY?)
As it seems in the biblical text the moral understanding is quite different to the Indian one:
The survival of the tribe is more important as a moral value than the idea of having incest.
Therefore the incest is acceptable in contrast to the private sexual interest of the Indian
woman.
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But this cannot be shown facing oedipal conflicts only. The interaction of inner and outer
positions gets also described by Uberoi (2002) who additionally explains changes in personal
pronouns:
The unity in the duality of ‘you’ and ‘I’ lies in their mysterious ability to exchange
places with one another and even to exchange their respective selves, one for the
other, through the conception of oneself, the use of the impersonal pronoun “one” in
language which is employed in English, for example, to refer to either of the two
singular persons, ‘you’ or ‘I’ or to both of them simultaneously (synchrony) or in a
sequence of contexts (diachrony). (p. 114)
This should make aware that our so called “inner” and “outer” world can be changed easily!
At the same time the Indian way of answers can be understood better: Personal experiences
might be fit into non personal descriptions by telling myths or stories. Being into transcultural
work this possibility of giving answers in interrogations might does not assume as often as it
should do. For that reason we should think about understanding answers in a kind of mutual
process.
Maruyama organizes processes in two different ways what fits into present
transcultural consideration. He mentions that deviation-counteracting mutual causal systems
(Morphostasis) as well as deviation-amplifying mutual causal systems (Morphogenesis) are
needed to be detected. Both, Morphostasis as well as Morphogenesis can provide “inner” and
“outer” perspectives of person’s culture, as he clarifies: “[…] the possibility that some
deviation-amplifying interactional process in [their] personality and in [their] environment
may have produced the difference” (1963, p. 167). This difference may cause the gap of
universal psychoanalytic understanding: “Most likely such a culture had developed first by a
deviation-amplifying mutual causal process, and has later attained its own equilibrium when
the deviation-counteracting components have become predominant, and is currently
maintaining its uniqueness […]” p.178 Maruyama (1961) cited by Maruyama (1963). This
quote might be valid for cultural perspectives of Europe/India as well as for the “culture of
psychoanalysis” itself.
All theoretic excurses discussed here shall be made more understandable by the section of
empirical approach in chapter 3.
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2 Method
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3 Empirical Approach
Searching in the interview material the part about karma! Connecting it to Following
Ramanujan (1991, S. 34):
“Karma can be usefully analyzed into a t least three independent variables:
1.) Causality: Any human (or other) action is non-random; it is motivated and explaned
by previous actions of the actors themselves.
2.) Ethics: Acts are divided into “good, virtuous” and “bad, sinful”; the former accrue
punya (“merit”), the latter pāpa (“sin [?], demerit”).
3.) Rebirth or re-death (punarjanma or punarmrtya): Soul transmigrate and have many
lives in which to clear their ethical accounts. Past lives contain motives and
explanations for the present, and the present initiates the future. The chain or wheel of
lives is called samsara, and release from its moksa (salvation, liberation), nirvana
(“blowing out”), or kaivalya (“isolation”), in different systems.
Each of these three elements may, and often does, appear in India and elsewhere in
different combinations. For instance, Freudian psychoanalysis depends on causality, a
version of ethics (e.g., a punitive superego), and no rebirth. Utilitarian ethics depends on
element 1 and a version of 2 in its “calculus of consequences,”
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4 Discussion
How universal is the psychoanalytic self?
MAYBE HERE TUNES/EHRENFELS/UNIVERSALITY OF MUSIC/UNIVERSALITY OF
IDEATION  PSYCHOANALYSIS IS UNIVERSAL, BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THE
SENSE FREUD ASSUMED
Picture about Indian self construction and European
Connecting this to the Idea of ehrenfels with tunes
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5 References
Chatterji, S. K., Pusalker, A. D., & Dutt, N. (1958). Editor's Preface. The Cultural Heritage of
India, 1.
Freud, S. (2000). Die Traumdeutung (Vol. Studienausgabe II). (A. Mitscherlich, A. Richards,
& J. Strachey, Eds.) Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Hermans, H. J., & Dimaggio, G. (Eds.). (2004). The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy. New
York: Brunner-Routledge.
Kakar, S. (1982). Schamanen, Mystiker und Ärzte. Wie die Inder die Seele heilen. München:
Verlag C.H. Beck.
Kakar, S., & Kakar, K. (2006). Die Inder. Porträt einer Gesellschaft. München: Verlag C.H.
Beck.
List, E. (2009). Psychoanalyse. Wien: facultas wuv.
Maruyama, M. (1961). The Multilateral Mutual Causal Relationships among the Modes of
Communication, Sociometric Pattern and the Intellectual Orientation in the Danish
Culture. Phylon, 22(1), pp. 41-58.
Maruyama, M. (1963). The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal
Processes. American Scientist, 51, pp. 164-179.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952). Structure and function in primitive society. London: Cohen
and West.
Ramanujan, A. K. (1983). The Indian Oedipus. In L. Edmunds, & A. Dundes (Eds.), Oedipus:
A Folklore Casebook (pp. 234-261). New York: Garland Publishing Company.
Ramanujan, A. K. (1990). Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay. In M.
Marriot, India Through Hindu Categories. New Delhi: Sage.
Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). Towards a Counter-System: Women's Tales. In A. Appadurai, F. J.
Korom, & M. A. Mills (Hrsg.), Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive
Traditions (S. 33-55). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rao, S. K. (1962). Development of Psychological Thought in India. Mysore: Kavyalya
Publishers.
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Roland, A. (1996). Cultural Pluralism and Psychoanalysis. The Asian and North American
Experience. New York: Routledge.
Uberoi, J. P. (2002). Self and Other: Dualism and Non-dualism. In J. P. Uberoi, The
European Modernity. Science, Truth and Method. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Figure 1 European and Indian Oscillation in comparison .......................................................... 7
Figure 2 http://www.wgsebald.de/lot.html 02.03.2014 ............ Error! Bookmark not defined.
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6 Additional Material
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