INDIA ~ INNER AND OUTER

As much as it is underrated or misunderstood by outsiders, it is highly and widely appreciated by insiders: The Inner World, a book by the Indian psychologist Sudhir Kakar. I read it in 1981, reread it now and am all the more impressed and delighted by its lucidity and profoundness in explaining dominant identities and behaviors in India and their differences from western identities and behaviors.

Back then, I devoured the book as an enormous relief, a finally offered beautiful explanation of the typical Indian behaviors that related to so many of the problems I faced in understanding deep human love, harshly maintained inequalities and dreamy states preferred over pragmatic solutions that I, as a westerner found so obvious to see and implement. And many ways, the book provided a model for analyzing other cultures and intercultural dynamics as well. So far, I have not encountered better models for such purposes than Kakar’s The Inner World.

If it comes to understand how children are brought up in a specific kinship system and how that, next to their genes, deeply affects their behaviors as adults in the wider world, the book is a jewel. At the same time, mind you, it’s not a jewel for sissies.

----

journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7051544&fileId=S0021911800124283

http://www.voxmentis.com/2011/01/inner-world-psychoanalytic-study-of.html

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/23002311?sid=21106095950663&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3738736

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077152.001.0001/acprof-9780198077152