Sudhir Kakar

Sudhir Kakar (25 July 1938 – 22 April 2024) was an Indian psychoanalyst,^[1] novelist and author in the fields of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion.^[2]

Sudhir Kakar
Born	(1938-07-25)25 July 1938 Nainital, United Provinces, British India (now in Uttarakhand, India)
Died	22 April 2024(2024-04-22) (aged 85)
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	University of Mannheim
Subject	Psychology of religion

Biography

Kakar was born on 25 July 1938 in Nainital,^[3] a town in present-day Uttarakhand, India. He spent his early childhood near Sargodha, now in Pakistan^[4] and also in Rohtak, where his father was an additional district magistrate during the British Raj and during the partition of India, and the family moved quite a bit from city to city.^[4][5] At age eight he was enrolled as a boarder in Modern School, New Delhi;^[4] he would later write about homosexual encounters in the school dormitories.^[4]

He next attended St. Edward's School, Shimla.^[4] He began his Intermediate Studies at Maharaja's College, Jaipur, in 1953 after which his family sent him to Ahmedabad, where Kakar lived with his aunt, Kamla Chowdhry, and attended engineering college.^[4] After his B.E. degree in mechanical engineering from Gujarat University 1958, Kakar obtained a master's equivalent in business administration (Dipl.-Kfm.) at the University of Mannheim (1960–64), and a doctor's degree in economics at the University of Vienna.^[6] When he returned to India, he encountered psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who inspired Kakar to train in Freudian psychoanalysis and continued to influence him throughout his career.^[7] He began his training in psychoanalysis at the University of Frankfurt's Sigmund Freud Institute in 1971.^[8]

In 1975, Sudhir Kakar moved to Delhi with his aunt, Kamla.^[4] Kakar resided in Goa and was married to Katharina (born 1967), a German writer and a scholar of comparative religions.^[9]

Kakar died on 22 April 2024, at the age of 85.^[10] Kakar is survived by his son Rahul Kakar and daughter Shveta Kakar, as well as his partner Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar.^[8]

Career

After returning to India in 1975, Sudhir Kakar set up a practice as a psychoanalyst in New Delhi. There, for a short period of time, he was the Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology (1976–77).^[11][12] He was the 40th Anniversary Senior Fellow at the Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard (2001–02)^[13] and a visiting professor at the universities of Chicago (1988–90)^[14], McGill (1976–77), Melbourne (1981), Hawaii (1998) and Vienna (1974–75),^[15] and at INSEAD, France (1994–2013)^[16]. He had been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton,^[17] Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute of Advanced Study), Berlin, Centre for Advanced Study of Humanities, University of Cologne.^[18]

Kakar was in private psychoanalytic practice in New Delhi for 25 years^[16] before moving in 2003 to his place of residence in Goa, India.^[9] Since then he had his practice in Benaulim, a village in Goa. He was a visiting professor at Goa University.^[11][19] He created controversy in a symposium regarding the Death Penalty for Child Rape in 2018 by advocating leniency towards perpetrators of child rape, emphasizing protection of the family reputation and the family bond over the child's safety.^[20]

Psychoanalysis and mysticism

A portion of Sudhir Kakar's work involves the relationship between psychoanalysis and mysticism. His analyses of personages include that of Swami Vivekananda in The Inner World (1978), Mohandas Gandhi in Intimate Relations (1989), and Ramakrishna in The Analyst and the Mystic (1991).^[21][22]

Kakar’s novel Ecstasy (2003) was "written exclusively for the senses of the skeptic and the mind of the mystic" and "is the beginning of a journey through the soulscape of spiritual India".^[23] The story is set in Rajasthan of 1940s or 1960s.^[24]

Psychoanalyst Alan Roland (2009) writes that when Kakar applies his psychoanalytic understanding to these "three spiritual figures [Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi, Ramakrishna]", his analyses are as "fully reductionistic as those of Jeffrey Masson". Roland also disputes the Kakar's theoretical understanding of mysticism from a psychoanalytic standpoint, and writes that it is "highly questionable whether spiritual aspirations, practices, and experiences essentially involve regression."^[21]

At a personal level, Kakar felt that spirituality for him consists of moments of profound connection with a person, nature, art, music, and for those who believe in God, with the Divine. His spiritual beliefs have been influenced by a combination of a rationalistic, agonistic father and a religious, ritualistic mother.^[25]

His some general observations on Indian psychology and attitudes are mentioned in V. S. Naipaul's India - A Wounded Civilization.

Awards and honours

Kakar's was awarded the 1987 Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.^[26] He received the Order of Merit, Federal republic of Germany, Feb. 2012, Distinguished Service Award, Indo-American Psychiatric Association, 2007, Fellow, National Academy of Psychology, India, 2007, Member, Academie Universelle des Cultures, France, 2003, Abraham Kardiner Award, Columbia University, 2002, Rockefeller Residency, Bellagio. April–May 1999, Goethe Medal of Goethe Institute, Germany, 1998,^[14] Watumull Distinguished Scholar, University of Hawaii, Spring Semester, 1998, National Fellow in Psychology, Indian Council of Social Science Research, 1992–94, MacArthur Research Fellowship, 1993–94, Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow, 1986–88, Homi Bhabha Fellow, 1979-80. Karolyi Foundation Award for Young Writers, 1963. The French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur profiled Kakar as one of 25 major thinkers of the world while the German weekly Die Zeit profiled him as one of twenty one thinkers for the 21st century. Oxford University Press, Delhi is in the process of publishing 4 volumes of Kakar’s essays in their series Great Thinkers of Modern Asia.

Works

Non-fiction

• Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World^[27]
• Inner World: A Psycho-Analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India: Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India^[28]
• Shamans, Mystics, And Doctors^[29]
• Tales Of Love, Sex And Danger^[30]
• Intimate Relations^[31]
• The Colors Of Violence^[32]
• The Indians Die Inder. Porträt einer Gesellschaft (2006)^[33]
• Kamasutra
• Frederick Taylor
• Understanding Organizational Behavior
• Conflict And Choice
• Identity And Adulthood
• The Analyst And The Mystic
• La Folle Et Le Saint
• Culture And Psyche
• The Indian Psyche
• The Essential Writings Of Sudhir Kakar
• A Book of Memory, 2011^[34]

Fiction

• The Ascetic Of Desire
• Indian Love Stories
• Ecstasy
• Mira And The Mahatma
• The Crimson Throne
• The Devil Take Love
• The Kipling File^[35]

Further reading

• T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): VISHNU ON FREUD'S DESK : A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-565835-3, Paperback (Edition: 2003)
• D. Sharma (Editor): Psychoanalysis, culture and religion: essays in honor of Sudhir Kakar, Oxford University Press (2014) (ISBN 978-0-19-807698-8), https://www.india.oup.com/product/psychoanalysis-culture-and-religion-9780198076988
• D. Sharma (Editor): Childhood, family and sociocultural change in India: Reinterpreting the Inner World. New York: Oxford (2004). (ISBN 978-0-19-566460-7)
• R. LeVine. Asian explorers of the psyche and culture: Sudhir Kakar and his contemporaries. In D. Sharma (Ed). The cultural psyche. North Carolina: IAP (2021). (ISBN 978-1-64802-412-2) https://www.infoagepub.com/products/The-Cultural-Psyche

See also

• Girindrasekhar Bose

Notes

• Singh, Khushwant (25 April 2011), "Me and my couch: A review of A Book of Memory—Confessions and Reflections By Sudhir Kakar, Penguin/Viking, Pages: 318, Rs. 499", Outlook