For more than a century, the cultural imagination of
psychoanalysis has been assumed and largely continues to be
assumed as Western. Fundamental ideas about human
relationships, family, marriage, and gender often remain
unexamined and pervade the analytic space as if they are
universally valid. In the intellectual climate of our times, with the
rise of relativism in the human sciences and politically with the
advent of decolonization, the cultural and historical transcendence
of psychoanalytic thought can no longer be taken for granted.

Insights from clinical work embedded in the cultural imaginations
of non-Western civilizations could help psychoanalysis rethink
some of its theories of the human psyche, extending these to
cover a fuller range of human experience. These cultural
imaginations are an invaluable resource for the move away from a
universal psychoanalysis to a more global one that remains aware
of but is not limited by its origins in the modern West.

This book of
essays aims to be a step in that journey, of altering the self-perception
of psychoanalysis from 'one size fits all' into a more
nuanced enterprise that reflects and is enriched by cultural
particularities.

Sudhir Kakar is an Indian psychoanalyst and writer. He has been a lecturer and visiting professor at Harvard University, visiting professor at the universities of Chicago, McGill, Melbourne, Hawaii, and Vienna, fellow at the Institutes of Advanced Study, Princeton, Berlin, and Cologne, and is on the board of the Freud Archives. Kakar is the author of fourteen non-fiction books and six novels. His books have been translated into twenty languages around the world.