All the Mothers are One: Hindu India and the Cultural Reshaping of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanylsis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple mother goddesses of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many mothers in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western models without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a briefr comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America. All the Mothers Are One makes a significant contribution to the growing debate concerning the role of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of culture and the study of cross-cultural human development.

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