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George Devereux, in a preface, calls this slender volume "a landmark in the history of applied psychoanalysis," in which "the world of ancient India comes to life." For the psychoanalytic clinician, however, and for the serious student of psychoanalytic theory, Masson's essays transcend the application to Indian culture and make a substantial contribution to an aspect of psychoanalytic theory and practice which is presently in ferment.
The religious world of ancient India seems to have incorporated a malaise shaped by, and having shaped, specific varieties of narcissistic pathology. Masson delineates the regressive defenses that attend such narcissistic disorders, particularly the denial of depressive anguish, and he explicates the religious, mystical and (anti-) therapeutic effects of furthering such regression. He places "cosmic narcissism" (as advocated by Kohut) among the latter. The religious—and mystical—affect is characterized by the oceanic feeling.
The concept of an oceanic feeling had been advanced by the mystically inclined Romain Rolland for Freud's consideration; Rolland extolled it as profoundly beneficent. Masson documents convincingly the morass of severe depressive psychopathology among the Indian religious leaders who originated and extended the concept. Elements of their religious thought emerge like symptoms, with superego-syntonic elements amalgamated to repressed sadistic and masochistic urges, but drenched in the narcissism characteristic for such depression. Masson states (p. 76) "the longing for the ocean as an overt symbol of eternal peace is always a covert reference to suicide."
Masson demonstrates, incidentally, the antianalytic character of a number of currently advocated modifications in psychoanalytic technique which aim at giving the analysand evidence of support but tend to further regression into narcissism. His study highlights the crucial role of early trauma and the subsequent struggle to cope with its after-effects. Such