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Freud along the Ganges is a timely work. India is an increasingly important country and society. It is a parliamentary democracy. It is a rapidly developing Eastern giant—economically, industrially, technologically, and geopolitically. Francis Bacon, in my view correctly, attributed the deep changes in life and culture wrought by ancient Athens more to its artists and tradesmen than to its philosophers. It
was the return to their spirit that enabled Renaissance thinkers to make the discoveries that laid the foundations of modern science, technology, and secularism. This Western project was completed only in the last century by Freud's discoveries, which enabled him to construct psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Freud along the Ganges tackles the formidable task of shedding light on the yet more formidable tasks inherent in the integration of psychoanalysis into Indian life, society, and culture. Because of its challenge to human narcissism, psychoanalysis has not yet found an altogether secure place for itself even in Western post-Renaissance societies and cultures, especially now that the enthusiasm caused by its novelty no longer enthralls, intrigues, or excites. If many Western intellectuals are gleefully announcing the death of psychoanalysis (or, more often, remain crouched behind a wall of indifference), it cannot be expected that psychoanalysis would easily take root in a culture that did not have the equivalent of the European Renaissance, or therefore the generations of preparation for a scientific psychology that Western societies are heir to. The small number of psychoanalysts in India today—as reported in the thoughtful and informative brief history of psychoanalysis in India by Akhtar and Tummala-Narra that introduces the work—is not surprising. An alternative explanation would be that India is in less need of psychoanalysis than are Western societies because of Indian spirituality. This explanation would, of course, require a far-reaching correctio