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This important study of Hindu personality structure is written with penetration and understanding, and should prove of great interest to pyscho-analysts.
Dr. Carstairs was born in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and spent the first nine years of his life there. To his professional knowledge as a psychiatrist he added a training in social anthropology before settling in a village near Udaipur in Rajasthan in 1951 to study the members of the three highest Indian castes, represented by the Rajputs (landlords and warriors), Brahmins (priests), and Banias (merchants). The élite comprised in these three caste groups is distinguished by the wearing of the 'sacred thread' and is known as 'The Twice-Born', the title of this book.
The original object of Dr. Carstairs' researches was to test out his working theory as a psychiatrist of the part played by early formative experiences in determining adult personality. He puts the question: 'Suppose he (a psychiatric patient) had not been treated in this way by his father or in that way by his mother, would he necessarily be a very different person now?' In other words, he was exploring the old question of the relative importance of heredity and environment. Such considerations account, in broad outline, for one of the differences that separate the anthropologist from the psycho-analyst and, in certain ways, that distinguish schools of psycho-analysts. By studying a community whose values and customs differ considerably from our own, he hoped to be able to assess whether there was a valid relationship between the formative experiences peculiar to that society, and any characteristics of personality common to their adult members and differing from his own conception of the normal. The result of these researches is a study in national character.
The question of methodology is of major importance in inter-disciplinary work of this nature. Dr. Carstairs originally followed the eclectic theories of Adolph Meyer's 'Psychobiology' wi