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The book could as well be entitled 'All the Goddesses are One', for the author relates the Hindu religious beliefs and myths to family transactions, and in the process suggests how psychoanalysis can be modified to suit cultures other than the Western civilisation in which it was born. Unfortunately, Kurtz seems to believe that he is the first to have suggested that modifications apply to a different culture, and he ignores Takeo Doi's and Keigo Okonogi's modifications for Japanese analysis, as well as those concerning the cultures of Papua New Guinea, and of the influence of collective child-rearing on the Kibbutzim of Israel, all of which have pertinence to his thesis.
The author went to India to study the characteristics of a new goddess, Santoshi Ma, who first emerged in the latter half of this century and has become extremely popular. Kurtz rightly expected that the creation of a new goddess, a rarity in India, indicated some shift in the social structure which he would be able to relate to some special characteristics of Santoshi Ma. To his dismay, his potential informants refused to talk about Santoshi Ma as an individual goddess, and when directed to her shrine, Kurtz found that it was the shrine of an old goddess, Vaishno Devi. He was repeatedly informed that Santoshi Ma was not an individual goddess, but that 'all goddesses are one'—apparently manifestations of the Great Goddess, or the comprehensive religious spirit. As far as he could determine, Santoshi Ma's rapid rise had resulted from a very popular film about her. Kurtz did not give up, but sought to understand what was meant by 'all the goddesses are one', which suggested, in the light of his psychoanalytic knowledge, that it had to do with the nature of Hindu mothering. His pursuit of further understanding gave rise to this fascinating, but rather perplexing book.
Stated very briefly, Kurtz attributes the Hindu concept that all mothers and all goddesses are one to the rearing of children in co