Problems in psychoanalytic writings on non-Western cultures, such as questionable yardsticks of evaluation, the incorporation of Western middle-class experience and values in some of the analytic concepts which are then considered as universally valid, are discussed with examples from clinical practice in India. It is suggested that the confinement of psychoanalysis to the West and its relative stagnation in the two non-Western societies of India and Japan may well have to do with the model of man underlying classical drive psychology. The very nature of the drive psychology model excludes a consideration of cultural data and thus hinders any relativising of analytic concepts. The dominant concept of man in most non-Western societies is more relational than individual. The newer relational theories in psychoanalysis may therefore find a greater resonance and better reception in non-Western cultures than the traditional psychoanalytic version of Enlightenment man.