Sexuality, the Indian Extended Family, and Hindu Culture

Sexuality, the main protagonist of classical psychoanalysis, has been viewed in an eternal drama with its antagonist, the superego. The drama may vary with the individual players, but both the development and vicissitudes of sexuality and of the superego have been couched in universal terms. Oedipus, its tragic hero, has reigned supreme. In more contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis, new characters have entered the drama of sexuality, ones far more related to developmental ego formation, needs of the self, and early object relations—all embodying a more relational-oriented psychoanalysis than that of classical drive and structural theory.

What happens when the scene shifts from Mount Olympus to Mount Kailasa, the home of the Indian gods and goddesses? Or when the notions of morality change from the categorical imperative and the Sermon on the Mount, both highly universalistic, to those of dharma where proper behavior depends wholly on the context of relationships, the situation, and the specific natures of the persons involved? Or when kinds of child rearing, early object relations, and family structure are radically different? Psychoanalytic therapy in India enables us to assay how the civilizations affect the drama of sexuality that Freud and other Western psychoanalysts have formulated.

Before delving into the considerable variations in which sexuality may be played out in the contexts of different civilizations, I should first note from clinical experience that incestuous fantasies with punitive superego reactions—the hallmark of the classic formulations of the Oedipus complex—are indeed present in both Indian women and men. Incestuous fantasies often surface through dreams, occasionally through conscious fantasies. Furthermore, Indian patients, both women and men, seem more open on the whole to bring up sexual fantasies and other associations to sexuality than even many of my liberated American patients—a point confirmed by Dr. B. K. Ramanujam (personal communicat