You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
DISCUSSION: Dr. Samuel Orgel suggested that the desire for self-control in Yoga is derived basically from the infant's wish to attain sphincter control. Gratification in Yoga seems to lie in a renunciatory striving for perfection in the hope of discovering absolute reality. Psychoanalysis, on the contrary, attempts to soften
the demands of the superego; specifically, it tries to change the perfectionistic goals of the obsessional patient and to abolish the need for ritual. Yoga would seem to devaluate object relations in striving for a state of tranquility, designated as joy. Psychoanalysis, with less lofty aims, does not expect to free man from all passions nor from his relations to the outer world.
In closing, Dr. Sinha stated that he was not presenting a polemic in favor of Yoga but intended only to point out similarities and differences between psychoanalysis and Yoga. He suggested that there were some areas in which exploration might be beneficial to analytic theory.