Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

November 30, 1964. A BRIEF SKETCH OF MIND IN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND YOGA. T. S. Sinha, D.Sc.

An attempt is made to compare the aims and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis and the Yoga philosophy of the Samkhya School. Dr. Sinha discusses briefly the different concepts formulated by the Samkhya School. There are two eternal entities: 1, Purusa (the unchangeable consciousness), thought of as male; and 2, Prakiti (the changeable, eternal nonconscious), thought of as female. Western psychologists describe mind, in contrast to the Samkhya concept mana, not as having a separate existence but as the sum total of the mental processes. Samskaras (latent memory impressions with an active tendency to find fulfilment of desires) are produced by wishes and carried over into the next incarnation. Mental states, perceptions, capacities, memories, and desires are outlined in terms of Yoga concepts. The Yoga system seeks to eliminate sorrow and suffering by the realization and rediscovery of the nature and range of creation, thereby extracting the ego from involvement with external objects and internal cravings. The attainment of this is a positive experience of 'joy'.

Similarities and differences in the concepts of the mind according to Yoga and to psychoanalysis are: a loose correspondence between the concept of bisexuality in psychoanalysis and the bisexuality of purusa and prakiti; no topographical division of the mind in Yoga equivalent to the structural division of ego, id, and superego. There are similarities between the inherited traits and drives that Freud postulated in the id, and the inherited, unresolved, driving tendencies known as Sanskara. The pleasure-pain principle of Freud is acknowledged by Yoga only to a limited extent. Yoga aims at true liberation of the ego from the bondage of imaginary and false relationships with objects, and from the values of the world colored by desires. There is a similarity to the analytic aim of liberation of the ego fr