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Kakar's book is part of a growing, blatantly apologetic literature about India. The ancient Hindu world view is seen as coterminous with and equally valid as the Western scientific one. A studious attempt is made to avoid all judgments, and this extreme psychological relativism produces exactly what one expects: bland platitudes
and cautious generalizations that illuminate little except the author's schooling in an age of intellectual timidity.
Although Kakar is a trained psychoanalyst, the orientation he brings to his study of India is the Eriksonian psychosocial and epigenetic one which seems ever further removed from the concern with conflict that is at the center of classical psychoanalysis. Not surprisingly, Kohut's work is also invoked. To this reviewer, the power of these two systematic viewpoints to illuminate Indian (or any other) culture is limited.
Although the quality of this apology is higher than that variety which claims that Indian philosophy can enrich psychoanalysis, Kakar's position is little different. Since the Hindu world view is as good as any other, the objective scientist has only to describe it with sympathy and empathy to make a valid contribution to Western knowledge. I must point out that even if he is correct, Kakar should abstain from his endeavor, for he has neither the academic equipment for such an exploratory undertaking, nor the talents to redeem such purely descriptive accounts.
There are already innumerable descriptions of traditional Indian viewpoints in existence, and the one provided by Kakar falls well below the current standard. If this deficit were counterbalanced by a wide clinical experience, the book might have been redeemed. However, there are almost no references to Kakar's practice; thus the account he provides of the strains and strengths of Indian civilization rests or falls on the sophistication he is able to bring to bear on the accounts of others. This is a pity, for there is very little primary materia