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The search for explanations of human behavior, including but not limited to those forms of behavior judged to be aberrant, has gone on from time immemorial. So has the utilization of those explanations in the treatment of what is called psychopathology. Perhaps nowhere on earth has this age-old search gone on for so long, with such vigor, and with so many seemingly variegated results as in India. It is to this superficially bewildering (at least to the casual Western observer) psychological landscape that the Indian psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakar, turns his attention in this fascinating and thought-provoking book. As he states in his first few sentences:
This book explores the traditions of India that are concerned with the restoration of what is broadly termed "mental health" in the West … Drawing on three years of fieldwork, I have tried to describe, analyze and reflect upon my experiences with gurus of mystical cults, shamans, practitioners of ancient systems of medicine and other indigenous colleagues who are also professionally engaged in the common endeavors … [of] "healing" (p. 3).
That this is a highly personal and highly ambivalent exploration is acknowledged by Kakar throughout. As he puts it, "One side of this ambivalence ultimately derives from my being a Western-trained psychoanalyst in a culture whose soil is not particularly conducive to psychoanalysis, either as a method of therapy or as a theory of human nature" (p. 7). One consequence of his ambivalence