In this paper, I employ a comparative civilization approach to the study of the development and functioning of the self. This requires me to take a position in psychological space from which a wide view of different selves in societies and cultures so enormously different as India and America can be achieved. By juxtaposing psychological development and functioning in these two societies, they will alternately serve as figure and ground one for the other, sharply highlighting similar, different, and unique aspects. This will allow a better perspective from which to view these selves.

My basic assumption is that, by the principle of adaptation, psychic structures will develop in a somewhat different way and form different gestalts within highly differing sociocultural contexts and child-rearing.1 That is, that the intrapsychic development of the self is congruent with the major sociocultural patterns of a society and