Anthropology Archive

Psychoanalytic Movements in Third World Countries Brazil Japan India China and Russia

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The establishment of psychoanalytic movements in many non-European countries, especially in the Second and Third Worlds, offers an opportunity for psychoanalytic anthropology to study the adaptation of psychoanalysis itself to diverse cultures (Kutter, 1995). In Russia, psychoanalysis was centrally involved in the 1917 revolution, being regarded as a liberating intellectual movement; but was suppressed when Stalin took a dislike to it. Many of the well-known Russian psychologists, such as Alexander Luria and Lev Vygotsky, were analytically trained (Etkind, 1995). It has recently been undergoing a resurgence there. I have mentioned psychoanalysis in Brazil, which began early (Mezan, 1988); the first talk by a Brazilian psychiatrist on Freud's theory of neurosis was in 1899—though interest in Freud's theories of childhood sexuality was at first directed toward stricter controls on children's expression of sexuality. Real interest in psychoanalysis began among the group of artists who were active in the "Week of Modern Art" (Semana de arte moderna) in 1922, and by the psychiatrist Durval Marcondes; the history of Brazilian psychoanalysis has been ably researched by anthropologist Roberto Yutaka Sagawa (1985, 1994). Brazilian psychoanalysis, like Brazilian intellectual life in general, is deeply concerned with social justice. The accessibility of psychoanalysis for all, regardless of income, has been a constant ethical issue. An event from the time of the Brazilian dictatorship, when a psychoanalytic candidate was revealed to have been participating as a doctor in a government torture team, has continued to raise ethical concerns in Brazil, with worldwide repercussions (Vianna, 1994, 1997; Villareal, 1997; Villela 1998; see also Danneberg, 1995).

The psychoanalytic movements in India and Japan were established at an early date, in the 1920s and 1930s when Freud was still alive and able to engage with them. The Indian psychiatrist Girindrashakhar Bose (1886-1953) read Freud's work and by 1914 undertook the use of Freud's methods, and his variants on them, in his own practice. In 1929 he corresponded with Freud about the difference between the underlying fantasies of his Indian patients and European ones: the fantasy of wishing to be a woman—what Karen Horney termed "womb envy"—was much more accessible to his Indian patients (Kakar, 1990). He did not just apply Freud's ideas to his Indian patients, but also "used Indian cultural categories to domesticate psychoanalysis for Indians" (Nandy, 1995, p. 123; Ramanujam, 1992). The Indian Journal of Psychoanalysis, Samiksa, has become a major organ for publication of articles by Indian psychoanalysts, including some interesting case histories (e.g., Kakar, 1979, 1980). Sudhir Kakar is India's best known psychoanalyst today. A student of engineering, Kakar befriended a lonely Erik Erikson while the latter was in India researching his book on Gandhi (Erikson, 1969). Then, with Erikson's influence, Kakar undertook psychoanalytic training in Berlin. He went on to author a number of books on psychoanalysis and Indian culture (Kakar, 1978, 1982, 1989). An article of special clinical importance is his "Psychoanalysis and Nonwestern Cultures" (Kakar, 1985), discussing the differences in experiences brought about by different conditions of child-rearing in India, and the modifications that must be made in psychoanalytic method to analyze Indian patients. Complaining of ethnocentric evaluations of Indian child development in American psychoanalytic articles—assertions of "overstimulation in the oedipal period" and the "pull toward oral fixation" because of "intense libidinal gratification"—he responds that from the Indian point of view a European or American child might just as well be seen as "sensually starved or under-stimulated" (p. 442). He calls for a "relativising" of psychoanalysis through exploration of the range of family conditions experienced by growing children in the different cultures of the world. On the other hand, he finds the kind of introspection presupposed in psychoanalytic treatment something characteristic of European thought, derived from Greek precedents, posing difficulties for psychoanalytic treatment with traditional Indian patients. B. K. Ramanujam (1986) offers a slightly different per-specive through clinical examples, presenting his successful analytic work with two traditional Indians.

Though interest in psychoanalysis began in Japan in the early part of the 20th century, 1912-1914, and a school influenced by Adolph Meyer flourished in the 1920s, psychoanalysis in Japan began in earnest when Heisaku Kosawa (1897-1968) went to Vienna for training in 1932. While there he had training analysis with Richard Sterba and supervision from Paul Federn, and visited Freud to present Freud with his paper on the "Ajase complex." Kosawa's analysis of the myth of Ajase, which epitomizes the intense ambivalence of the son toward the mother stemming from intense dependency feelings, was a first step toward a distinctively Japanese psychoanalytic theory (Okonogi, 1978-79). More recently, Takeo Doi (1973)—a Japanese psychoanalyst who did his psychiatric training in the United States—has developed a psychoanalytic theory in which the central part is played by the emotion designated in Japanese amae, referring to the dependent love an infant has for the mother—a form of love for which there is no term in English (but which is comparable to Balint's "primary object love," or Heinz Kohut's "self-object relationship"). What is especially distinctive about Doi's psychoanalytic theory, and what makes it of special interest to psychoanalytic anthropology, is that he has elaborated the theory entirely from Japanese ethnopsychological concepts. Doi's theory, translated into English, has provoked some interest in psychoanalytic circles around the world. It has also stirred controversy at home in Japan, where some other analysts and sociologists suggest that amae is regarded as more problematic in Japanese culture than Doi has portrayed it (Kumagai & Kumagai, 1986).

In China, the works of Freud were translated in the 1930s by a small group of analysts, but it is only recently that Chinese psychoanalysis has taken a major leap forward. Until recently, most mental patients in China have been treated by drugs, sometimes with antipsychotic medications used to treat patients with a neurosis much more appropriately treated by psychotherapy. An "International Symposium of Psychoanalysis" was held for the first time in 2001 and repeated in 2002, the first under the auspices of the Beijing University Medical Center and its director Hu Peicheng, and the second hosted by Professor Huo Datong in Chengdu. Translation and important contributions were provided by the Taiwan-based psychoanalyst Therese Bai. A major figure in Chinese psychoanalysis today is Huo Datong, who was analyzed in Paris and trained there in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Huo Datong has established a school of psychoanalysis at Sichuan University in Chengdu, Sichuan, where a generation of psychoanalysts is now in training. Huo Datong's thesis in Paris was on the analysis of Chinese folklore. At the two conferences, he has been developing a theory of the unconscious expressed in Chinese characters, comparing the structure of dreams with the structure of meaning in characters. This work, which promises to establish a distinctly Chinese perspective on psychoanalysis, is being translated into English and French. Professor Hao's work, and the problem of reconciling psychoanalysis with the reticence before authority figures traditional in Chinese society—still true even with the cultural changes that have gone on in mainland China—these developments promise interesting cultural developments.

The introduction of psychoanalysis to a new country, particularly one of a nonwestern cultural heritage, offers an opportunity for psychoanalytic anthropology to examine the adaptation of psychoanalysis to new cultural conditions, and the new perspectives in psychoanalysis that may result from this adaptation. It may be seen as a continuation of the mutual relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology envisioned by Sapir.