The great Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar has died

He was considered the father of Indian psychoanalysisbut he was also a writer, scholar, cultural critic. Sudhir Kakar died yesterday Monday April 22 in Goa, India, at the age of 85 from throat cancer, as reported by The IndianExpress.

A leading figure in the field of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion, for years he has studied the explicit link between modernity and tradition in India, deeply probing culture, social customs and family ties. With a keen eye on the cultural dimensions of psychoanalysis, Kakar challenged the universality of Western models by pioneering a nuanced understanding of the human mind across cultures.

To what extent can psychoanalytic theory that originated primarily within the Western canon be valid when applied to the Indian context? he wondered.

Graduated in mechanical engineering with a master’s degree in business administration and a doctorate in economics, he only began studying psychoanalysis in 1971 at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, Germany. Between 1966 and 1971 he was a professor of general education at Harvard University, a research associate at Harvard Business School, and a professor of organizational behavior at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India.

After returning to India in 1975 he opened a psychoanalysis practice in Delhi, also becoming head of the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology. And then researcher, among others, in Merlbourne, Chicago, Vienna and Princeton. He is the author of numerous essays, such as The Inner World (now in its sixteenth printing since its first publication in 1978), Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. And of novels, published in Italy mainly by Neri Pozza, such as The rise of desire, Ecstasy, Mira and the Mahatma.

His many awards include Columbia University’s Kardiner Award, the American Anthropological Association’s Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology, and the German Order of Merit Medal. According to New York Times, The world, Frankfurter Allgemeine e The new observer, Sushir Kakar was one of the twenty-five greatest thinkers in the world; while for The time one of the twenty-one most important thinkers of the 21st century.

Probably also thanks to his new translation of the Kama Sutra written for Oxford World Classics and, above all, for Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality, published in 1990 and considered a truly revolutionary work because it is able to address a delicate topic such as sexuality. In that volume, Kakar delved into the history and cultural attitudes towards sexuality in Indian society, exploring the influence of religion, social norms, and colonial legacy on intimate relationships and sexual expression.

Sumanta Datta, chief executive of Oxford University Press, said Kakar’s passing will leave a void in intellectual and cultural circles: “His research into the post-independence Indian psyche will inspire generations to come, enriching global perspectives on the complexities of identity cultural”.