Kakar, Indias foremost practitioner of psychoanalysis, has focused his career on infusing this preeminently Western discipline with ideas and views from the East, In Mad and Divine, he takes on the separation of the spirit and the body favored by psychoanalysts, cautioning that a singleminded focus on the physical denies a persons wholeness.
Similarly, Kakar argues, to focus on the spirit alone is to hold in contempt the body that makes us
human,
Mad and Divine looks at the interplay between spirit and psyche and the moments of creativity and transformation that occur when the spirit overcomes desire and narcissism.
Kakar examines this relationship in religious rituals and healing traditions both Eastern and Westernas well as in the lives of some extraordinary men: the mystic and guru Rajneesh, Gandhi, and the Buddhist saint Drukpa Kunley.
Enriched with a novelists felicity of language and an analysts piercing insights and startling interpretations, Mad and Divine is a valuable addition to the literature on the integration of the spirit and psyche in the evolving psychology of the individual.
I would like to recommend this book to those who are interested in spirituality and psychoanalysis, . otherwise boring : This book by Sudhir Kakar I read during my master's in, I was working on Sociology of Religion and looking at mysticism and Mystical Experiences, Sudhir Kakar is a Psychoanalyst and this was my first book in Psychology, Psychoanalysis, In this book Sudhir Kakar, brings an extraordinary depth of psychoanalysis and Indian sensibilities to bear on topics of sainthood, religious ritual and healing in India, He seeks along with psychoanalysis the spiritual dimensions of these topics and the ways in which these dimensions are entwined.
Sudhir Kakar is a psychoanalyst and writer who lives in Goa, India, Kakar took his Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Gujarat University, his Masters degree Diplom Kaufmann in business economics from Mannheim in Germany and his doctorate in economics from Vienna before beginning his training in psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, Germany in.
Betweenand, Sudhir Kakar was a Lecturer in General Education at Harvard University, Research Associate at Harvard Business School and Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
After returning to India in, Dr, Kakar set up a practice as a psychoanalyst in Delhi where he was also the Head of Department Sudhir Kakar is a psychoanalyst and writer who lives in Goa, India.
Kakar took his Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Gujarat University, his Masters degree Diplom Kaufmann in business economics from Mannheim in Germany and his doctorate in economics from Vienna before beginning his training in psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, Germany in.
Betweenand, Sudhir Kakar was a Lecturer in General Education at Harvard University, Research Associate at Harvard Business School and Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
After returning to India in, Dr, Kakar set up a practice as a psychoanalyst in Delhi where he was also the Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology.
He has beenth Anniversary Senior Fellow at the Centre for Study of World Religions at Harvard, a visiting professor at the universities of Chicago, McGill, Melbourne, Hawaiiand Vienna, INSEAD, France.
He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, Wissenschaftskolleg Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin, Centre for Advanced Study of Humanities, University of Cologne and is Honorary Professor, GITAM University, Visakhapatnam.
A leading figure in the fields of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion, as well as a novelist, Dr, Kakars person and work have been profiled in The New York Times, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Neue Zuricher Zeitung, Die Zeit and Le Nouvel Observateur, which listed him as one of the world'smajor thinkers while the German weekly Die Zeit portrayed Sudhir Kakar as one of theimportant thinkers for thest century.
Dr. Kakar's many honors include the Kardiner Award of Columbia University, Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association, Germany s Goethe Medal, Rockefeller Residency, McArthur Fellowship Bhabha, Nehru and ICSSR National Fellowships and Distinguished Service Award of Indo American Psychiatric Association.
He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Board of Sigmund Freud Archives in the Library of Congress, Washington and the Academie Universelle des Culture, France.
In February, he was conferred the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country's highest civilian order, Sudhir Kakars twenty books of non fiction and six of fiction, include The Inner World now in itsth printing since its first publication in, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors , with J.
M. Ross Tales of Love, Sex and Danger,Intimate Relations, The Analyst and the Mystic, The Colors of Violence,Culture and Psyche, with K, Kakar The Indians: Portrait of a People, with Wendy Doniger, a new translation of the Kamasutra for Oxford world Classics, Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern world and Young Tagore: The makings of a genius.
His fifth novel, The Devil Take Love will be published by Penguin Viking in August, Sudhir with Katharina Poggendorf KakarSudhir Kakar is married to Katharina, a writer and a scholar of comparative religions and artist, He has two children, a son Rahul who is in financial services, and a daughter Shveta, a lawyer, both in New York, sitelink.