The Mind in the World

The four volumes cover Sudhir Kakars sel‎ected writings on psychoanalysis, culture and society, and religion and biography over the last four decades. As the psychoanalyst of civilizations, Kakar uniquely captures wide swathes of Indian cultural imagination through his essays. The first volume unfolds his psychoanalytic journey comprising both his theoretical innovations and clinical speculations. It recounts his personal travelogue in psychoanalysis that gave birth to the latermacro spectrum of his analytic explorations into the concept of maternal enthralment, Oedipal alliance, and spiritual healing traditions. Kakars thinking from his earliest works to the most recent is traced in the four sections of the second volume:: Hinduism and psychoanalysis; psychoanalytic andspiritual healing in India; violence, self, and the sacred; and spirit and psyche. The third focusses on Kakars original contributions on culture and society and maps the landscape of Indian cultural imagination from multiple vantage points, thus demonstrating Kakars dynamism as a prominent, deep, and fierce Indian thinker who has combined Western philosophical thinking with critical Indian cultural thinking. The fourth volume presents psychological biographies to advance the claim that thestudy of life narratives across cultures needs to be pursued, especially in the era of globalization and increased cross-cultural exchange and connectivity.