Psychoanalysis in India: a story of ascent, decline and revival

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has been around in India for over a century now, beginning with the works of G.S. Bose in 1910s. However, the popularity, acceptability and accessibility of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy has had a fluctuating course in the mental health arena of the country. The initial enthusiasm seems to have been circumscribed within the academic community and appears to have taken objections with its ‘foreign origin and roots’. This approach to psychotherapy was seen as alien to the Indian culture and was not welcome warmly as a treatment strategy. However, there have been some recent attempts in making this style of thought and school popular and accessible in clinical settings and there seems to be a slow but gradual increase in the usage of Psychoanalytic thinking in both clinical and non-clinical settings. The paper reviews the history and describes the current state of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in India and highlights the difficulties in accessing the therapy within the national health schemes.

Keywords:

• psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• India
• National Mental Health Program
• psychotherapy training

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who responded to our queries and gave us information, especially Ms. Micky Bhatia, Ms. Anoma Modek, Mr. Darshan Shah, Ms. Hanan Beevi, Mr. Somdev Mitra, Ms. Gagan Ahluwalia and Ms. Nupur Dhingra Paiva.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The MPhil programme in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which happens to be the only one offered in India, is being withheld temporarily, in keeping with the larger change in the education system that is being implemented in India. The future course of the programme remains unclear for now.

2. The Psychoanalytic seminars and supervision offered by Malika Verma at Tara Clinic and Dr Abdul Salam continue online.