Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose 9780190878375, 0190878371

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Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Title Pages Alf Hiltebeitel

(p.i) Freud’s India (p.ii) (p.iii) Freud’s India

(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted

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Title Pages by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hiltebeitel, Alf, author. Title: Freud’s India : Sigmund Freud and India’s first psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose / Alf Hiltebeitel. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018001328 | ISBN 9780190878375 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190878382 (updf) | ISBN 9780190878399 (epub) | ISBN 9780190878405 (online resource) Subjects: LCSH: Freud, Sigmund, 1856 –1939—Correspondence. | Bose, Girindrashekhar, –1953—Correspondence. | Psychoanalysts—Austria—Correspondence. | Psychoanalysts—India—Correspondence. | Psychology, Religious. | BISAC: RELIGION / Hinduism / History. | RELIGION / Psychology of Religion. | RELIGION / Philosophy. Classification: LCC BF109.F74 H55 2018 | DDC 150.19/520922— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001328 135798642 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

(p.xxiii) Freud’s India (p.xxiv)

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Figures

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.vii) Figures Alf Hiltebeitel

7.1 “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva.” Front and side views of the Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk 196 7.2 Iconography of Paravāsudeva 203 7.3 Paravāsudeva at Badami, Cave 3 205 7.4 Śrī Śeṣanārāyaṇa 207 7.5 Viṣṇu AnantaŚayana 208 7.6 Viṣṇu, seated, with two wives on a coiled Ananta. 211 7.7 Bāla Kṛṣṇa 215 7.8 Narasiṃha 216 8.1 “Long” Madhusūdana on south-facing wall of second-floor circumambulatory, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple 240 9.1 Reclining icon in middle-floor sanctum, with goddeses Śrī and Bhūmi 255 9.2 West-facing Vāsudeva vyūha, ground-floor sanctum, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple, Kanchipuram 256 9.3 Saṃkarṣaṇa vyūha, facing out from northern wall of ground-floor sanctum, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple 258 9.4 Ananta positioned like Saṃkarṣaṇa on north-facing wall of outer circumambulatory on ground floor, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple 260 9.5 Viṣṇu off his serpent couch but still on the ocean killing Madhu and Kaiṭabha on his lap 270 (p.viii)

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Preface

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.ix) Preface Alf Hiltebeitel

THE TITLE OF this book, coupling Freud with India, was decided upon after considering other titles. The subtitle has been a constant. The title is not meant to be coy; Freud did not make as much of India as he could have. It is meant to catch the eye of two chief groups of prospective readers: those interested in Freud and psychoanalysis, and those interested in India. That is a good-sized readership and hardly a new combination. I have taken some risks in presenting such breadth of material. The foremost risk involves readers who begin with an interest in Freud and psychoanalysis, but have little knowledge of India. These readers will be carried along through the book’s first three chapters that treat Freud’s correspondence with Bose and the next three that discuss Bose’s main challenges to Freud. Only the concluding three chapters cover the complex Indian material necessary to the book’s argument, but by then I hope to have made it accessible and intriguing. Resistant readers could read only the first six chapters, by which they would be replicating Freud’s own detours around Indian materials—but they can discard that option. The companion book, titled Freud’s Mahābhārata presents more Indian material as part of this same project. The latter makes the Indian and primarily GrecoMediterranean Goddess one of its three principal characters as a figure who links the two pioneer psychoanalysts. Freud’s Mahābhārata makes points about how both Freud and the Hindu epic treat mythologies that complement the discussions of Freud and Bose made in this book, and the book ends by proposing a new Freudian theory of the Mahābhārata.

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Preface I am less worried about readers interested in India, whom this book addresses throughout. Indian readers are known for their longstanding comfort with an adversarial Freud and with Freudian analysis as providing an inevitable angle on the study of Indian life and thought that (p.x) has more interest for them than the Indophilic Carl Jung.1 Readers about India cannot be surprised that the same angle has been exploited since the 1950s by many serious scholars both from South Asia and the West. The risks I take are more personal here—about Freud and Bose, and about myself. About Freud and Bose, I resist the hagiographic impulses that have shaped most writing about them, and I argue that their correspondence allows one to trace the ups and downs that put each of them, occasionally, in an unflattering light. About myself, I speak of risk because a book on Freud, India, and psychoanalysis these days invites a choice as to whether one talks personally about one’s life. If I join those who have done so,2 which I do with a few sidelights about religion, it is because I do not see the point in trying to hide the fact that thinking about my life and upbringing has been an engaging and ongoing part of this project. I take this risk, but only in the preface, so that readers can sometimes think between the lines of the main text about my personal input. Beginning and ending with the near present, I highlight thirteen vignettes in telegraphic form, some of which have an affinity with Freud’s life, as one will meet it in this book: 1. My mother Lucille Barnett Hiltebeitel passed away at age 101 on June 13, 2014. Freud’s mother died at 95. 2. I was my mother’s firstborn, as was Freud. Unlike Freud, I was also my father’s firstborn. I was born in a Catholic hospital in New York City early during World War II. During an air-raid alert, my mother was “given the baby” and told “you take care of it!” She “threw” me “under the bed.” 3. I had a Catholic nanny named Fanny, who was Irish, from ages two to four, before my family made its big move. Freud also had a Catholic nanny, who was Czech, up to his third year, but in reverse circumstances. Fanny was my nanny in New York City before we moved to Weston, Connecticut, in the country, whereas Freud at three moved from rural Freiberg to Leipzig and then a year later to Vienna. My earliest memory is of crossing a New York City street (I imagine (p.xi) it to have been 89th Street near Broadway) holding Fanny’s hand. Neither nanny made the big move. 4. My sister Jane, my only sibling, was born eleven days before my fourth birthday, for which my mother just made it home from the hospital. Freud had two brothers and five sisters, and thus many more sibling rivalries. By my reconstruction from family stories reinforced by some childhood memories, my rivalry with my sister derives from her hospital visit for a tonsillectomy when she was about two. From that time, she suffered fears Page 2 of 9

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Preface of being left alone, which left my mother feeling guilty that she had not stayed with Jane in the hospital. My mother quit her job in New York City to be able to be in Weston with Jane. My experience of this change, from long range and over many incidents, including when my second marriage began to unravel in the mid-eighties, is that my mother’s unending concerns for my sister had as their counterpart a determination that all must be alright with me. This loss of closeness with her is my distant analogue to whatever Freud experienced when and after his immediately younger brother Julius died at the age of eight months, before Freud was two. 5. When I was about ten or twelve, my Jewish mother took me twice on the holidays to the Catholic churches of my home towns—first to Westport’s on Easter and then, along with my sister, to Weston’s new church on Christmas Eve while it was being finished (there was hanging plastic sheeting for walls in the back where we sat). These are two of the few mysterious things she did with me. Freud reports that by age three, his nanny had carried him to all five Catholic churches in Freiberg.3 6. My Lutheran-by-birth father’s hypersensitive ears developed since childhood a hatred of Lutheran choral exuberance, which had to do with his preference for the visual arts and his life as a painter. He made stained-glass windows for the Rockefeller Chapel in Princeton, New Jersey, when he was in art school. I have panels of a Virgin Mary and a Joseph that he made. 7. He told me at the lunch table once when I was about fifteen, uncontradicted by my mother, “Son, I am not your father; I am your mother.” I had just gone to the kitchen for a second glass of milk, which he accused me of “swilling.” My mother replied, “Oh, leave him (p.xii) alone.” My father’s remark made a contradictory impression on me. I felt I had lucked out in having a nurturing, though somewhat nutty, father to compensate for my mother’s haughtiness. I took his remark to be about who wore the pants in the family, or about the bisexuality of both members of my parental unit. 8. In 1970, my uncle Alfred, after whom my mother had named me, died at eighty-two. According to my mother his last words, after a life of identifying as a Viennese expatriate Jew who escaped the holocaust, were “Save me, Jesus.” His mother was Catholic. 9. My father died in 1984 when I was forty-two, just as Freud was fortyone. Having dealt with Parkinson’s disease since about 1969, he was courageous about his loss of painting skills with his loss of hand coordination, and also about growing housebound and being unable to take walks in the woods. But exchanges with him grew more scarce and difficult. I was in Washington and came up to Weston to see his body and attend the cremation. Some months later, the family reunited to place his ashes in the outlet of a brook on a trail named after him in the Weston Page 3 of 9

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Preface Conservancy, at which I read a passage from his library by Henry David Thoreau about thrashing through underbrush. When I published my first book on the Draupadī cult in 1988, about the cult’s mythologies, I dedicated it “in memory of my father who taught us to see.” 10. My sister was killed in early 1996 when her car was hit from behind by a truck at a red light that rammed her into another truck ahead of her. She was returning home after seeing her Jungian therapist. I received the news that evening from her husband, who called me from Russia. My two sons, Adam and Simon, and I decided to drive the next day from Washington to Norwalk, Connecticut, to break the news to my mother. She was playing cards with friends when we arrived in the late afternoon. She said that when she saw us through the window, she knew we were bringing bad news. 11. Not long after Jane’s funeral, my mother decided to move to Washington, D.C., to live near me. For several years, she saw a therapist about my sister, but fired her when she fell asleep while my mother was talking. Thinking that my father would have wished it, I tried being a dutiful son, seeing her at least once a week, usually to take her out to dinner, and introducing her to friends, including girlfriends and my eventual third wife. Women usually liked her. But two events made me rethink my accommodation. In 2007, she was rushed to a hospital where two (p.xiii) weeks of tests with no exercise (despite my urgings to her doctor) found nothing wrong with her. Upon release, she had lost motor skills, could no longer use a walker, and was obliged to relocate from her chosen residence at a Hyatt. Physical therapy was a nonstarter and she became wheelchair-bound. Meanwhile, in 2006, I was told I had an essential tremor, which I knew would probably soon mean a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, which it did by 2008. Because my mother had suffered through my father’s Parkinson’s, and because I had learned to expect no sympathy from her, I decided not to tell her. Then after her hundredth birthday in January 2013, I began to see much less of her. I arranged her birthday party at my wife’s country place in Middleburg, Virginia, calling my mother’s few surviving relatives, and threw a catered party for twenty-eight guests. Just a week later, my daughter-in-law told me that my mother had told her and Simon that she was “surprised that Alf had done nothing for my hundredth birthday.” 12. My mother’s death in June 2014 was to me a surprise, since I had decided she would live to 104, and that we would have more time to grow alike in our senility, like Molloy and his mother in Samuel Beckett’s trilogy.4 I was in Colombia when I received the news that she was losing consciousness, and I decided not to go back. She was with Simon, who was overseeing her last shift from assisted living to hospice care. I urged him to follow up on his plans to come with his wife and two girls to Colombia to join me and my wife the next day, and leave her with Adam. Page 4 of 9

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Preface She died holding Adam’s hand soon after Simon and his family had gotten to Colombia. Through all this, I was prepared by Freud’s biography to recall that he did not mourn his mother’s death, felt no grief over it, and did not attend her funeral. Freud, too, had the fear that his mother, who died at ninety-five, would outlive him. More than this, I believe that my mother’s grip on things was not unlike that of Amalia Freud as Freud and her grandchildren knew her. Freud’s son Martin called her a “tornado,”5 and a granddaughter described her as “full of charm with strangers (p.xiv) but overweening, demanding, and tyrannical with her family” and “a most selfish old lady.”6 At her son’s seventieth birthday celebration to which Freud had discouraged her from coming, but at which she was nevertheless the first guest, she announced to the assembled party, ‘I am the mother.’ ”7 My father and sister had terms for my mother’s huffiness long before I did. My father called her an “injustice collector” to explain her skill in showing everyone else at fault whenever there was a family argument. In the late 1960s, my sister coined the name “war hostess” for her trait of commandeering our friends and other guests for after-dinner games and arguments, long before there was a component of senility to her behavior, such as Simon writes of: I recall how often (and I mean incessantly) she would tell me with great pride those last few years of her life about the time you’d been called off to Spain to deliver a series of lectures that would prepare Spain for war. It’s such a wonderfully strange idea. I picture you at a lectern, tens of thousands of Spanish soldiers standing at attention in neat cohorts that stretch to the horizon before you, the king and queen with all the generals with all their medals arrayed on chairs to your sides on the golden dais, nodding gravely as you explain, as Kṛṣṇa did to Arjuna, that they need to stop hesitating and fulfill their Kṣatriya duty. I was in Spain for a month in 2009 to lecture on the heroines of the Indian epics.8 Year after year, my mother would await the announcement of the MacArthur “genius awards,” sure that I must be a contestant. Worst of all for me, she felt entitled to be mean to whomever she felt like telling off, even after being told I had made peace with them, or with myself about them. 13. I have always had a predilection for goddesses that I don’t claim to understand, but which probably has something to do with the fact that I converted to Roman Catholicism during the writing of this book. (p.xv) The first chapter written for the whole study, about three dead mother stories in the Mahābhārata, is now chapter 3 of Freud’s Mahābhārata. But both books have been impacted by André Green’s article “The Dead Mother,” which is about an imago that “has been constituted in the child’s mind, following maternal depression, brutally transforming a living object, which was a source of Page 5 of 9

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Preface vitality for the child, into a different figure,” one who may eventually give the patient “the feeling that a malediction weighs upon him that there is no end to his dead mother’s dying.”9 Green sees Amalia Freud’s dealing with the death of Julius behind Freud’s variation on “the dead mother complex”10 But why go into all this? Old age is no picnic for anyone, and my mother’s foibles made me cringe only in her last years. I tell such stories after much thought and vacillation because I lived with them, and recalled many more like them, as this book took shape, and I feel that it is a fuller and more honest book thereby. I feel some survivor guilt,11 and I acknowledge that Freud only spoke positively about his mother. To paraphrase one of his well-known epigrams: biography is destiny. I started work on the project in the fall of 2012, and I soon began to announce the book in publications as “forthcoming,” with “Uncanny Domesticities” as part of the title, giving name to a trope that ran through early chapters as applied to Freud, Bose, and the Goddess. I kept that title until late 2015, when I scrapped it. I decided then to overhaul the whole book and retitle it, for a time settling on either “Viṣṇu on Freud’s Couch” or “Freud on Viṣṇu’s Couch”: titles that I eventually rejected because they were limited by their play on the older title, Vishnu on Freud’s Desk,12 and because they applied only to the third part of this volume. In the meantime, I had found Henri and Madeleine Vermorel’s 606-page Sigmund Freud et Romain Rolland: Correspondence 1923-36: de la sensation océanique au trouble du souvenir sur l’Acropole. The Vermorels’ book first caught my eye in August 2014, on a shelf for returned books at the Freud Museum library in London. I was immediately intrigued that the dates of the Freud–Rolland correspondence overlapped the time span of the Freud–Bose letters, and since I knew that the Freud–Rolland correspondence (p.xvi) touched on India, I thought there could be the potential to read the two exchanges for light they might shed on each other. I read the book over the 2014–15 winter holiday. I then took time out from Freud and company to write Nonviolence in the Mahābhārata: Śiva’s Summa on Ṛṣidharma and the Gleaners of Kurukṣetra.13 Having put the Freud–Bose book in the twilight for a while, once I returned to it, owing to what I had discovered in the Vermorels’ book, I decided in December 2015 to thoroughly rewrite the three chapters-which now intercalate the two correspondences—and to highlight some of the Vermorels’ fruitful findings elsewhere. Since readers will be making the Vermorels’ acquaintance in these early pages—most, I suspect, for the first time—I will say some words about them, and about what it means that a chance find looms so large in this book. (It was also at the Freud Archives, in its bookshop, that I found Janine Burke’s The Gods of Freud,14 which led me to the poet H. D., whose 1933–34 work with Freud is also introduced in chapter 3.)

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Preface It seems, as a rule, that writers on Freud in English know they should read about him in German, but very few read about him in French. The result is that, aside from Jacques Lacan and his followers, French scholarship on Freud and psychoanalysis tends to exist in the English-speaking world as an unvisited island.15 Yet the body of non-Lacanian collaborative work in French is distinctive and considerable, and from the 1950s through their 2013 publication, De la psychiatrie à la psychoanalyse,16 the Vermorels have been on its pulse as writers, readers, and respondents. As a recent interview of Henri Vermorel by Marie Roumanens says,17 the Vermorels began their careers as interns and then as doctors together in the 1950s, participating in the movement for a humane opening of psychiatric institutions in France after the Second World War. Members of the Psychoanalytic Societies of Paris and Lyon, each has a private psychoanalytic practice at (p.xvii) Chambéry, the capital of the Savoy Prefecture, and both have taught clinical psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of Savoy for over thirty years. Roumanens lists three reasons for carrying out her dialogue with Henri: that he began his work (with Madeleine, as he quickly points out) at a time when psychiatric hospitals included a farm where patients worked; that his (and their) work took part in a transformative movement that saw psychoanalysis begin to think about relations to the environment; and that he (with Madeleine) renewed the study of the origins of psychoanalysis by showing the influence of German Romanticism on Freud’s thought. It is the latter that they work into their book on Freud and Romain Rolland, as well as their 1995 book, Freud, Judéité, Lumières et Romantisme.18 The Vermorels offer a new interpretation of Freud’s lifelong yet, as they argue, deepening interests in religion, and they interpret the correspondence with Rolland about the “oceanic feeling” as impactful on Freud’s late-in-life interests in pre-Oedipal themes involving the mother. I will argue that this coincides with what Bose was challenging Freud to consider, which allows me to explore what Bose might have been able to contribute from an Indian perspective to Freud’s rethinking, had Freud been as encouraging of a give-and-take exchange with him about things Indian as he was with Rolland. Both the correspondence with Bose and that with Rolland ended as Freud was shifting his ground to turn, for his last sustained effort, to Moses and Monotheism.19 On the one hand, this last turn coincides with what Richard A. Bernstein (in Freud and the Heritage of Moses) and Jacques Derrida (in Archive Fever) have hit on in Freud’s softening on religious traditions (not on religion itself), whereby he relates them to a people’s collective traumas. On the other hand, it finally made both Rolland’s and Bose’s openings onto Hinduism seem antithetical to Freud’s driving interests. To my surprise, this book and its companion volume thus have a chance to say something new about Freud himself, not to mention about Freud and Bose, Judaism and Hinduism, images and their rejection, God and the Goddess, and

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Preface Moses and the Mahābhārata in the light of Freud’s analysis of religious traditions in terms of peoples’ collective traumas. (p.xviii) Notes:

(1.) See Kapila 2007, 127–34. (2.) I think of Sarah Caldwell 1999a, 1999b; Jeffrey Kripal 2000, 2001; David Gordon White 2003; and among those working on Buddhism, Gananath Obeyeekere 2012. (3.) Bernfeld 1951, 115, 128. (4.) Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1968). (5.) The comment follows Martin Freud’s (1958, 11) depiction of Amalia’s background from East Galicia on the Ukrainian-Polish border. “They . . . had little grace and no manners; and their women were not what we should call ‘ladies.’ But . . . they, alone of all minorities, stood up against the Nazis.” (6.) For other details and context, see Heller 1973, 335–39. (7.) All quotes are from Abraham 1982, 443. (8.) See Hiltebeitel 2016a,the essay I gave in Wulff 2016. (9.) Quotations from Green 1983, 142 and 153. (10.) Green 1983, 148–49, 158, 163, 168; see FM, ch. 2. (11.) Max Schur frequently uses this term for Freud’s response to Julius’s “sudden disappearance” (1972, 159–72, 240–41). (12.) Vaidyanathan and Kripal 1999. (13.) Hiltebeitel 2016. (14.) Burke 2006. (15.) Two exceptions prove the rule. Parsons read the Vermorels’ book after completing his dissertation on Freud and Rolland’s correspondence while turning it into a book (1999a). He cites theirs only where it confirms things he says, and ignores its originality. Armstrong (2001) then reviews both books favorably, overlooking Parsons’s deficiency. Armstrong’s review of the Vermorels’ book is thoughtful, but he overrides one of their most fruitful insights and replaces it with his own mediocre solution (see the end of chapter 3, this volume). (16.) Vermorel and Vermorel 2013. Page 8 of 9

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Preface (17.) In the electronic journal écopsychologie. http://eco-psychologie.com. (18.) H. Verrmorel, A. Clancier, and M. Vermorel [1992] 1995. (19.) See Schorske 1993.

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Acknowledgments

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.xix) Acknowledgments Alf Hiltebeitel

THIS VOLUME, FREUD’S INDIA, was for a long time conceived of as one with its companion volume, Freud’s Mahābhārata, down even to the time of its submission to Oxford University Press. It was the word-count maximum of another press that led to its split into two books. The second book could thus take shape independently—as I describe further in the preface and acknowledgments of Freud’s Mahābhārata, so that readers will have a clearer path to intelligibility in both books. Of those acknowledged here, none read the second volume separately; thus, the acknowledgments made here count for both volumes. I lead off by thanking this book’s most steady reader through its many changes and developments, from its earliest chapter to its completion: the psychoanalyst Dr. Christopher Keats, who offered many timely and valuable suggestions, as well as much encouragement. Toward the end, the project got a long-overdue full critical discussion by its two anonymous Oxford University Press readers, one of whom discarded his anonymity, Jeffrey Kripal, and the other whom I could recognize as Marshall Alcorn. Both had the unusual combination of psychoanalytic insight and experience of India that this project could really benefit from, and both made invaluable suggestions that I followed. Also, my friend Randy Kloetzli can be a curmudgeon on Freud, but that did not stop him from reading two drafts with care and insight, knowledge of Indology, and a sense of much-appreciated humor. I also thank Christiane Hartnack, who read a draft in 2016. Thanks go to Vasudha Narayanan for getting into the spirit of my search for answers to questions about Bose’s seventy-fifth birthday gift to Freud and for contributing her insights. Thanks also are due to Diane Jonte-Pace for an early note of encouragement.

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Acknowledgments I thank Bryony Davies at the Freud Museum in London for her help during my visits there in August 2014, and for sending me and giving permission to publish four images of the “Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk.” I thank (p.xx) Mark Baron and Elise Boisanté for giving me access to pertinent images in their collection, and for their permission to publish three of them as figures. Thanks are likewise due to Raoul Goff and to Parabola Books for permission to print two figures, and to Pandita Geary for helpfully making those arrangements. All five of those permissions concern images that appear in Gods in Print: Masterpieces of India’s Mythological Art. A Century of Sacred Art (2012) by Richard H. Davis, who was also encouraging and helpful. I also thank Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce five images from Dennis H. Hudson’s The Body of God: An Emperor’s Palace for Krishna in Eighth-Century Kanchipuram (2008). I thank Lewis D. Wyman, Reference Librarian at the Freud Archive at the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C., for his help with navigating the collection there. Thanks are due to my George Washington University Religion Department colleagues for supporting my pre-retirement two-year leave of absence that allowed me to write the two books, and to the GWU Committee on Research and University Facilitating Fund for the 2014 award that supported my summer research at the Freud Museum in London. Midway through the writing, before I read Henri and Madeleine Vermorel, and before I really knew what I would be doing with this project, I sent a draft to William “Hank” Abrashkin, who had asked to see what I had written. Hank is the younger brother of my oldest and best friend West, who died in 1996. His own Freud-resistant questions and off-the-cuff comments were helpful in envisioning a general current-day readership, and often were a reminder of things his Buddhist brother might have said. I thank my sons Simon and Adam for their help, encouragement, and timely consultations, and Simon moreover for being willing to put his own writing and editing skills to the potential task of being my literary executor, should Father Time put an end to my oversight of the two volumes. Through the five years of work on this project, my wife Elena Eder has been the real beacon, with her wonderful and supportive ways, carving out time and workstations for me to make my portable offices in Cali, Colombia; Washington, D.C.; and Middleburg, Virginia. Elena read many of my books on Freud while backing up my studies with her own library that includes the Standard Edition of Freud’s works translated by William Strachey and Ernest Jones’s three-volume biography of Freud. She had the prescience fifteen years ago to insist that I read Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents and Bruno Bettelheim’s Freud and Man’s Soul, neither of which I had finished until this project was underway. My love, debts, and thanks cannot be measured.

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Abbreviations

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.xxi) Abbreviations Alf Hiltebeitel

KNOWING THE FOLLOWING abbreviations for works cited and discussed in this book may be helpful to the reader. FM Freud’s Mahābhārata, the companion volume to this book BhG Bhagavad Gītā DM Devī-Māhātmyam Mbh Mahābhārata Up Upaniṣad (p.xxii)

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Introduction

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Introduction Beginnings of Tension and Drama in the Surviving Bose–Freud Correspondence Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords Chapter 1 compares Freud and Bose biographically: their childhoods, early psychoanalytic discoveries, marriages, residences, careers, founding of psychoanalytic movements in Europe and India, respectively, and later years. Freud’s writings on his own life are compared to Bose’s silence about his. The chapter opens discussion of Freud’s relation to his father Jacob and mother Amalia, and Freud’s screen memories about the death of his baby brother Julius when Freud was not yet two. It then goes into the first phase of their correspondence, which centers on a drawing of Freud made sight unseen by an Indian artist and forwarded by Bose, and a photograph of Freud sent by himself that Bose had requested. Keywords:   Jacob Freud, Amalia Freud, Julius Freud, Freiberg Moravia, Vienna, Hindu joint family, Parsibagan Lane, Calcutta, iconography

SIGMUND FREUD IS much better known than Girindrasekhar Bose, and has been the subject of many full-length biographies, whereas no one has written one about Bose. I suspect the main reason for the latter’s lack is the scarcity of details Bose left about himself—particularly that he sought to advance his career without leaving a record of self-promotion. Even adding what has been said in a few sketchy pages about him by others leaves the impression that a Bose biography would have to be filled in with life-and-times detail about the development of his career. This book will mention all the known details available from these sources, but only as they emerge from his correspondence with Page 1 of 20

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Introduction Freud. It is there that I will address the biographical asymmetry. And I will attempt to level the field simply by treating them as equal partners in their correspondence. It is important to state at the outset that both wrote to develop the science of psychoanalysis. We can best view Bose as an original psychoanalytic thinker who sought out Freud as a mentor and offered him an intelligent critique. Bose’s letters show him respecting Freud as the founder of a discipline in which he pursued both discipleship and local leadership in Calcutta. Differences emerged between them, but they shared a commitment to the psychoanalytic movement’s claims to being science. (p.2) True, we shall find that Bose had distinctive ideas about psychoanalysis that contained his own Indian and Hindu experiences. But he seems not to have advanced them as a colonial or anti-Western critique from the standpoint of a “secret self under colonialism,” as Ashis Nandy has taken him to have done, particularly in his Bengali writings. Amit Ranjan Basu, “after reading most of Bose’s Bengali writings,” says that “one finds Nandy’s essay limited in scope, and not adequately representative of the wide-ranging variety of Bose’s secret selves.”1 Basu adds, “Unlike the straight-jacketed nationalist projects which saw the colonial demon everywhere, the discipline of psychology provided a more flexible nuanced space for consent and contest. In this endeavor, no ‘Hindu psychoanalysis’ like the ‘Hindu alchemy’ was born.”2 Bose was also not looking for a “Hindu modal personality,” as were two of his British colleagues working in India, as well as many since his time who have taken up the question of “the Indian Oedipus” to profile a distinctive Hindu psychology. Nor did Bose develop a notion of a “split mother” (variants of this construct are good/bad mother; spousified/unspousified goddess; and breastgoddess/tooth-goddess) in discussing Indian childrearing or goddesses.3 I see nothing particularly Hindu or Indian about a “split mother”4—a formulation that owed a debt to Freud.5 I will also not pursue the idea of a Hindu or Indian modal personality based on an alternative Oedipus, since I agree with Robert P. Goldman,6 as would Bose, (p.3) that the Freudian Oedipal triangle is wellattested in India, even if Bose thought that Freud’s formulation of it needed rethinking. Both ideas have served to promote Indian exceptionalism. This chapter begins with features of Freud’s and Bose’s home lives that are roughly comparable. My inclination is to see a basis for sympathies between Bose and Freud. Pre-World War II Europe and late colonial India between 1922 and 1937 offer a period when both men knew that varied voices sought to link their own familiar enough Judaisms and Hinduisms not only with the origins of religion but also with attacks for their alleged backwardness, and with emerging

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Introduction nationalisms and essentialisms that neither signed on to.7 Both also felt the impact of hegemonic Christianities and insidious understandings of the Aryan.8 Based on Freud’s own writings, almost everyone who writes about Freud has something to say about his home life: natal, growing up, married, and aging. Each period has also been mined for things Freud was silent about, including scandals, but the evidence for the scandals is thin.9 In contrast, Bose maintained total silence about domestic matters, never writing about his own life as an object of analytic self-scrutiny. Madalon Sprengnether observes that for Freud’s first three years in Freiberg, Moravia, “we find a family structure that differs considerably from the one that characterized his subsequent years of development in Vienna.”10 Freud spent his earliest years quartered in the same single room as his parents, in which a younger brother (Julius, who died) and sister Anna were born. His two halfbrothers from his father’s first marriage, Emmanuel and Philipp, also lived close by, and Emmanuel’s children, John and Pauline, were Freud’s closest playmates. There was also Freud’s (p.4) Catholic nanny. Sprengnether characterizes the domestic arrangement in Freiberg as “what we would now call a ‘blended family,’ ”11 which is not a far cry from an Indian “joint family.” It contrasted to the Vienna household, which was more patriarchal and organized around the father, Jacob Freud. “In Vienna, [Sigmund] faced the inevitable Oedipus situation alone.”12 The Vermorels say that Vienna was a tough place for Jacob, who became inactive as opportunities ran out during an economic crisis, while the family lived on subsidies given to Freud’s mother, Amalia. They cite Ruth Abraham (Freud’s disciple Karl Abraham’s daughter), who suggests that Freud had resentments toward Jacob that were aggravated near the end of his failing life, and that the humiliations he felt toward him went back to a prior period of his life. Freud’s adolescent fantasies of identification with political leaders and prophets (Hannibal, Napoleon, Moses, etc.) reflect a tentative idealization that contrasted with the age of Jacob’s feebleness. Meanwhile Amalia, whom we met in this book’s preface, held her weekly Sunday and holiday gatherings, to which Sigmund would always come late. Abraham even concludes “that the Oedipal father is constructed largely from characteristics and experiences with Freud’s mother. These characteristics and experiences were originally projected by Freud onto his father, and later, by extension, onto the universal Oedipal father.”13 But Freud surely knew his father better than this implies. I suspect that Freud grew up with a grudging admiration of his father’s ability to keep his attractive young wife pregnant.14 No doubt Freud’s success owed much to the positive overinvestment that he says his mother made in him, but he seems to have been willing to sacrifice very little of his personal life to fit her ambitions for him. Freud (p.5) said that his relationship to his mother was behind what the Vermorels call his “conquistador persona.” As he says in “The ‘Uncanny,’ ” “When one has been the uncontested Page 3 of 20

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Introduction favorite of his mother, . . . his conquering sentiment, this assurance of success, . . . is not rare.”15 “The hero,” says Freud, “was probably afforded by the youngest son, the mother’s favorite, whom she had protected from paternal jealously, and who, in the era of the primal horde, had been the father’s successor. In the lying poetic fancies of prehistoric times the woman, who had been the prize of battle and the temptation to murder, was probably turned into the active seducer and instigator to the crime.”16 With this strained relationship in mind, it is possible to make a revealing, if uneven, comparison between Freud and Bose in the manner of handling their mothers’ deaths. Bose reportedly showed no affect at the time he learned of his mother’s death in 1929, which might remind one that Freud’s felt “no grief” (kein Trauer) when his mother died, and he did not mourn her. As Hartnack retells Bose’s story, “The Berlin sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who met him on a world tour in 1929, was surprised at how well he controlled his emotions”; Hirschfeld had seen Bose get some news urgently whispered into his ear while they were having a conversation, and learned some days later that the news had been of Bose’s mother’s death.17 Freud wrote about his mother’s death with relief: I will not disguise the fact that my reaction to this event has, because of special circumstances, been a curious one. Assuredly, there is no saying what effects such an experience may produce in deeper layers, but on the surface I can detect only two things: an increase in personal freedom, since it was always a terrifying thought that she might come to hear of my death; and secondly, the satisfaction that at last she has achieved the deliverance for which she had earned a right after such a long life. No grief otherwise, such as my ten years younger brother is painfully experiencing. I was not at the funeral; again Anna represented me.18 (p.6) Their differences in age at their mothers’ deaths are, of course, striking. When Bose’s mother died, he and she were about forty-two and seventy, respectively.19 Freud and his mother were seventy-five and ninety-five, respectively. Having written “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud knew what he was talking about when he told friends he did not mourn his mother’s passing, which occurred only six years before his own. All this we know through Freud’s own writings. With Bose, it is only through a virtual stranger’s report that we learn of his lack of emotion when his mother died. Like anyone else, Freud could never bring his pre-Oedipal years into clear focus. Says Max Schur of his first three years in Freiberg, “Being unable to reconstruct these events completely, he had to create maximum distance. And yet he did it with a maximum of ingenuity, which makes one regret not being able to follow him in this flight of imagination.”20 But as he “rationalized an ideal patriarchy, one he may have wished to experience as a child and which he strove to Page 4 of 20

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Introduction establish in the context of his own marriage and extended family,” so “casting his lot with that of Oedipus”21 must have something to do with a felt tension between the two household structures. That would not have pertained to Bose, who moved from a smaller joint-family household to a bigger one. Two additional similarities are striking. Both considered themselves sons of their fathers’ second marriages, in which their mothers were much younger than their fathers and the fathers’ first wives.22 And both were uprooted from rural towns and moved to an “imperial” city—Freud by age four, Bose by age five. In Freud’s case, we have his efforts at psychoanalytic self-analysis in those formative years; in Bose’s case, there’s nothing of the kind. A comparison of Freud’s and Bose’s adult residences also yields obvious similarities, as has been set forth by Hartnack, who knows Vienna intimately: Like the Berggasse in Vienna, Parsibagan Lane is not located in but near the heart of the city. The Alsergrund district in Vienna, (p.7) where Freud lived and worked, is close to the university, but not inside the “Ring” as it is called in Vienna, where all the buildings and offices of imperial importance were located. Likewise, the Bose residence is also close to Calcutta University, but not to the Maidan, and the former “saheb para.” Parsibagan, like the part of Vienna in which Freud lived, was a typical upper middle class residential area. In both cases the houses were new and imposing. Yet they were far from being the kind of urban palaces that the wealthy elite in Calcutta or Vienna could afford.23 Freud’s residence, to which he moved in 1881, was his own purchase after he married, and it remained his headquarters for the next forty-seven years, until his forced move to London.24 Bose moved into his home in 1905 at age five, after it was purchased by his father. Sharing it with his brothers, Bose lived there the rest of his life.25 Each residence became a place for both Freud and Bose to meet with the respective psychoanalytic societies they founded. Freud says the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was begun in 1902, with the impetus of Wilhelm Stekel, when “a number of younger physicians gathered around me with the declared intention of learning, practicing, and disseminating psychoanalysis.”26 It “met around a long table in his waiting room amidst cigar smoke and spittoons.”27 Margolis describes the scene in connection with Freud’s self-proclaimed “addiction.” When colleagues “arrived for their weekly meeting, they found all prepared for the hours of presentations and discussions that were to follow, not least the preparations for smoking.”28 In 1911, Stekel joined Alfred Adler’s break with Freud, but Freud reconstituted the group and kept it going.

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Introduction Bose hosted similar gatherings. Bose and the fifteen other founding members of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society met regularly in the residence of the Bose family.29 Bose also met there regularly with a group (p.8) of Bengali writers, who read and discussed their latest works in progress. The Bengali term for the gatherings was an adda, “a place for careless talk or the chat of intimate friends . . . for it was bound by no rules or regulations. Among its members could be counted many great names, artists, poets, journalists, historians, litterateurs, medical men, psychologists, and scientists. It was known as the Arbitrary Club,” and the Utkendra Samiti (“Eccentric Club”) in Bengali. “Along with tea, chess, and cards, members would hold discussion on all possible topics. . . . The atmosphere of the Club was at that time surcharged with the electric current of psychology and literature.”30 At these meetings psychoanalytic ideas were related to prevailing concepts and conditions in Bengali Hindu culture.31 Both Freud and Bose encouraged a combination of strictly psychoanalytic purposes and what Freud called “applied psychoanalysis,”32 discussing art and literature at their respective gatherings. For instance, Freud read a draft of his Leonardo da Vinci study at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.33 As we have seen, Bose and Freud differed in the ways their public and private— or outer and inner34—domains were recorded.35 According to Nandy, once the Bose family moved to Calcutta and began to keep “the social company of reformist Brahmos . . . the Brahmos now began to make fun of the orthodox ways of the Boses,” including their domestic pieties.36 The Bose family’s “orthodox ways” are said to have included their devotions to their Kāyastha caste’s “family divinities” (kuladevatās). Although I risk the charge of jāti-profiling to mention it, if (as seems altogether likely) Bose’s own “family deity” was the typical one for Kāyasthas, Citragupta, his kuladevatā could have provided him with a culturally iconic figure identified with nothing less than the writing technique Bose used for the transcription of his psychoanalytic cases. The Boses would have maintained a domestic cult for Citragupta, the patron deity and eponymous (p.9) ancestor of their scribal Kāyastha caste, and the record-keeping assistant of Yama, god of the dead. Like Citragupta, Kāyasthas “set the greatest store by their profession of writing and say that the son of a Kāyasth should be either literate or dead”; the term lekhak, or “writer” for a Kāyastha is defined “in Purāṇic literature” as one “who can express much thought in short and pithy sentences, who is able to understand the mind of one when one begins to speak.”37 Consider how Bose details his methods and purposes in transcribing his sessions with patients: It was the original custom for the analyst to note down in writing the ideas brought up by the patient by free-association. . . . I have however continued to use the old method because, in the first place, I can always adopt a mechanical attitude towards the writing, and bring about a partial dissociation of this particular activity from my main mental current. My mind is not much distracted by the act of taking down the patient’s Page 6 of 20

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Introduction thoughts. . . . My patients get habituated to the condition in a very short time and do not feel any distraction either. As they are generally asked to keep their eyes closed they do not even see me writing.38 As Bose seems to be aware, Freud began likewise by writing notations during sessions with patients, up through the time he corresponded with Wilhelm Fliess, to enable “the work of synthetic cogitation, which remains dependent on a written record.” Freud, however, alternated his notetaking with periods of “evenly suspended attention, without taking notes.”39 Bose extends his advocacy for the practice in terms of the analyst’s implicit contract with the patient: The psychologist takes a note of his own mental states and asks other individuals to do the same under certain specific settings which constitute the conditions of his observation and experiment and having collected as many data as he can [he] submits them to (p.10) statistical treatment and arrives at certain conclusions regarding the operations of the mind. . . . [H]is deductions have the same validity as the physicist.40 As concerns objectivity: “I can certainly claim a greater scientific objectivity and validity for my data.”41 As to theories that might arise from the records kept: “A reliable and permanent record of past cases is of great use in testing the correctness of a theory that may suggest itself at a later period.”42 As concerns length and summarization: “the actual records of [the case studies] . . . run into several hundred pages each.”43 And as confirmation of one of the corollaries to his theory of opposite wishes: “an analyst, who takes care to note down the freeassociations of his patients, is sure to come across the see-saw mechanism as I have described it.”44 Whether or not Bose reflected on Citragupta’s ledgers in defending his own in this way, or indeed on Citragupta assessing the acts of persons passing through death in Yama’s court, the comparison enables one to encapsulate Bose’s manner of recording the detailed and orderly case histories that show him prompting patients to fix circuits by making opposite-wish “adjustments.”45 Hartnack contrasts Freud’s metaphor for the psychoanalyst as “an archaeologist who digs into an individual instead of a cultural past” with Bose’s belief “that he worked like an engineer who fixes circuits that are not functioning properly.”46 But Citragupta also brings up the question of karma, raising questions about it that must be asked of Bose, as we shall do in chapter 4. Citragupta assesses the current state of the circuits of karma so that Yama, judge of the dead, can assign a suitable rebirth that might fulfill or punish leftover conscious wishes, presumably including formerly unconscious opposite ones that have become conscious over a terminated lifetime or await another life to come to fruition; or he may pronounce the cure: salvation. Bose is not talking about karma, but his theory of opposite wishes has what I will call (p.11) a “penumbra of karma” about it. The seesaw mechanism may remind one of Citragupta’s scale on which Page 7 of 20

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Introduction he weighs the good and bad karma of those who arrive before him.47 Bose even goes one-up on Citragupta, in that he brings unconscious opposite wishes directly into the adjustment or the cure in this life, not between this one and the next. I turn now to the first phase of the Bose–Freud letters. Their correspondence raises two main “dramatic” questions, even if scholarship to date has not formulated them. The first, to be explored in chapter 3, is, why Bose never complied with Freud’s repeated invitations to contribute an article on his theory of opposite wishes to one of the Freudian circle’s international psychoanalytic journals. The one article Bose did submit to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, on “The Duration of Coitus” (1937), relates his case studies to contemporary literature on sexology and the Kāmasūtra. It says nothing direct or theoretical about wishes, and it was certainly not what Freud asked for. The second question, to be discussed in chapters 7 and 9, is why Bose and his colleagues sent Freud an obscure image of Viṣṇu from distant Kerala, rather than a Bengali image, which would suggest a Goddess. But tension and drama are felt earlier in the correspondence than with these two questions, as even this introductory chapter will begin to show. My interpretation of the letters derives from reading between the lines and giving careful attention to dates, to Freud’s contemporary exchanges with others, and to the two authors’ concurrent scientific writings. No such dynamic is imagined in other accounts of either Bose’s or Freud’s careers, and readers should make what he or she will of my invasions of the men’s privacy. Bose’s widow Indrumati Bose gave the Bose–Freud letters to the Freud Archives in London, at Anna Freud’s request in 1963.48 The correspondence makes several references to lost letters; if found, the letters might alter the drama—but very little, I will argue. The remaining letters reflect three clear phases: 1. Twelve getting-to-know-you letters (December 1920–December 1923), examined in this chapter. These letters center on Bose’s requests for a photograph of Freud. 2. Ten letters exchanged more than six years later (January 1929– February 1933), examined in chapter 2. These show a surge of increasing (p.12) collegiality, even bonhomie, until they end, revealing strains in the relationship. 3. A 1933 New Year’s letter from Freud that is answered with Bose’s last letter. Freud closes out the correspondence on November 27, 1937, with his only letter in German, which is followed by a “friendly letter” in English from Anna Freud. The first two phases both begin with Bose’s sending Freud his current writings on psychoanalysis. In each case, Freud responded with appreciation but also

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Introduction with consistent reservation. All three phases end abruptly, and probably on both sides but more clearly on Freud’s, with signs of withdrawal. Rather than reproducing the Bose–Freud letters in full, summaries will suffice for the purposes of this book.49 I will do the same in the next two chapters both with their letters and with the Freud—Romain Rolland correspondence that was mentioned in the Preface. When I quote passages in discussions, to avoid repetition I sometimes shorten the summary by marking the segments omitted with an asterisk, followed by an ellipsis (*. . . ). Where this is done, it means the asterisked passage will get a later airing and discussion. It should be mentioned that Freud’s letters to Bose are mostly short and that he never exhibits in these letters the literary flair that has been noted in much of his other correspondence. Presumably, feeling restricted to the English language has something to do with this nonexpansiveness, but Bose’s own brevity also sets the tone. Bose likewise developed a literary side, becoming a novelist and children’s fiction writer in Bengali. The opening phase of twelve letters is interesting for its air of tentativeness, as both authors feel each other out. Phase 1 1. Bose to Freud December 1920 The initial note accompanies Bose’s dissertation, “The Concept of Repression,” and requests Freud’s “opinion and suggestions about my work.” Bose says, “Along with my friends and relations I have been a warm admirer of your theories and science, and it might (p.13) interest you to learn that your name has been a household word in our family for the past decade.” 2. Freud to Bose May 29, 1921 Acknowledging receipt of “your book,” Freud writes that he is “glad to testify [as to] the correctness of the principal views and the good sense appearing in it,” to which he adds: “It is interesting that theoretical reasoning and deduction play so great a part in your demonstration of the matter which with us is rather treated empirically.” Freud registers “surprise . . . that Psycho-analysis should have met with so much interest in your far country.” He ends, “P.S. I shall always be glad of more of your news.” 3. Bose to Freud

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Introduction [Undated] Bose asks for details on the price and publisher of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and he writes, “I hope you will pardon my liberty if I ask you to send a photograph of yours. Myself, my relations and friends and a wide circle of admirers have been eager for it. Such a gift from your hands would have valuable associants [sic].” He asks on behalf of his book’s agent whether Freud could write “an expression of opinion” for its publication, and whether the book “has got any chance of success in Austria and Germany”; and what periodicals it might be advertised in. Bose is “sorry to have troubled you but my ignorance about Austria and Germany is my excuse.” 4. Freud to Bose August 3, 1921 Freud writes a postcard while “away in the mountains and likely not to return until October 1,” after which he will send the blurb for “The Concept of Repression” and the photo. He will also see to it that contact information on the two journals, including the English-language Journal of Psychoanalysis, is sent from the publisher. 5. Bose to Freud November 24, 1921 Having thought to wait until Freud returns to Vienna from his holidays, Bose repeats his two requests and thanks him for the (p.14) information about the Journal of Psychoanalysis; “I have now been receiving the publication regularly and I like it very much.” He mentions his efforts through Ernest Jones “to have an Indian Psychoanalytical Association at Calcutta affiliated to the International Association,” and hopes to send Freud soon a copy of the Indian Association’s draft rules and regulations. He also sends a paper, the first half of which he has written, on “Mental Pathology,” one of four “practical papers” for M.A. and M.Sc. students of Calcutta University. He concludes, “Psycho-analysis is daily gaining popularity here and even the lay periodicals and dailies in vernacular are discussing the subject now.” 6. Bose to Freud January 26, 1922 “Most likely you have received my last latter to which I am expecting a reply.” Bose adds, “we have been able to start a Psycho-analytical Society in Calcutta” while having applied for international affiliation, and sends the Page 10 of 20

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Introduction Proceedings of the inaugural meeting, welcoming Freud’s suggestions. He adds, “A friend of mine, Mr. J. Sen—a celebrated Indian artist and an ardent admirer of yours—has drawn from imagination a pencil sketch which he thinks ‘you ought to look like.’ ” Bose sends Freud the original, “keeping a copy for myself which I would like to compare with your photo when it arrives. . . . He has not the slightest information about your features.” Bose asks, “Will it be possible for you to come out to India for a few weeks and deliver a course of lecture[s] in the Calcutta University? If so, I shall be glad to know about your terms so that I might place them before the proper authorities.” 7. Freud to Bose February 20, 1922 “At last I can send you the photograph you wished for—it will come to you from Hamburg—and write the few lines which you ask on behalf of your agent.” He invites Bose “to change my expressions so as to suit your purpose” since “my English is very deficient.” Freud’s blurb reads, “It was a great and pleasant surprise that the first book on a psychoanalytic subject which came to us from that part of the world (India) should display so good a knowledge of psychoanalysis so deep an insight into its difficulties and so much of deep-going original thought. Dr. Bose has singled out the concept of repression (p.15) for his inquiry and in treating this theoretical matter has provided us with precious suggestions and intense motives for further study. Dr. Bose is aiming at a philosophical evolution and elaboration of our crude practical concepts and I can only wish, Psychoanalysis should soon reach up to the level, to which he strives to raise it.” Freud has heard about Bose’s founding of the Psychoanalytic Association of Calcutta and sends his congratulations, adding, “May we meet one day not too far off, as I am rather old (66 years).” 8. Freud to Bose March 1, 1922 [This is apparently the postcard mentioned by Bose in his undated reply. Freud begins answering Bose’s letter 6; their two last letters had crossed.] “The imaginative portrait you sent me is very nice indeed, far too nice for the subject. You will soon have occasion to confront it with the photo and see that the artist did not take into account certain racial characters.” . . . P.S., “I am too old to come over to India and very busy here. Try it the other way around and come to Europe.” 9. Bose to Freud Page 11 of 20

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Introduction [Undated] Bose thanks Freud for a missing postcard of January 1, 1922, for “the very kind opinion you have given on my book,” and for the photo: “Your portrait has been very acceptable to a wide circle of friends.” As regards Bose coming to Europe, “I must confess that it would give me the greatest pleasure*. . . .” 10. Freud to Bose October 27, 1922 Freud sends congratulations “on the reception of your society as one of the groups in the [International Psychoanalytic] Association which occurred at the Berlin Congress a month ago. . . . Now, as I am Editor of the German Zeitschrift für Psychoanalysis as well as of the English Journal of Psychoanalysis I beg you to consent that your name may be printed on the cover of both journals as the leader and representative of the Indian group,” as is done with the presidents of other groups. Freud concludes with his “hope to find soon some of your contributions in our journal.” (p. 16) 11. Bose to Freud November 13, 1922 Bose thanks Freud for his “very kind letter” (number 10). He says that Ernest Jones had asked him “to act as associate editor for India” for both journals, which he says, “I shall try my best to do. . . . I may be able to get the help of German knowing friends here. I hope to send you some contributions for the Journal in the near future. Wishing you a [crossed out: “happy”]50 merry Christmas and a happy New Year and many many returns of the same.” 12. Freud to Bose December 28, 1923 “Dear Professor Bose, A happy New Year to you and as much success in your work as you deserve. Yours most sincerely, Freud.” My first comments in this chapter go to the correspondence’s opening, and my last to phase 1’s closing. Accompanying Bose’s initial undated letter of December 1920, Bose first sent his doctoral dissertation, “The Concept of Repression,” and asked for Freud’s “opinion and suggestions,” and soon thereafter for an endorsement of it. A “short introduction” by Freud now graces my own edition.51 Already, Freud expresses a reservation about Bose’s Page 12 of 20

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Introduction dissertation: “It is interesting that theoretical reasoning and deduction play so great a part in your demonstration of the matter which with us is rather treated empirically.” That he is being critical appears unmistakably from the ensuing comment that he trusts the translations “we are preparing here will slowly improve the situation.” The critique is consonant with other comments Freud will make in later phases of their correspondence. Those familiar with “Freud’s dismissal of philosophy”52 will also appreciate the ironic tone of the concluding remark in his endorsement of Bose’s dissertation: “Dr. Bose is aiming at a philosophical evolution and elaboration of our crude practical concepts and I can only wish, Psychoanalysis should soon reach up to the level, to which he strives (p.17) to raise it.” Freud had for some years ceased to define “the mind-body problem which preoccupied both Freud and Fliess” as “my original goal of philosophy.”53 As we shall see in chapter 4, that problem lies at the heart of the philosophical program that Bose envisions for psychoanalysis. A second detail worth noting is the imbalance one sees in the way that invitations to travel are extended and received. Freud could barely conceive of going to India when Bose invited him in 1922, the year before Freud’s first cancer operation curbed any thoughts of foreign travels. After the operation, Freud ventured a difficult but rewarding trip to Rome with Anna, and then did not travel after 1924, for several years.54 Bose made a formal invitation: “Will it be possible for you to come out to India for a few weeks and deliver a course of lecture[s] in the Calcutta University? If so, I shall be glad to know about your terms so that I might place them before the proper authorities.” But Freud brushed it aside in a P.S. on a postcard: “I am too old to come over to India and very busy here. Try it the other way around and come to Europe.” It is made to look like an afterthought, with nothing corresponding to the niceties of Bose’s invitation. Bose then entertains the idea of coming to Europe: “I must confess that it would give me the greatest pleasure to see you and travel with that end in view. Probably time will come for such an opportunity.”55 But it never did, and Freud never invited Bose again. Freud was sixty-four years old, and we may chalk this up to what Hartnack calls “the missed chances” of their correspondence: Confronted with the challenge to explore the “dark” continents of their time—the unconscious, women, and the non-Western world—Freud focused on the first, admitted his difficulty in working on women, and remained disinterested in an intercultural exchange that went beyond confirmation of his own expansionist strivings. . . . He thus missed the chance to learn from colleagues abroad who were sympathetic to his ideas, and who could have contributed to clarifying the “dark aspects” in his own theory.56 (p.18) The letters portray Freud and Bose as stay-at-homes, although this would have meant different things for each of them. Freud wrote often of his love of adventure, but he limited it to rigorous tours of European and Page 13 of 20

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Introduction Mediterranean lands made familiar through his studies, language competence, and dreams.57 An early train episode recalls what Schur calls Freud’s “mild ‘train phobia,’ ” to which Freud attributes momentous importance.58 He made a total ordeal of his one ocean trip to America.59 Bose, on the other hand, is recalled for fastidiously maintaining a controlled environment still closer to home. One man recalls going twice on successive days, “armed with a stopwatch, from Bose’s home to the Howrah railway station . . . once without and once with luggage, as a rehearsal for Bose’s planned train journey the following day”; another remembers Bose “once saying that, for his holidays at Deogarh in Bihar, he pre-calculated all possible expenses, including that of the wear and tear of his car tyres.”60 Although he may have traveled to other cities in India for conferences, there seems to be no record of Bose traveling farther than from Calcutta to Bihar, from which his family hailed. The next matter to take up is Bose’s request for a Freud photograph. Bose twice asked for one,61 and in the meantime sent him a portrait by an Indian artist who drew Freud sight unseen. The photo and sketch may be said to establish an iconic presence of Freud for Bose and for “a wide circle of admirers” and “friends.” Seeing the sketch, the “amused Freud . . . wrote to Lou AndreasSalomé: ‘Naturally he makes me look the complete Englishman.’ ”62 When Freud finally sent Bose the photo, he commented, “You will soon have occasion to confront it with the photo and see that the artist did not take into account certain racial characters”63—that is, “racial characteristics.” Neither account squares with Hartnack’s report of Anna Freud’s recollection about the portrait: that Freud “was glad to look like an Englishman, and not Jewish”64 (p.19) Finally, we come prepared to address the curious ending to phase 1. On the face of it, this first phase ended quite trivially. After Freud told Bose he would be able to see “racial character[istics]” in the photo he had sent him, Bose signed his next letter, “Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year and many happy returns of the same. Yours very sincerely, G. Bose.” Freud’s brief reply three days after that holiday, but a full year later, was, “A Happy New Year to you and as much success in your work as you deserve. Yours most sincerely, Freud.”65 And that was the totality of Freud’s greeting. It is hard to imagine Freud getting frosty over “Christmas” (he himself mentioned Christmas, Easter, and other Christian holidays frequently in letters sent during his courtship66 and in letters to European colleagues67). But his surviving correspondence with Bose breaks off here for over six years. Why would Freud risk such an outcome with a potentially valuable and well-meaning colleague? One cannot make out sufficient reason for Freud to have taken umbrage at Bose’s wishing many Merry Christmases to a man with self-pronounced Jewish “character[istics],” nor can we assume that Bose, at least at this point, was airing an “opposite wish,” conscious or otherwise, or that Freud might have suspected such a wish. The remark on Bose’s part looks foolish but totally innocent. In fact, the “happy” he crossed out before the “merry” suggests some Page 14 of 20

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Introduction naïvité: Did Bose almost forget the conventional Christmas greeting, or did he intend at first to wish only a happy New Year and toss Christmas in for good measure? His November 15 letter would have reached Freud in time to cover both holidays. Whatever Freud made of it, he left himself a year to think it over. Freud’s response, however, reads like a rude joke, one harbored over a year, and probably privately, for who would he impress by telling it? Bose’s subsequent silence for over six years strongly suggests that he understood Freud’s bad humor. He never wrote back about Freud’s sign-off. But by the time he wrote Freud again in 1929, he had used his (p.20) time productively, and he chose to make a fresh beginning to their exchange by sending Freud thirteen of his recent articles. Freud had a no-nonsense stance of not suffering fools gladly, and not that Bose was one, Freud had a reputation for being on the watch for them. Some quotations will bear this out: Charcot was the renaissance man Freud desired to be, “like Goethe, Montaigne . . . men who radiate an interest in everything, with a ‘gift for observation and ellipsis’ and a loathing of ‘banalities and the commonplace.’ ”68 No, this is not a good grey old man mellowed by the years, but an inexorable scrutinizer, a rigorous examiner, who will neither try to deceive nor allow himself to be deceived.69 Not to make further excuses for either of them, I think we can attribute Freud’s 1923 letter to a bad humor of this sort. Looking ahead to chapter 2, we must anticipate that Freud and Bose will find their way out of this current impasse. Carrying forward a question raised in this chapter, which allowed that missing letters might alter my picture of tensions and drama, it is worth putting to rest any likelihood that missing letters could have changed much. The only two instances where the extant correspondence definitely alludes to missing letters occur at the beginning of phase 2 and toward the end, in phase 3. In each case, they follow a hiatus of several uncomfortable years begun after different kinds of falling out had occurred—the first, as noted, looking rather trivial. Each of these two missing letters seems to have been sent by Bose using the pretext of asking for Freud’s view of a paper by an Indian colleague, perhaps at the latter’s request. As letters 13 and 14 will suggest, Bose must have launched phase 2 with a missing letter of that kind, sending Freud a study by his colleague Ranjan Haldar of Tagore’s poetry. In this case, he also mentioned some work of his own that he would like to send to Freud. As we shall see in phase 3, Freud will also allude to one or two missing letters from Bose centered on a reference to Bose’s administrative (p.21) conference activities in Calcutta—and on the face of it nothing more. This time, Bose’s letter was Page 15 of 20

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Introduction apparently occasioned by a paper he then sent to Freud by another of his colleagues, S. C. Mitra. A possible missing letter, at most a brief cover letter, will also be alluded to by Freud in letter 23, where Freud mentions receiving an article from Bose about which Bose asked for Freud’s opinion. Freud probably anticipates receiving this article from Bose in letter 17. We can imagine simple enough reasons for Bose not having kept copies of these two or three cover letters. More important, as one might expect, he seems to have saved all of Freud’s other letters, including the very last one, in German, which he never directly answered. In short, the tensions and drama I ascribe would not be affected by anything in missing letters such as these. (p.22) Notes:

(1.) See Nandy 1996; Basu 1999, 40. (2.) Basu 1999, 49. On “the ‘Hindu alchemy,’ ” see White 1998, 55, 104–106, and 372n22, on the discredited ideas of Profulla Nath Ray, who in 1903 wrote of rasaśāstra (Indian alchemy) as “iatrochemistry” (a term going back to Paracelsus), and claimed its origins went back to Buddhist siddhas who converted to Hinduism to avoid Muslim persecution. Kapila (2007) also finds Nandy “misleading,” making the same point: “It is significant that Indian psychoanalysis and its high culture of difference did not—like other ‘national sciences’ such as chemistry—call for a ‘Hindu psychology’ ” (138). (3.) See Nandy 1996, 351 and 355, on the “Hindu modal personality”; 359–60, on the “split mother,” citing numerous authors from 1923 to 1988, including his own Nandy 1980 He attributes this “concern with the split mother” to Bose, crediting him with a “particularly resilient” key to interpreting the Indian Goddess. Nandy does not document Bose’s alleged usage. Nor does he provide an adjacent reference for Sudhir Kakar’s attribution that the “split mother” is “the ‘hegemonic myth’ of the Indian culture” (Nandy 1996, 359). (4.) Cf. Garcès 2008, 4, 88–89, 151–52, 162–63, 192, 205–20, on Eve, Mary, and marianismo in Latin American culture. (5.) See Freud 1953–74, 11:165–75; Sprengnether 1990, 40; cf. 37, 220, 234. (6.) See Goldman 1978. (7.) See Harding 2009, 9: “Bose’s writing contained nothing in the way of a sustained political commentary.” Bose was evidently sympathetic with Gandhi’s Quit India Movement but reticent to join it (Hartnack 1999, 97). Cf. Loewenberg 1996, 25–27, on Freud’s antipathy toward the construction of a religious national mythology, evidenced in his politely rejecting a 1929 invitation to support a right of access for Jews to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

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Introduction (8.) On Jung’s view of Christian and Aryan psychic structures, see FM, ch. 1. (9.) There are uncertainties over who knew about his father Jacob’s second wife, Rebekah, and whether his mother, Amalia, had an affair with one of Jacob’s two sons from his first marriage, leaving the possibility that Jacob was not Julius’s or Sigmund’s father (see Sprengnether 1990, favoring this idea); and during his marriage that Freud had an affair with his sister-in-law Minna Bernays (on which Jung was certain; see Kerr 1993, Swales 1982, and again Sprengnether 1990). (10.) On these contrasting periods, concentrating on Freud from ages three to ten, see also Bernfeld 1951. (11.) Sprengnether 1990, 13–14. (12.) Bernfeld 1951, 125. (13.) Abraham 1982, 441. (14.) Robert Holt (1992, 12) says, Freud’s parents were remarkably dissimilar in a number of ways. The mother seems to have been a stronger and more active person than the father was. But are those not stereotypically masculine characteristics? As a matter of fact, in virtually every way that Jacob and Amalie’s personalities contrasted, she had more of the “manly” qualities such as competence, dominant masterfulness, and aspects of hostile aggressiveness, while he excelled in the “ladylike” virtues of quiet, gentleness, kindness, peaceableness, and graceful acceptance of the inevitable. Holt goes on to say that Amalia “never invaded masculine turf by earning money when he could not. He wore the pants” (12). (15.) Freud 1953–74, 22:133; see Sprengnether 1990, 165; Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 491. (16.) Freud 1953–74, 18:136. (17.) Hartnack 1999, 97. (18.) Freud letter to Ernest Jones; see Schur 1972, 424; Freud makes the same point in a letter to Sándor Ferenczi; see Margolis 1996, 145. (19.) Bose’s year of birth is uncertain. (20.) Schur 1972, 475, critiquing Freud’s “stubborn” ideas about phylogeny, which I discuss in FM, ch. 1. See also Grubich-Simitis 1987.

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Introduction (21.) Sprengnether 1900, x (I have reversed the two quotes, which make one sentence). (22.) “Considered themselves,” since before Freud’s mother, his father apparently had had a second wife, of whom Freud seems unaware. (23.) Hartnack 1999, 106. (24.) Gay [1988] 2006, 74. (25.) Hartnack 1999, 95. (26.) Gay [1988] 2006, 173, citing Freud 1953–74, 14:25; see Gay [1988] 2006, 173–79, on the Society’s early history. (27.) Kerr 1993, 353. (28.) Margolis 1996, 101–102. (29.) Hartnack 1999, 2, 95. (30.) Kapila 2007, 128 and 147n25, sourcing her gloss on adda, and citing Hartnack 1999, 87. (31.) Hartnack 1999, 95–96. (32.) As the Vermorels (1993, 560–66) say, “Applied Psychoanalysis” is Freud’s term, in which he puts literature and art to the purpose of psychoanalytic construction, not the other way around. (33.) Gay [1988] 2006, 274. (34.) Kapila 2007. (35.) See the recollections of Bose assembled in Nandy 1996. (36.) Nandy 1995, 89; Nandy 1996, 347; cf. Hartnack 2001, 94. (37.) Russell and Hīra Lāl [1916] 1969, 3:422. Their chapter on Kāyasthas (3:404–22) summarizes Gazetteer literature on the caste over north India, with accounts of their service to Muslim and British rulers and attainment of high social status in Bengal as “pure Śūdras” with varied ties to Brahmins. A son of Brahmā (405), Citragupta is honored as the Kāyasthas’ “divine ancestor” at weddings, Holi, and Diwāli (421). (38.) Bose 1933, 86–87. (39.) See Grubich-Simitis 1996, 79.

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Introduction (40.) Bose 1933, 42. (41.) Bose 1933, 87. (42.) Bose 1933, 90. (43.) Bose 1933, 90. (44.) Bose 1933, 103. (45.) See chapters 4 and 6, this volume. (46.) Hartnack 2001, 128 and note 15, citing Bose 1952a, 10. (47.) See the oleograph on the cover and frontispiece of Hiltebeitel 2010. (48.) Indian Psychoanalytic Society [1964] 1999, preface (henceforth IPS). (49.) For Bose and Freud, see IPS [1964] 1999; and Ramana 1964. (50.) Bose’s deletion of “happy” is visible in the handwritten original on microfilm, digitalized in the Library of Congress’s Freud Archive. (51.) See Blowers 2006. (52.) Armstrong 2005, 212; see Freud’s dismissive words about philosophy in Freud 1953–1974, 22:160–61, cited in Schur 1972, 437. (53.) Schur 1972, 97n3, 93. (54.) Schur 1972, 361. (55.) See asterisk in letter 9. (56.) Hartnack 1999, 101, my italics. (57.) On Freud’s vacation travels and hikes in the decade up to 1900, see Jones 1953–57, 1:332–37. On his annual summer trips up to 1904 with his brother Alexander, see Freud 1953–74, 22:239–40. (58.) Schur 1972, 181. (59.) Kerr 1993, 235–68; fainting, etc. (60.) For these anecdotes, see Nandy 1996, 360–61. (61.) IPS [1964] 1999, 3, 5. (62.) Hartnack 2001, 139 and 160n44. (63.) IPS [1964] 1999, 7, 8. Page 19 of 20

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Introduction (64.) Hartnack 2001, 197 and 199n7. (65.) IPS [1964] 1999, 10 (December 28, 1912). (66.) Jones mentions Freud’s dream to “one day be able to give [his fiancée Martha Bernays] a golden snake bangle” until “at Christmas 1885 . . . he managed to procure her a silver one in Hamburg” (Freud 1953–57, 1:156–57). Freud chose Easter Sunday 1886 for the press announcement of his new medical practice (1:143). (67.) From my rough count while reading Schur on Freud’s European correspondence, Freud mentions Christian holidays at least nine times, including Christmas to Fliess (Schur 1972, 212); and Easter to Jung (230). Fliess sent Freud a Christmas present in 1898 (Jones 1953–57, 1: 292, cf. 118, 314). (68.) Burke 2006, 86 and note 52, quoting a book on Charcot. (69.) Stephan Zweig 1973, 93, on Freud. Cf. Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 11–12, citing Joan Riviere on Freud: “on percevait . . . son horreur des préambules et des salamalecs. . . . Je n’oserais pretender qu’il supportât de bon coeur les imbéciles.”

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence Light Shed on Its First Two Phases, from Freud’s 1923–37 Correspondence with Romain Rolland, and a Missed Chance to Compare Views on the Pre-Oedipal Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Chapter 2 compares the second phase of the Bose–Freud correspondence with the first two periods of Freud’s correspondence with Romain Rolland. Freud’s preference for Oedipal insights is explored along with his slow-to-emerge interest in the pre-Oedipal, as discussed by Harold Blum and Madalon Sprengnether. Both Bose and Rolland introduced pre-Oedipal themes to Freud, Bose in his letters and writings and Rolland in the “oceanic feeling” he described to Freud, which Freud acknowledged in Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud also explored the pre-Oedipal before this in his study of Leonardo da Vinci, as discussed by Ilse Barande. The chapter ends with an insight from Henri and Madeleine Vermorel about Freud’s letter to Rolland, “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis,” that opens up Freud’s earliest screen memory about the death of his brother Julius. Keywords:   Oedipal, pre-Oedipal, Romain Rolland, oceanic feeling, Leonardo da Vinci, Civilization and Its Discontents, “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, ” Henri and Madeleine Vermorel

IN 1923, DURING which he took nearly all of the year to answer Bose’s “Merry Christmas” from 1922, Freud had his first operation for oral cancer in April. Earlier that year, he struck up a different kind of correspondence with Romain Rolland, whom Freud courted. Rolland had a friend; and on February 9, Freud wrote that friend’s son, the scientist and aesthetician Edouard Monod-Hertzen, Page 1 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence and asked him to send Rolland “a word of respect from an unknown admirer.” Rolland quickly answered on February 22. They would exchange twenty letters between 1923 and 1937: seven from Rolland, eleven from Freud, and with two missing. William Parsons divides their correspondence into three periods and I will do the same, using his term “periods” to parallel the “phases” of the Bose– Freud exchange. To allow Rolland and Freud to complete their back-and-forth about the “oceanic feeling” in period 2, I include more letters than Parsons does from that period and fewer in period 3.1 It would take a few years for the Freud–Rolland correspondence to become pertinent to the Freud–Bose exchange. This occurred when Rolland became a source of information about India. Rolland does this (p.24) in period 1, with his book on Mahatma Gandhi,2 referred to by Freud in letter 6. Rolland will hit full stride on India in period 2 with his books on Swamis Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and in his letters about the oceanic feeling. I therefore skip over much in the period 1 letters. Again, I provide only the condensations of these letters, with asterisks at some ellipses indicating passages to be quoted in the discussion. Period 1 1. Freud to Rolland February 9, 1923 Freud’s letter via Edouard Monod-Hertzen. 2. Rolland to Freud February 22, 1923 “Very touched” by Freud’s “forwarded letter,” Rolland says: “Allow me to take this opportunity to tell you that your name is now among the most illustrious in France. I was among the first Frenchmen to know you and to read your work. About twenty years ago . . . I found The Interpretation of Dreams in a Zurich bookstore, and I was fascinated by its vast subliminal visions which articulated several of my intuitions. You were the Christopher Columbus of a new continent of the spirit. . . . Your letter reveals a great melancholy of today’s miseries. If it is sad to be, as you are, in a country that has been ravaged by war, it is no less sad, believe me, to be, as I am, in a victorious country and to feel disconnected from it: for I have always preferred to be among those who suffer rather than among those who cause suffering. Time, alas! (and the lunacy of people), takes it upon itself to render everything equal. . . . But humanity has a hard life, and I am convinced that from these convulsions the spirit will renew itself.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence It is a heavy price to pay for renewal. But you know that nature is not economical and it is pitiless.” 3. Freud to Rolland March 4, 1923 “That I have been allowed to exchange a greeting with you will remain a happy memory to the end of my days. Because for us your (p.25) name has been associated with the most precious of beautiful illusions, that of love extended to all mankind* . . . .” 4. Rolland to Freud [Undated] Rolland sent Freud his novel Lululi, after Freud’s March 4 letter, dedicating it “To Freud the Destroyer of Illusions.”3 5. Freud to Rolland March 12. 1923 “Thank you very much for the small book. I of course have been long familiar with its terrible beauty. I find the subtle irony of your dedication well deserved since I had completely forgotten Liluli when I wrote that silly passage in question in my letter, and obviously one ought not to do that. Across all boundaries and bridges, I would like to press your hand.” 6. Freud to Rolland June 15, 1924 “Mahatma Gandhi will accompany me on my vacation, which will begin shortly. When I am alone in my study, I often think of the hour that you gave me and my daughter, and I imagine you again in the red chair which we set out for you.4 I am not well. I would gladly end my life, but I must wait for it to unravel.” 7. Freud to Rolland January 29, 1926 “Unforgettable man, to have soared to such heights of humanity through so much hardship and suffering! I revered you as an artist and apostle of love for mankind many years before I saw you. I myself have always advocated the love for mankind*. . . . When I finally came to know you personally I was surprised to find that you hold strength and energy in Page 3 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence such high esteem, and that you yourself embody so much will power. . . .” (p.26) 8. Rolland to Freud May 6, 1926 [telegram] “With all my heart I share with those who celebrate your birthday.[5 May the power of your mind pierce the night of life for a long time to come! . . . ” 9. Freud to Rolland May 13, 1926 “Your lines are among the most precious things which these days have brought me. Let me thank you for their content and your manner of address. Unlike you, I cannot count on the love of many people*. . . . It seems to me a surprising accident that apart from my doctrines my person should attract any attention at all. But when men like you whom I have loved from afar express their friendship for me, then a particular ambition of mine is gratified. I enjoy it without questioning whether or not I deserve it, I relish it as a gift. You belong among those who know how to give presents.” The Vermorels speak of common “stakes” in the Freud–Rolland correspondence, most of which are evident from its start and none of which—especially the first— apply to Freud and Bose’s: 1. Each is in touch with the other’s culture. 2. Each builds on a grief of youth to be a hero who creates something universal. 3. It is between a Jewish atheist and a churchless Christian. 4. It concerns two writers as creators, touching on illusion, mysticism, and the domain of the sacred that is literature and science.6 To mark another obvious difference from the Freud–Bose correspondence, we see the laudatory tone that both Freud and Rolland bring even to their earliest letters. Each knew how to say what the other wanted to hear. In opening this new friendship, Freud was making himself vulnerable to some of the same propensities that brought him troubles in his (p.27) friendships with Wilhelm Fliess and Carl Jung. These included an overvaluation of the friend,7 an “effusiveness” in correspondence;8 an “unruly homosexual feeling” with Fliess and to a lesser degree with Jung, that Freud mentioned in his self-analysis;9 and Freud’s cautiousness, as with Jung, about anti-Semitism.10 The Vermorels imply

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence that he had resolved to handle his friendship with Rolland without rupture, by showing greater reserve and distance.11 There is also Freud’s tendency to make seemingly gratuitous comparisons between them. After granting that Rolland’s name conjures up “one of the most precious and beautiful illusions, that of love extended to all mankind,” Freud extends a Jewish calling card (as with Bose) by bringing up the record of past and current anti-Semitism: “Such experiences have a sobering effect and are not conducive to making one believe in illusions. . . . My writings cannot be what yours are: comfort and refreshment to the reader. A great part of my life’s work (I am ten years older than you) has been spent [trying to] destroy illusions of my own and those of mankind. . . . If in the course of evolution we don’t learn to divert our instincts from destroying our own kind, if we continue to hate oneanother for minor differences and kill each other for petty gain, if we go on exploiting the great progress we have made in the control of our natural resources for our mutual destruction, what kind of future lies in store for us? It is surely hard enough to ensure the perpetuation of our species in the conflict between our instinctual nature and the demands made upon us by civilization. My writings cannot be what yours are: comfort and refreshment to the reader. But if I may believe that they have aroused your interest, I shall permit myself to send you a small book which is sure to be unknown to you, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego published (p.28) in 1921. . . . It shows a way from the analysis of the individual to an understanding of society.” “I myself have always advocated the love for mankind not out of sentimentality or idealism but for sober, economic reasons: because in the face of our intellectual drives and the world as it is I was compelled to consider this love as indispensable for the preservation of the human species as, say, technology.” “Unlike you, I cannot count on the love of many people. I have not pleased, comforted, edified them. Nor was this my intention; I only wanted to explore, solve riddles, uncover a little of the truth. This may have given pain to many, benefited a few, neither of which I consider my fault or my merit.”12 Freud is probably responding (in the last two cases, belatedly) to what Rolland says in letter 2 about “the political ruin of western Europe” and “that nature is not economical.” But one gets the sense that these well-constructed asides form a continuous thought and were essential to what Freud wished to communicate, whereas for Rolland they may have begun to sound preachy and to have felt uncomfortably adversarial. Rolland did not answer them. In this initial period, there are some telling lines. In Freud’s first letter after his first cancer operation (over a year after it), he writes, “I am not well. I would gladly end my life, but I must wait for it to unravel”—to which Rolland answers nothing. But I would emphasize what Freud says about Rolland’s telegram on Page 5 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence Freud’s seventieth birthday: that he will “relish it as a gift. You belong among those who know how to give presents.” I believe this thought has a continuity for Freud in rousing his energies to write “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis” for Rolland’s seventieth birthday, and in what Freud came to realize about Rolland’s next letter mentioning the “oceanic feeling,” which Rolland writes after receiving Freud’s The Future of an Illusion. For Freud, the “oceanic feeling” would be a gift that would keep on giving. But let us now swing back to Freud and Bose. I turn to the central and liveliest phase of their correspondence. As noted at the end of chapter 1, Bose found a fairly clever way to restore communication with Freud via a lost cover letter. (p.29) Phase 2 13. Freud to Bose January 2, 1929 “I am glad of having got your letter. Since you joined our Association I regretted that our Indian group did not attain closer contact with the others. Any sign of the contrary is pleasant to me. To be sure I am not surprised by the result of Prof. Haldar’s study of Tagore poetry. But it may be convincing to other people as well and so I think it ought to be published. May I wait for your permission to send it to Dr. Jones with my recommendation? The part of your own work which you will send to me may be sure of my intense interest. My health is not strong, my mind still active although not productive.” 14. Bose to Freud January 31, 1929 “A copy of Haldar’s paper . . . has already been sent to Dr. Jones. Prof. Haldar will be very grateful if you would kindly recommend it for publication in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.” Under separate cover, Bose sends “some of my own papers.” Some “are written on popular lines and are meant for inclusion along with other papers in a book which is in preparation for the lay public. The other articles are of a more technical nature and are meant for another book” and will be “supplemented with short clinical records in support of the contentions put forth in them. . . . I would draw your particular attention to my paper on Oedipus wish where I have ventured to disagree with you in some respects.” Bose provides “the order in which the articles are to be read”: Popular Articles Page 6 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence 1. Free Association Method in Psychoanalysis 2. Sex in Psychoanalysis 3. Psychoanalysis in Business 4. Temper and Psychoanalysis 5. Crime and Psychoanalysis Technical Articles 1. Relationship between Psychology and Psychiatry 2. Reliability of Psycho-analytical Findings (p.30) 3. Is Perception an Illusion? 4. Nature of the Wish 5. Analysis of Wish 6. Pleasure in Wish 7. The Genesis of Homosexuality 8. The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish Bose also includes “a Bengali book on dreams. . . . [13] Your portrait which appears in the book is from a pencil drawing by my friend Mr. J. K. Sen the renowned artist from the photograph you kindly sent me some years ago. Please accept the book as a token of my deepest regards for the Father of Psycho-analysis. An abridged translation of the contents of this book will appear as a chapter in my popular book.”14 15. Freud to Bose March 9, 1929 “Best thanks for your sendings. I have read all of your papers, the popular ones as well as the most important scientific ones and I am impatient to see them published in books as you promise. You directed my attention on the Oedipus wish and you were right in doing so. It made a great impression. In fact I am not convinced by your arguments. Your theory of the opposite wish appears to me to stress rather a formal element than a dynamic factor. I still think you underrate the efficiency of the castration fear. It is interesting to note that the only mistake I could notice in your popular essays relates to the same points. There you say Oedipus kills himself after blinding which he never did. In the scientific paper you give Page 7 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence the story correctly. On the other side I never denied the connection of the castration wish with the wish to be female nor that of the castration fear with the horror of becoming female. In my ‘Passing of the Oed. Complex’ I tried to introduce a new metapsychological possibility [of] destroying a complex by robbing it of its cathectic charge which (p.31) is led into other channels besides the other idea of repressing it while its cathexis is left undiminished. But [I] confess I am no more convinced of the validity of my own assumptions. We have not yet seen through this intricate Oedipus matter. We need more observations. P. S. Thanks for the Bengali book!” 16. Bose to Freud April 11, 1929 Bose is “grateful for going through my papers,” and for pointing out the mistake on Oedipus, which he will correct. “Of course I do not expect that you would accept off-hand my reading of the Oedipus situation. I do not deny the importance of the castration threat in European cases; my argument is that the threat owes its efficiency to its connection with the wish to be female. The real struggle lies between the desire to be male and its opposite the desire to be female. I have already referred to the fact that castration threat is very common in Indian society but my Indian patients do not exhibit castration symptoms to such a marked degree as my European cases. The desire to be female is more easily unearthed in Indian male patients than in European. In this connection I would refer you to my paper on Homosexuality where I have discussed this question in greater detail. The Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image and this is a fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that much of the motivation of ‘maternal deity’ is traceable to this source.” “My theory of the opposite wish is not a mere formal philosophical statement as you suppose it to be. Like any other scientific theory it is a specific formulation that will explain many facts of mental life. To cite a few instances it gives the exact dynamics of repression when a particular wish is pushed into the unconscious; it explains in a simple manner the mechanisms of imitation, retaliation, conscience, projection, etc. The facts that have led you to suppose the existence of the repetition compulsion in addition to the pleasure principle would be more easily explained on the basis of this theory. When a person receives a shock certain wishes of a passive type are satisfied, perforce leading to the release of the opposite type of wishes—corresponding to the situation of the agency which brought about the shock. This is an effort at identification with the offending agent. The repeated bringing up of the (p.32) shock situation in dreams is an effort on the part of the unsatisfied wish to get a satisfaction.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence This is determined by the pleasure principle. There is no need to suppose the functioning of the repetition compulsion.” “The theory of the opposite wish will explain the occurrence in pairs in the same individual of such traits as sadism and masochism, observationism[15] and exhibitionism etc. This theory will also explain the relationship between the different wishes that emerge from the unconscious in a definite sequence during analysis. This theory enables the analyst to predict beforehand the possibility of emerging in consciousness of a particular repressed wish from an examination of grammatical forms of speech.” Bose has reserved a separate chapter of his book, which he will send to Freud when it is written, on “practical points of applicability of this theory,” which he has modified since his Concept of Repression “in view of new facts that have come up during analysis. . . . I am sorry to have troubled you with this long letter, my only excuse is that I want my findings to be tested in the light of your experience.” 17. Freud to Bose May 12, 1929 “Thank you for your explanations. I am fully impressed by the difference in the castration reaction between Indian and European patients and I promise to keep my attention fixed on the problem of the opposite wish which you accentuate. This latter one is too important for a hasty decision.” Freud wonders “what the relation of the opposite wish to ambivalence ‘may be.’ ” He is glad to expect another publication from Bose. 18. Bose to Freud [Undated] Bose details the contents of a package that includes “one ivory statuette” that he and his colleagues in the Indian Society of Psychoanalysis (p.33) have sent to celebrate Freud’s seventy-fifth birthday, and asks Freud to inform him of the articles’ safe arrival.16 19. Freud to Bose December 13, 1931 “Now I am in possession of all your sendings. . . .” “The statuette is charming. I gave it the place of honour on my desk. As long as I can enjoy life it will recall to my mind the progress of psychoanalysis, the proud Page 9 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence conquest it has made in foreign countries and the kind feelings for me it has aroused in some of my contemporaries at least.” 20. Bose to Freud October 4, 1932 Bose thanks Freud “for all the kindness you have shown to my daughter and my son-in-law while they were in Vienna. They are full of gratitude to yourself, your wife and daughter and your sister-in-law. My daughter had been hearing about you ever since she was a little child and she has written to me a glowing account of her impressions about yourself.” 21. Freud to Bose November 8, 1932 “I could not read your kind letter without feelings of embarrassment. In fact I do not deserve the gratitude of your children owing to the fact that I and my daughter were full in work, my wife and her sister not speaking your language and difficulties in our household making it hard for us to invite them for meals. So I had to be glad that one of my friends and pupils did it for me. I was very sorry that your charming daughter did not like our dogs. But you know in life we often get praised or blamed for no merit of our own.” I will move lightly over this phase 2 exchange, which provides topics I extract for not only this but all this book’s remaining chapters as well. Some passages will not be discussed until chapters 4, 6, and 7. Freud was apparently pleased to reopen the correspondence after over six years, and to put behind him whatever ill mood provoked his belated (p.34) response to Bose’s 1922 “Merry Christmas.” Their exchange through phase 2 begins cordially, but hits a snag when Bose says, in letter 14, “I have ventured to disagree with you in some respects.” The correspondence then opens their only real debate, which centers on letter 16, in which Bose defends himself theoretically about opposite wishes and speaks of the “Oedipus mother” as the source of “the maternal deity.” Bose does not spell out what he means by these terms. We will pick up a thread on Bose’s “Oedipus mother” in a moment. Freud, however, steers their discussion away from these two topics and toward opposite wishes. Two letters then talk about Bose’s daughter appearing at Freud’s doorstep, and the two men take time out to enjoy their positions as patres familias. Let us now pick up the thread of the “Oedipus mother.” Bose says, “The Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image and this is a fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that much of the motivation of ‘maternal Page 10 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence deity’ is traceable to this source.” Freud has been noted for finding “mother goddesses” an inconvenience to his evolutionary schema, “sandwiching them in between two patrilineal and patriarchal periods”:17 the father dominance of the primal horde in Totem and Taboo, and the patriarchy that inspired the paternal deity in Moses and Monotheism. He found an evolutionary niche for J. J. Bachofen’s understanding of mother right and matriarchy, which Freud saw as a real period between the two patriarchies and a threat to his Oedipal explanations for each.18 So we cannot be surprised that Bose drew a blank by proposing that he could trace “much of the motivation of maternal deity” to the Oedipus mother. I propose that, in failing to prod Bose about the “Oedipus mother,” Freud missed the chance to credit and explore something the two were now thinking about jointly. For if the “Oedipus mother” was “very often a combined parental image,” she was pre-Oedipal avant la lettre. Although I will attempt to solidify this claim about Bose in chapter 6, I mention some support for it now that comes from a separate point of Bose’s. Recall that Freud asked Bose what looks like a leading question when he wrote, “I wonder what the relation of the opposite wish to the phenomena of ambivalence ‘may be’ ”19 Freud’s scare quotes around “may (p.35) be” are evidently a teaser playing on the term “ambivalence.”20 Bose’s answer includes his opposition to what he presents as Freud’s view that hate and sadism, as primary,21 may develop independently of love. For Bose, love–hate ambivalence is better explained in a wish context by the primacy of love/like and pleasure. Bose had argued in The Concept of Repression that “originally all wishes are pleasurable and it is only when they are in conflict that unpleasantness arises.”22 He works this out later in terms of a (pre-Oedipal) “primary phase” where the infant’s pleasurable sensations arise in relation to the mother and the mother’s caresses;23 thus pain, in contrast to pleasure, is “not a primary feeling.”24 T. C. Sinha can thus contrast Freud’s notion of ambivalence in a “love–hate pair” with Bose’s view, according to which “the opposite of the wish to love is the wish to be loved.” In his 1921 dissertation, Bose was already speaking of pre-Oedipal sensations. The point that Bose’s Oedipus mother has a pre-Oedipal profile also gets reinforcement from the Vermorels.25 With no discussion of Bose, whom they write of only as Freud’s Indian correspondent who was behind the gift of Freud’s Viṣṇu statuette,26 they speak of a very similar figure, whom they call “le maternel singulier.” They speak of her as “the originary mother,” who plays her part in the first of the “two times”: the pre-Oedipal. The relation between the two times is crucial. For Freud, who always leaned toward the Oedipal in accounting for the relation between them, there were the difficulties that the prelinguistic character of early pre-Oedipal experiences made them inaccessible to memory, and that memories of the pre-Oedipal years up to the Oedipal phase

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence at about age three to five seemed typically to be screen memories, picked up by hearing what others recalled from a child’s upbringing. (p.36) We may say for now, ahead of chapter 6, that Bose’s Oedipus mother is a kind of intimation of “le maternel singulier,” an inhibiting or dark side of whose outlines the Vermorels trace while drawing on the work of a host of mid- to late twentieth-century researchers on hysteria.27 From the perspective of such a body of research, they observe not only points in Freud’s work where he begins to explore facets of such a dossier but also points where it would have improved matters had he done so. A case of this second kind, they say, is Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, the book Freud sent to Rolland at the beginning of their correspondence. For Freud, the hypnotic power of the leader over crowds and the masses recalled the originary father. But here, say the Vermorels, Freud’s analysis is incomplete, for it condenses too much the oedipal father with this parental bisexual that is rather founded upon the maternal imago of the originary times.[28] This bisexual imago is all-powerful. The situation of man submitted to a violent leader would be . . . analogous to the distress of the newborn, without defense and menaced by death if it does not receive help and tenderness from its parents. . . . This binary relation to the maternal singular cedes place—without disappearing—to the oedipal triangulation, with the recourse to the father, who permits one to leave the original dependence.” . . . The dictators of the totalitarian regimes become an unconscious incarnation of an internal imago, which would be totally hateful facing a defenseless baby.29 “Very often a combined parental image,” Bose’s “Oedipus mother” prefigures this maternité singulière. In chapter 6, we will also see that Bose’s analysis of two patients with mothers who present “combined parental images” can be supplemented and enriched by the Vermorels and others’ (p.37) comments.30 But since the Vermorels offer their survey in connection with interpreting hysteria31 and in discussing Freud’s response to Rolland’s “oceanic feeling,” I take two straighter routes to Freud’s treatment of the pre-Oedipal that come from Harold H. Blum and Madalon Sprengnether. In his “The Prototype of Preoedipal Reconstruction,” published in 1972 and reissued in 1979 (not discussed by Sprengnether), Blum focuses on “the early utilization of reconstruction in psychoanalysis and its relation to contemporary preoedipal reconstruction.” Blum examines how Freud first handles pre-Oedipal reconstructions while aiming at Oedipal lessons. Freud uncovered pre-Oedipal phases in character formation studies (e.g., in “Character and Anal Eroticism” [1908]), but character studies were rare in “the pioneer days” when “analysis was symptom-oriented,” and when “the crucial elucidation of the oedipus complex overshadowed other discoveries.”32 Nonetheless, already in 1900, in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud referred to the phase before age Page 12 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence three as the “prehistoric epoch,”33 and “incorporated, over the years, the reconstruction of preoedipal reactions and influence, so evident in character, into psychoanalytic theory and technique.”34 Blum says most of Freud’s reconstructions have been overlooked: The extraordinary reconstruction of the primal scene at eighteen months in the Wolf Man case, probably the most famous of psychoanalytic reconstructions, was a preoedipal reconstruction. Freud gave an extremely detailed reconstruction of this scene, including the age of the Wolf Man, his illness—fever, the time of day, the position of his parents, the child’s reaction, and the developmental consequences. Freud regarded this single traumatic experience of the primal scene as a traumatic sexual seduction, but occurring in the preoedipal phase. Blum adds, “Freud’s analysis of the Wolf Man touched upon issues in his selfanalysis which were in a continuing process of question, investigation, (p.38) illumination, and extrapolation. In the Wolf Man case, and in his self-analysis, Freud uncovered persistent early infantile influences that had a profound effect for later development.”35 Yet Freud did not immediately identify a pre-Oedipal impact of the eighteenmonth-old Wolf Man’s experience. Freud invoked “the concept of delayed trauma,” and “proposed that the preoedipal primal scene became pathogenic as a phase-specific oedipal trauma at the time of the Wolf Man’s nightmare on his fourth birthday. This preoedipal reconstruction, so daring in its conception and elucidation, was ‘reconstructed upward’ to the oedipal phase.”36 For Sprengnether, this would be a typical move by Freud to an Oedipal explanation, but Blum sees Freud as taking things deliberately. Blum says the actual beginning of Freud’s pre-Oedipal constructions is simultaneous with “his discovery of the oedipus complex,” and goes back “long before” the Wolf Man’s 1917 case to his own self-analysis, recorded in his letters to Fliess:37 The reconstruction of the “prehistoric period” of childhood in dreams and screen memories is recorded in the Fliess letters for the first time in history. Transference, the return of the “revenants,” is codiscovered with reconstruction in the Interpretation of Dreams in the context of infantile object relations.“Most of the reconstructions in the Fliess letters are actually preoedipal,” including those about his cousin John, his deceased brother Julius, and his nanny. Blum also observes the scant reference to Freud’s “loving and adoring mother,” his “inseparable companion, his partner between ages one and two.” She is in the background, a “pale shadow of his oedipal parent, usually the father.”38 As Blum points out regarding Julius, maternal grief and depression can

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence result in “a narcissistic injury” to a surviving nursling. With the formation of the super-ego, “the germ of guilt or seed of reproach can become real guilt.”39 (p.39) Later, in 1926, in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, Freud “formulated the great danger situations in early childhood, that is, of the preoedipal period, in terms of fear of loss of the object and fear of loss of the object’s love. The abstract ‘object’ was the mother, returned to a pivotal position in psychoanalytic theory.”40 One now finds Freud being attentive to pre-Oedipal behaviors of children as he offers “the first description of a peek-a-boo game in psychoanalysis” and observes that the toys of an eighteen-month-old—“the rapprochement period of his Julius and Wolf Man reconstructions”—were “used in separation games, for mastery of separation anxiety.”41 This child is the same much-adored grandson who died of tubercular meningitis on June 19, 1923, near the time of Freud’s first cancer operation.42 He had lost his mother Sophie, Freud’s daughter, as described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Blum’s inventory of Freud’s pre-Oedipal reconstructions still leaves others overlooked. One, made in his 1905 book on Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious and noteworthy for its observational basis, is his “tracing back or interpretation of the muscular actions characteristic of laughter,” which had been puzzling “both before and since Darwin”: I have one contribution to make to his theme. So far as I know, the grimace characteristic of smiling, appears first in an infant at the breast when he is satisfied and satiated and lets go of the breast as it falls asleep, Here it is a genuine expression of the emotions, for it corresponds to a decision to take no more nourishment, and represents an as it were an “enough” or rather a “more than enough.” This original meaning of pleasurable satiety may have brought the smile, which is after all the basic phenomenon of laughter into its later relation with pleasurable processes of discharge.43 Another is Freud’s study of Leonardo da Vinci (hereafter, “Leonardo”), which Blum may not count because it does not treat a clinical case. (p.40) Freud’s article “A Child is Being Beaten” and his accounts of the pre-Oedipal period in girls in “Female Sexuality” and “Femininity” will also be mentioned.44 Sprengnether covers a similar range of Freud’s texts as do the Vermorels. As she shows, for the totality of Freud’s writing the word “pre-Oedipal” is “anachronistic.” Freud never used the term, and “finally characterized as ‘preOedipus’ ” the earliest period of development from infancy to about age two, when the child is closest to the mother. About two years after Bose’s April 11, 1929, “Oedipus mother” letter, and less than a year after Freud’s mother died at ninety-five, Freud published his article “Female Sexuality,” in which he first guardedly articulated observations about the “pre-Oedipus stage” based on clinical observations. First, he states some recent findings on girls: that in Page 14 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence instances where an exclusive one-sided and long attachment to the mother has preceded or even negated attachment to her father, “the pre-Oedipus stage in women gains an importance which we have not attributed to it hitherto.” Freud says “our insight into this early, pre-Oedipus, phase in girls comes to us as a surprise, like the discovery, in another field, of the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization behind the civilization of Greece.”45 He last uses the term in this article when he asserts that boys “are able to deal with their ambivalent feelings toward their mother by directing all their hostility on to their father,” adding: “But, in the first place, we ought not to make this reply until we have made a close study of the pre-Oedipus phase in boys, and, in the second place, it is probably more prudent in general to admit that we have as yet no clear understanding of these processes, with which we have only just become acquainted.” Sprengnether says of this bit of fitting first facts and then expectations to the Oedipal paradigm, and then backing away from his tentative findings, that Freud does not entertain “the possibility that sons do in fact experience hostility to their mother, causing them to lessen their attachment.”46 Yet if Freud is claiming some novelty in presenting clinically derived observations about pre-Oedipal tendencies, at least among girls, we have seen from Blum that the pre-Oedipal is not a new idea to him. We need to look at texts that are not among Freud’s case studies. I now turn to (p.41) his most straightforward treatment of the pre-Oedipal, written up in his 1909 “applied psychoanalytical”47 study of Leonardo da Vinci. As a character study, Freud transcends the early analytical stress on symptoms at the expense of character that was emphasized by Blum. The year 1909 is when Freud formalized his use of the term “Oedipus complex,”48 and his “Leonardo” study involves a clear attempt to discern the relation between the pre-Oedipal and the Oedipal in one individual. Freud’s emphasis on both locates a strain in one of Sprengnether’s enthusiasms for the pre-Oedipal. In addressing how it is treated by postFreudian object-relations theorists, and by Jacques Lacan and French feminists, she makes the general claim that they all treat it as “subversive” but not as “transformative.” Aren’t subversions transformations? She faults a Yale collection on American and French feminisms for not bringing itself to “critique the oedipal-preoedipal hierarchy per se.”49 But what would that mean? Even if one speaks of an intimation of the Oedipal within the pre-Oedipal, is there not an indelible age hierarchy between them? What Sprengnether is after is “an alteration of the structure as a whole” that does more than just romanticize subversion.50 Sprengnether gets to “Leonardo” toward the end of a chapter titled “Displacements and Denials,” which begins with Freud’s discomfort over his handling of Fliess’s misdiagnosis of Emma Eckstein, about which he makes “Irma’s Injection” his “specimen dream” in the Interpretation of Dreams.51 She then examines the case histories of Dora (1905),52 Little Hans (1909), the Rat Man (1909), Dr. Schreber (1911), and the Wolf Man (1919) to show how “Freud Page 15 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence either ignores or actively suppresses evidence that points to maternal signification, while insisting on the exclusively paternal etiology of his patients’ illnesses.”53 By the end of (p.42) this chapter, which also discusses Freud’s study of “Leonardo,” she has been able to reveal a real pre-Oedipal counterthesis to Freud’s “Oedipal ‘master-plot’ ”54: The preoedipal mother, as Freud portrays her, refuses to stay in her place. Creating a level of persistent, low-level disturbance that problematizes his attempts to theorize her subordination, Freud’s efforts to deflect, obscure, or deny the issues posed by her so-called phallic self-sufficiency, as imagined in her reproductive capacity and the threat of castration imminent in her overwhelming love, only highlight these gaps in his argument.55 Sprengnether could be said to be on the same wavelength as Bose in the things she mentions: the pre-Oedipal mother’s “so-called phallic self-sufficiency” and the “imagined . . . threat of castration imminent in her overwhelming love.” Yet I have a few more difficulties with Sprengnether’s presentation once she gets to “Leonardo.” She offers a one-sided reading of it as a “sinister portrait of the mother–son relationship, which he nowhere else depicts so explicitly or intensely”; “a cautionary tale of the dangers of mother love.” Sprengnether allows that, “If, on the other hand, what Freud has to say about Leonardo’s relationship with his mother has a bearing on his own preoedipal period, then we may begin to compose a different portrait of his early life from the one that Jones and others have proposed.”56 This, however, is an incomplete thought, as Ilse Barande shows in a book that actually calls Freud’s “Leonardo” essay “an indirect self-portrait.”57 In a second edition, she writes, “This book sets out to oust the autobiographic Freud hiding himself at the heart of his romance on Leonardo da Vinci.”58 Barande’s book has the merit of concentrating on Freud and his mother, and of imagining Freud at work rather than addressing the validity of his (p.43) interpretation of Leonardo’s life and paintings based on Leonardo’s alleged “vulture” fantasy.59 The point is not straightforward, since the parallels Barande elicits between Freud and Leonardo are all in different ways askew. Her first chapter, titled “A Freud (1909)–Leonardo (1505) Meeting,” attends to the two years, respectively, as those in which Freud authored the “Leonardo” study, and in which Leonardo began working the Mona Lisa smile into his paintings.60 It is a “meeting of fiftyyear olds.”61 The two men have things in common: both side with the visual over the auditory; Freud’s work with the microscope corresponds to Leonardo’s anatamo-physiological curiosity;62 each faces a midlife crisis.63 But where the askewness of the parallels is sharpest is on the point that occasions the book’s original title: Le maternel singulier, the term we have met from the Vermorels.64 Although chapter 6, “The Latency of the Maternal Singular,” stretches the term Page 16 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence to argue that Mother Goddesses of the ancient world—among them the Egyptian Nut and the Hindu Umā,65 and the Virgin Mary and the Mariology dogmatized in the nineteenth century—exemplify the maternal singular in historical tension with monotheism, Barande’s sustained usage is more revealing. Her argument applies to the pre-Oedipal interactions of the two firstborn sons with their mothers, but more to Freud and Amalia, cryptically behind the scenes, than to the Leonardo and Caterina whom Freud features (p.44) in his study. Barande finds support in spanning Freud’s study between the discoveries of his earlier years, which he writes of to Fliess, and well past his “Leonardo” to his article “Femininity” of 1932, authored shortly after his mother has died. Barande suggests that Amalia’s death somewhat freed up Freud in his writings about maternity, although he would keep his self-imposed silence about her. The discussion of the early period first centers on Freud’s quandaries over parental seduction, beginning with the paternal seduction of daughters. Barande goes to the Fliess letters of 1895 for Freud’s “Hella” dream, in which he confronts his attraction to his oldest daughter Mathilde, and to October 1897, for the reversal of the seduction theory—Freud found that women who tell of childhood seduction by their fathers are not helped by the assumption of a real seduction, and will usually be describing a hysterical symptom.66 In writing about Leonardo and Caterina, Freud puts matters askew by portraying Caterina as not only the seducer but, by her infant son’s identification with her, also as the seduced. “To take Freud’s Leonardo is to go from the desire to be seduced to the phantasm of being oneself the seductive mother.”67 Barande says there is a “lyricism” to Freud’s portrayal of Caterina as a “reversal” of the seduction theory revised in October 1897: “It is rather a question of the eulogy of the accomplishment of the active desire of being passively overwhelmed.”68 One can normalize what Barande is saying by invoking Bertram Lewin’s oral triad of wishes that the nursling brings to the breast: the wish to eat, the wish to be eaten, and the wish to sleep.69 In Lewin’s terms, Leonardo could have been a “knee baby, as distinguished from the younger lap baby,” when he takes in Caterina’s smile before lying down and wishing to be devoured.70 Freud’s argument is that Leonardo saw the Mona Lisa smile on the lips of “La Jaconde,” a model “who awakened some happy mystery that came from the bottom of time.”71 Leonardo then painted her smile into the (p.45) similar smiles one sees on the Mona Lisa, Saint Anne and the Virgin, and the sexually ambiguous Bacchus or Saint John the Baptist.72 Several things stand out in Freud’s analysis of two of Leonardo’s paintings that will bear reminders of Freud.73 Based on the smile of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa with “its promise of boundless tenderness and its hint of what [Walter] Pater called ‘sinister menace,’ ” Freud traces Leonardo’s sexual ambivalence, and with it his Page 17 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence muted narcissistic homosexuality, back to his pre-Oedipal “memory of the mother he had known in infancy . . . the poor peasant girl Caterina, who brought her wonderful son into the world to paint, to engage in scientific research, and to suffer.” Based on his observation that both women depicted in Leonardo’s Saint Anne with Madonna and Child, which was painted in the same period, have similar smiles to the Mona Lisa’s, Freud traces the early Oedipal memories of being “separated” from Caterina “at some point between the ages three and five” to live with “a young, affectionate stepmother, Donna Albiera, his father’s wife,” and Leonardo’s paternal grandmother, Mona Lucia. Sprengnether follows her penchant for collapsing the Oedipal into the pre-Oedipal, and simply does not mention Leonardo’s stepmother or Freud’s discussion of the painting Saint Anne with Madonna and Child. We must note that Freud traces not only Leonardo’s pleasure and “suffering” back to his pre-Oedipal infantile life but also the painfulness of his mother’s life during his youngest years: The violence of her caresses, as indicated by his vulture fantasy,[74 was only too natural, for in her love for her child this poor deserted mother had to merge all her past memories of past tenderness and her longing for its renewal. She was forced to compensate not only for herself—for having no man to caress her—but also for her child, for having no father to fondle him. And like all unsatisfied mothers, she substituted her little son for her lover and, through his erotic precocity, robbed him of part of his masculinity.75 (p.46) Freud says that once one has been struck that the two women in Saint Anne with Madonna and Child share their smiles with the Mona Lisa’s smile, “after contemplating” Saint Anne with Madonna and Child, “the viewer suddenly realizes” that “the picture contains a synthesis of the story of his childhood” with two mothers: Caterina “still as a young woman of unfaded beauty” in back as Saint Anne, and Mary before her “who stretches her arms out to him.” According to Barande, “The great turning point of the maternal smile is refound, according to Freud, after the death of Caterina. But it is also after the death of Leonardo’s father.” Of the possibilities, here for a double inspiration, Barande asks, Would we be at the heart of the identifications? Freud discovers the functioning of the psyche and the oedipal emotions after his father’s death, in 1896. Leonardo takes possession of the maternal smile when his father joins his mother in death; with the elaboration that it is this “smile which unites the two different elements” (as Freud says). The preceding doctrine of the seduction by the parent again surfaces, interposed in a certain manner between [his revision of the seduction theory] and his aspiration ad

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence matrem, in which Freud had recognized himself. This doctrine nourishes itself on the infantile history loaned to Leonardo.76 With the Latin ad matrem, Barande invokes the scene that Freud describes in another of his letters to Fliess, in which he recalls himself as a three-year-old seeing Amalia naked on a train, which Barande has introduced around the question of seduction: In constructing such a precocious biography, Freud conceives a model of identification alternating the envied positions of the son seduced by the seducer. He thus accomplishes his own oedipal wishes “ad matrem.” Behind the screen of a “pathography” of Leonardo he disguises his secret family romance.77 But the single parent at the bottom of these two paternal dyads who seduces and is seduced is, of course, a woman, not a man. That, Barande (p.47) is saying, is what Freud has lent to Leonardo from his own memories of Amalia. Yet the loan is conditioned. Describing what she sees as “the major parameters of Freud’s vision of Leonardo,” Barande says that for Freud, “Such a history demands sanction.[78] This sanction will be realized by Leonardo’s inhibition of sexual and artistic activities, an inhibition susceptible to condense his impotence to actively seduce a mother alone and his masochistic identification with a father abandoning his infant.”79 In concealing his own history (or memories) behind Leonardo’s, Freud does not have to own up to their implications. “Going from the desire to be seduced by his mother to the fantasy of being himself the seductive mother, Freud declines the honor, the horror. He protests his innocence. Only the father of Little Hans, only the son of Caterina could. . . .”80 Freud’s choice to take up Leonardo’s early childhood in 1909 conflicts with his self-image in the fraternity of early twentieth-century male heads of families.81 Twenty-three years into the twentieth century, in 1932, after Amalia Freud has died in 1930, Barande finds an anchor for seeing Amalia behind Freud’s portrayal of Caterina in Freud’s “ ‘subtle text’ on ‘Femininity.’ ”82 She returns at several points to this theme. She first says that Freud “cedes to Caterina’s being a seductive mother. This mother reappears in ‘Femininity’ to declare that her son is the woman’s most noble conquest, her most authentic accomplishment.”83 Barande makes her point by extrapolation; I do not see this said precisely in “Femininity,” which would tighten her case. She then makes three more related assertions. First, having reviewed the record that Leonardo leaves of his life, she asks whether he, “like Freud, takes the liberty to construct the narcissistic events of his life?” Freud is sixty-seven when he loses his mother and writes Ferenczi about the “deeper layers.” “This constant leads us to give importance to the Page 19 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence order and to the moments of the disappearances of father and mother in their respective rapport to the works of Leonardo and Freud. A certain novelty of tone in ‘Femininity’ (1932) is not strange . . . to (p.48) Amalia’s passing insofar as it is bared (dérobée) under the name of Caterina.”84 Barande cites a passage in “Leonardo” where she says Freud writes of Leonardo’s destiny in “a language of moving texture” in which “knowledge cedes to poetry.” Here is Strachey’s translation: His illegitimate birth deprived him of his father’s influence until perhaps his fifth year, and left him open to the tender seductions of a mother whose only solace he was. After being kissed by her into precocious sexual maturity,[85] he must no doubt have embarked on a phase of infantile sexual activity of which only one single manifestation is definitely attested —the intensity of his infantile sexual researches. The instinct to look and the instinct to know were those most excited by the impressions of his early childhood; the erotogenic zone of the mouth was given an emphasis which it never afterwards surrendered.86 In contrast, says Barande, Freud writes in a more grave if not severe style when he treats Leonardo’s prior period in Milan, when his “infantile past had gained control over him. . . . The research which now took the place of artistic creation seems to have contained some of the features which distinguish the activity of unconscious instincts—insatiability, unyielding rigidity and the lack of an ability to adapt to real circumstances.”87 Barande asks why Freud speaks similarly about Leonardo here and about women at the end of “Femininity” who, in contrast to men, at age thirty-two have, he says, fixed psyches and libidos. Second, Barande argues again that Freud tips his hand stylistically. As with the smile in the “Leonardo” essay, in “Femininity” Freud poses again as the revealer of mysteries and enigmas, with “unexpected expressive systems.”88 With a “stylistic swerve,” “the language of mystery or enigma differs from that of ‘dark continent.’ He is making a fundamental response.” In “Femininity,” writing about the mother’s relation to the daughter, (p.49) It is a question . . . of a disappointed love (amour décu), in imitation of her violence, of the girl toward her mother. In the evolution toward femininity, Freud conceives the change of object, of the mother to the father and to the man, as even more difficult to elaborate than the change of zone from the clitoris to the vagina, while the man, happier, can preserve, prolong, his preoedipal prehistory as to the zone and above all as to the object.89 Finally, in her third and last return to “Femininity,” Barande paraphrases the statement Freud makes in it about the exceptional rapport between a mother and her son: “ ‘The love of the mother for her nursling . . . has the nature of a Page 20 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence perfectly satisfying loving relation that fulfills not only the desire of the soul but of the body.’ ”90 Caterina’s secret of love blooms in the smile of the Mona Lisa, Saint Anne, Mary, and Bacchus or John the Baptist. In unveiling this “secret” that Freud has rescued from its repressions, the “secret unveiled” goes back to October 1897, to Freud’s words to Fliess when he discovered the Oedipus complex, that everyone has a bit of Oedipus within, which Freud “imagines” in Leonardo’s “conquest of the woman and his begetting, although much later, the smile of which he is born.” Here again, Barande brings up Leonardo’s “inevitable inhibitions” caused by the precocious seduction by this mother. “In effect, Freud, conquered by Caterina, says nothing, . . . inhibited! His pathway is frozen until the death of Amalia. When Caterina has died, Leonardo invents her; when Amalia has died, Freud writes ‘Femininity.’ ”91 Barande concludes that the deferred seduction exercised by the woman is her power to actualize the object of the oedipal position of the man because she has already drawn on her own relation with her preoedipal mother. And if the man or the male firstborn exercises an attraction, it is in permitting the woman to occupy the maternal pole of this relationship. . . . In effect, being father of Mathilde does not exclude the possibility of being the maternal seductress of Amalia, and vice versa.92 (p.50) Barande’s use of “Femininity” is not airtight in drawing Amalia into the shadows of “Leonardo.” She uses the term le maternel singulier more specifically than the Vermorels, and in a way that has one difference from Bose’s “Oedipus mother.” Barande and Bose could be said to work from opposite starting points: whereas Barande begins historically from Mother Goddesses, Bose says the Goddess has her source in the Oedipus mother. Yet Barande is highly suggestive in her reading of Amalia Freud. Among her constructions from “Femininity,” one is worth putting on reserve. In Barande’s only reference to “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis,” she says, “Let us recall it,” and describes it as follows: “It deals with the confusion of being on a height, a place unknown to his father, of having primacy in the science of dreams, of his having actively taken, he, Sigmund, all his sacrilegious initiatives.”93 Barande says nothing further about this, but as I will argue in chapter 8, Freud’s sacrilegious initiatives on the Acropolis could also lead one back to Amalia. Finally, we are not to think that Leonardo would have intended the two paintings of women with the smile, painted at about the same time, to portray the compacted story of his pre-Oedipal erotic precocity and early Oedipal life. As Freud puts it, “our surmise” is “that the smile of Mona Lisa del Giacondo awakened in the grown man the memory of the mother he had known in infancy.” It would be the real La Giaconda as a model, with her smile, who awakened unconscious memories of Leonardo’s mother in his infancy, and Page 21 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence further unblocked94 unconscious memories of early childhood that Leonardo taps into to bring his two mothers together in Saint Anne with Madonna and Child. Freud’s two-phase analysis takes not only memories of a painful ambivalence involving love back into the earliest experiences shared with the mother but also shows them being worked out unconsciously, once they are unblocked, in relation to the fuller experiences of childhood. In this last paragraph, I have underscored points made in the Vermorels’ analysis of Freud’s “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis” (henceforth “Disturbance”). Now supported by Barande’s demonstration, let us recall what I named Sprengnether’s “incomplete thought”: that “if what Freud has to say about Leonardo’s (p.51) relationship with his mother has a bearing on his own preoedipal period, then we may begin to compose a different portrait of his early life.” The Vermorels have done just that. For the moment, they need to be considered right about only one thing. They hypothesize a partial “unblocking” of Freud’s self-analysis bearing on the pre-Oedipal events concerning Freud’s younger brother Julius. “Our idea,” they say, is “that the oceanic feeling of Romain Rolland, as his person had become an object of transference by letters, would have furnished the associative elements to unblock [de déblocker] the analysis of a sentiment lived thirty-two years before, and which had until now resisted self-analysis.”95 Although it is premature for me to take up “Disturbance” ahead of contextualizing it in period 3 of Freud’s correspondence with Rolland, it will stand us in good stead to begin to discuss it, since Julius’s story offers what I consider a convincing contribution to resolving Sprengnether’s incomplete thought. The Vermorels’ hypothesis concerns Freud and his two brothers: one, Alexander, figures prominently in “Disturbance,” though without ever being named; and the second, Julius, is even more significant for having to be noticed between the lines.96 Alexander was Freud’s only living brother. As we have seen Freud do in his first letter to Rolland, he reminds Rolland near the beginning of “Disturbance” that he is ten years older than Rolland. Let us follow the three moves Freud makes based on this difference in ages. First, he launches his account of the late summer “holiday trips” with Alexander that “would take us to Rome or to some other region of Italy or to some part of the Mediterranean Seaboard. My brother is ten years younger than I am, so he is the same age as you— a coincidence which has only now occurred to me.” Second, about halfway through “Disturbance,” having described his experience of “derealization” before the Acropolis that is at the core of this letter, Freud says, “I was then forty-eight years old. I did not ask my younger (p.52) brother whether he felt anything of the same sort.” Then third, nearing the end, he writes, I might that day on the Acropolis have said to my brother: Do you still remember how, when we were young, we used day after day to walk along the same streets on our way to school, and how every Sunday we used to Page 22 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence go to the Prater or on some excursion we knew so well. And now, here we are in Athens, and standing on the Acropolis! We really have come a long way! So too, if I may compare such a small event with a greater one, Napoleon, during his coronation as Emperor in Notre Dame, turned to one of his brothers—it must no doubt have been the eldest one, Joseph—and remarked: “What would Monsieur notre Père have said to this, if he could have been here to-day?” All this time Freud is talking about Alexander, with whom, as Mark Kanzer has noted, Freud also had his rivalries.97 But as only the Vermorels (as far as I can see) have noticed, “It is not with Alexander—ten years his junior—that he would have been able to go every day to school, but with Julius, who was only a year younger.” Through an “author’s mistake,” Julius makes his way into Freud’s narrative unrecognized, uncannily, as a revenant: a childhood ghost companion a few years older than he lived to be.98 As the Vermorels say, in “Disturbance,” even though Freud explains his derealization by resolving matters into paternal rivalry, fraternal rivalry has a certain primacy.99 The relationship between the paternal and fraternal is played out through a “confusion of generations” in the comparison with Napoleon at Notre Dame, who was made father to his brothers.100 Indeed, the unacknowledged reminiscence about Julius may be further concealed when Freud writes that Napoleon “turned to one of his brothers—it must no doubt have been the eldest one,” just as he, Freud, was keeping the surface of his thoughts only on Alexander. Fraternal rivalry also extends to Romain Rolland, who had earlier won a Nobel Prize, which Freud now coveted.101 (p.53) Freud reconstructed his own account of Julius elsewhere, but he obviously worked mainly from screen memories.102 In an October 3, 1897, letter to Fliess, he “maintains that he greeted the birth of Julius with adverse wishes and genuine childhood jealousy,” and that “his death left the germ of [self-]reproaches.”103 Schur remarks that along with having discovered “as early as 1897 . . . the ‘oedipal’ conflict and the ubiquity of the rivalry with the father, leading to murderous wishes, Freud had also reconstructed in his self-analysis his own ‘murderous wishes’ against his younger brother and had described in The Interpretation of Dreams the ever-present hostile aspects of sibling rivalry. He indicated specifically that a little child, whose younger sibling had died, might after the birth of the next sibling harbor the wish that the same fate should meet his new competitor,” as Freud was to do with his first sister Anna. “In 1914, Freud added a new footnote: ‘Deaths that are experienced in this way in childhood may be forgotten in the family, but psycho-analytic research shows that they quickly have a very important influence on subsequent neuroses.’ ”104 In his 1932 article “Femininity,” written soon after “Feminine Sexuality,” Freud added further thoughts that could hold an obvious reference to his own situation of early weaning: Page 23 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence The turning away from the mother is accompanied by hostility: the attachment to the mother ends in hate. A hate of that kind may become very striking and last all through life. . . . The reproach against the mother which goes back furthest is that she gave the child too little milk—which is construed against her as a lack of love. . . . The next accusation against the child’s mother flares up when her next baby appears in the nursery. If possible the connection with oral frustration is preserved: the mother could not or would not give the child any more milk because she needed the nourishment for the new arrival. In cases in which the two children are so close in age that lactation is prejudiced by a second pregnancy, this reproach acquires a real basis, and it is a remarkable fact that a child, even with an age difference of only 11 months, is not too young to take (p. 54) notice of what is happening. But what the child begrudges the unwanted intruder and rival is not only the suckling but all the other signs of maternal care. It feels that it has been dethroned, despoiled, damaged in its rights; it casts a jealous hatred upon the new baby and develops a grievance against the faithless mother. . . .We rarely form a correct idea of the strength of these jealous impulses, of the tenacity with which they persist, and of the magnitude of their influence upon later development. Especially as this jealousy is constantly receiving fresh nourishment in the later years of childhood and the whole shock is repeated with the birth of each new brother or sister. Nor does it make much difference if the child happens to remain the mother’s favorite. A child’s demand for love are immoderate, they make exclusive claims and tolerate no sharing.105 I cite the passage as it is given, all but the last two sentences, by Louis Breger, who runs it all together without the ellipses, but which I include to show that there is omitted material. Breger says, “this passage gives an accurate account of Freud’s experience of his mother, including his anger at her and the babies who displaced him. But he did not connect any of this with himself, or even to male babies as a group; in his essay Femininity, only little girls were presumed to have such feelings.”106 Indeed, it is further along in the same essay that Freud, speaking of boys, states: “A mother is only brought unlimited satisfaction by her relation to her son; this is altogether the most perfect, the most free from ambivalence of all human relationships.”107 Says Breger, “This expressed his wishful fantasy—but certainly not the reality—of his early years.”108 Breger remarks that “Amalia gave birth to Julius when Sigi was eleven months old; significantly, this is exactly the age he chose in his example.”109 But Breger is writing this as an exposé regarding the implausibility of some of Freud’s early memories, bringing out the “greater control”110 offered by (p.55) his heroic masculine reconstructions. He omits in the last two sentences where Freud says it does not “make much difference if the child happens to remain the mother’s favorite.” This remark reflects Freud’s lifelong relation to Amalia and is equally gratuitous and surprising. But it makes a difference, even if we suppose that he Page 24 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence was not really just thinking about “little girls,” if we grant that Freud’s theorizing on these issues was fed by his unconscious. Freud’s tentativeness would thus anticipate what Joan Raphael-Leff says about what “developmental studies confirm” today: [the] earliest internalization occurs at a pre-symbolic level. The primary form of representation is not semantically coded but one of enacted relational procedures, which rather than producing fantasy or ideas compel repetition of what cannot be expressed in words. . . . Freud himself ascribed to his younger brother’s tragic death a lifelong relational pattern of intense emotional intimacy followed by painful rifts in his ambivalent relationships with revenants (ghosts) of Julius . . . and symptoms including inhibitions, phobias, and recurrent fainting fits.111 What Freud’s self-analysis could not penetrate in the pre-Oedipal events of his own life were his altered feelings toward his mother during her second two pregnancies and the impact of Julius’s death upon both of them. I will return to that impact in chapter 8, and will only say for now that I agree with what two quite different authors have said about these matters. First, in an earlier article that draws a comparison with Egyptian mythology’s deadly rivalry between Horus and Seth, Raphael-Neff states: “Indeed, I make the assertion that the death of this baby [Julius] was probably the most significant emotional event in Freud’s entire life and remained encapsulated as an unprocessed wordless area of prehistoric deathly rivalry and identification.”112 Second, from an author not normally given to interpretive statements based on biographical reconstruction, Ilse Grubich-Simitis says that, along with “supreme intrinsic talent” and “a degree of successful mothering,” three things “came together in Freud” that were “determinants of creative (p.56) achievement,” the third being “a sudden inner turning away of his mother from her firstborn in the second year of his life” when “his younger brother, Julius, died in infancy, and his mother, then pregnant with her third child, had to cope . . . also with the loss of one of her brothers, who had died almost simultaneously. The mourning work associated with this twofold bereavement must have resulted, at least temporarily, in a quite abrupt diminution of the young mother’s capacity for empathy, thereby unleashing in the infant storms of affect which placed an excessive burden on his budding ego.” Grubich-Simitis accounts for Freud’s “repeated successful attempts to come to terms with an inner state of distress, with mostly unconscious anxieties, never to be entirely allayed, about getting lost, about starving, and about death.”113 The Vermorels likewise build from their own and others’ studies to fill in these gaps.114 The baby Sigmund “must have resented this pregnancy gravely.” If he couldn’t have elaborated them at such a young age, the death wishes would have Page 25 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence been present and all the more active if they remained unconscious.115 It is a matter of violent sentiments toward the pregnant mother, with the difficulty of expressing them taking account of the young older brother’s impotence, and above all the death wishes toward the newborn as a source of guilt. According to Nicolas Abraham, when this traumatic situation is temporary, it can appear like a crypt of the psychic life,116 a sort of momentary syncope of the mental functioning of Freud at his swoons or blackouts, like a reproduction of the wound from the past at the time of separation from friends, such as Fliess and Jung, on whom he had projected an ambivalent maternal transference. The Vermorels then turn to two “complementary” dreams, both featured in the The Interpretation of Dreams and both probably dreams of Freud himself, although he admits this only of the first: the last dream he covers about his “beloved mother,” and the other called “The dead child who burns,” with which he opens his most important theoretical chapter 7, and makes a leitmotif of it there. In this second dream, an infant is dead rather than a mother, while a grandfather is indifferent, sleeping. (p.57) The Vermorels offer interpretations in which the child is more Sigmund than Julius. The fire could be the excitation of mourning. It could be the burning and dangerous heat of maternal love, with its incestuous connotation.117 “Or better, is it the reinvestment of Sigmund by his mother at the end of her mourning? The two dreams thus relate the book’s descent into hell with the danger of confronting the dead mother and brother in the crypt.”118 “In sum,” say the Vermorels, “the infancy of the young genius had to blow on him both hot and cold: maternal love versus mourning. We have had occasion to study this, and note a durable resonance of the confluence with the singularity of certain parental imagos: excessive force of some; sexual dissatisfaction of the parents; too severe a superego, etc.”119 We are, in other words, back to le maternité singulière and not so far from Bose’s Oedipus mother. (p.58) Notes:

(1.) Cf. Parsons 1999a, 19, the second period ending with the publication of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. (2.) Rolland 1924. A flaw in the Vermorels’ book is their statement that Gandhi was assassinated by a Muslim (Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 261). (3.) Parsons 1999a, 222, notes 3 and 4. (4.) This refers to the luncheon meeting arranged on May 14, 1924, by their mutual friend Stefan Zweig, who served as interpreter. See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 236. (5.) Freud’s seventieth, on the day.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (6.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 121. (7.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 492, citing Schur 1972, 104, on Freud’s idealization of Fliess. (8.) See Wangh 1988, 270; Schur 1972, 66, on the “intensity of impact” seen in Freud’s first letter upon meeting Fliess in 1887. (9.) See Schur 1979b, 125; cf. Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 200, 275, 479, 504– 507, 578, on Rolland’s homosexual stirrings. (10.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 275: After their 1924 meeting, Rolland writes: “I am of another race. In the conch of memory, my race carries through the ages the echoes of other voices, the baying of other monsters, and the songs of other gods.” In 1942, Rolland still resists, showing what the Vermorels call “un mode anti-Semite latent.” (11.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 456. (12.) See the asterisks in letters 3, 7, and 9. (13.) Pradip Bhattacharya (email to author, December 19, 2016) writes: “This is Swapna (1928; 4th edition 1980). He gives Freud’s views in brief plus his own different ideas on repression. It has a glossary of 134 psychological terms in Bengali. This became his Manabidyar Paribhasha (glossary of psychology) (1953).” (14.) Probably Bose’s English article “Dreams” (1930b). (15.) Probably scophilia, or “liking to look” (see Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 156); but Bose uses “observationism” for what he earlier called “peeping mania” and “peeping tendency” (Bose 1921, 41–42, 160), or “voyeurism.” (16.) See chapter 7, this volume, as also for letter 19. (17.) Sprengnether 1990, 103; cf. Burke 2006, 268–71 (on Freud’s handling of goddesses in debate with Jung); Gay 1988, 335. (18.) See Sprengnether 1990, 101, 111–12. (19.) IPS [1964] 1999, 19. See letter 17. (20.) Sinha 1966, 430, quotes Freud’s letter without the scare quotes. (21.) On Freud’s view, see Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 134, 139, 156, citing Freud 1953–74, 14:117–40, 139: “Hate, as a relation to objects, is older than love” or “ambivalence is an archaic inheritance” (131), including “both love and hate” (134, 139). Freud 1953–74, 12:323, considers whether “to derive the Page 27 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence capacity for the origin of morality from the fact that in the order of development hate is the precursor of love”—a view of Wilhelm Stekel’s he earlier found “incomprehensible” (325). (22.) Bose 1921, 55. (23.) Bose [1928] 1949, 227, 229–30, 233. (24.) Bose 1933, 123–24. Cf. 1933, 125: “The feeling of pleasure is sui generis.” (25.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 556–58, 572. (26.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 353, mentioning the statuette. (27.) The Vermorels (1993, 504) may get the term from Ilse Barande; see later. Claude Lévi-Strauss sounds out of touch when he introduces Totemism with this double put-down of Freud: “Totemism is like hysteria, in that once we are persuaded to doubt that it is possible arbitrarily to isolate certain phenomena and to group them together as diagnostic signs of an illness, or of an objective institution, the symptoms themselves vanish or appear refractory to any unifying interpretation.” (28.) They cite Freud 1953–74, 14:263–72; see 271. (29.) The translated quotations mixed with summary are from Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 393–95, my italics. On Freud himself as a “group leader,” see Kanzer 1979b. (30.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 554–96. (31.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 500–502, citing Fairbairn 1954 and Jean Bégoin 1987. (32.) Blum 1979, 144. (33.) Freud 1953–1974, 4:245. (34.) Blum 1979, 144. (35.) Blum 1979, 144–45. (36.) Blum 1979, 145. (37.) Blum 1979, 146. (38.) Blum 1979, 150–51. (39.) Blum 1979, 152–53.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (40.) Blum 1972, 156. (41.) Blum 1979, 156. (42.) Schur 1972, 358–59. (43.) Freud 1953–74, 8, 146n2. (44.) On “A Child is Being Beaten” (1919), see chapter 6, this volume; on both “Female Sexuality” (1931) and “Femininity” (1933), see later in this chapter. (45.) Freud 1953–74, 21:265–66; Sprengnether 1990, 158: Freud leans increasingly on the experiences of women analysts. (46.) Sprengnether 1990, 2, and note 3; 158 and 162, for the citation of Freud 1953–74, 21:235. (47.) Freud’s term; see chapter 1, this volume, note 32. The Vermorels discuss twelve such studies (1993, 560–66, 577, 595). (48.) Burke 2006, 207 (49.) Sprengnether 1990, 186n1. (50.) Sprengnether 1990, 297. (51.) See chapter 8, this volume, and M. Vernmorel 1989; Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 494–98. (52.) Reinforcing Sprengnether, see Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 500–501, speaking of “a pretriangulation, that is different from the oedipal triangulation,” as cited earlier. The Vermorels and Sprengnether both revisit “Dora” in a preOedipal light. (53.) Sprengnether 1990, 40. (54.) Cf. Jonte-Pace 1996, 1: not admitting that a counterthesis implies a thesis, she marshals only themes to account for her “counterthesis,” while dismissing the pre-Oedipal; see FM, ch. 3. (55.) Sprengnether 1990, 85. (56.) Sprengnether 1990, 75n28; Sprengnether 1995 offers such a rethinking based on Freud’s early friendships. (57.) Barande 1977, 131. (58.) Barande 2011, ii.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (59.) Shapiro 1956 says that as an art historical study, Freud’s work on Leonardo —beginning with the vulture, for which Freud should have read a kite (150–57)— does not stand up. See also Barande 1977, 55–66; Wohl and Trosman 1955. A loyalist book by Eisler 1961 defends Freud’s interpretation. Anderson then faults Shapiro and Peter Gay (who downgrades Freud’s vulture identification to a “gaffe”; [1988] 2006, 273), pointing out that much that Freud said about vultures, including that they were thought in Leonardo’s time to have been only female, was also said of kites or hawks (Anderson 1994, 63–68). He finds Freud’s reconstruction of Leonardo’s childhood memory heavy-handed, and his evidence that he was homosexual weak. See also Anderson 2001. It is a mistake to play gotcha with Freud to dismiss the study (see Armstrong 2005), which remains full of significance in showing Freud at work. (60.) Barande 1977, 16, on the overlapping dates of the two paintings. (61.) Barande 1977, 16. (62.) Barande 1977, 17, 19. (63.) Barande 1977, 25–32. (64.) Barande changes the second edition’s title to Le maternel au masculin (The Maternal in the Masculine), saying she now “risk[s] a more explicit title, masculinizing its theme without ambiguity for the reader” (2011, i) (65.) Called misleadingly “the feminine rival of Śiva.” (66.) See Barande 1977, 107, on the “Hella” dream; 54 and 117, on the seduction theory. (67.) Barande 1977, 128. (68.) Barande 1977, 54. (69.) See chapter 8, this volume. (70.) See Lewin 1950, 104–109, on “The Wish to be Devoured” and the terms for the two types of nursing babies, adopted by Bateson and Meade (1942) from southern mountain people. A knee-baby sees the mother’s face while it is stood on her knees (their italics) (71.) Barande 1977, 22–23. (72.) I use Freud’s distinctive names for these paintings. At the Louvre, the first is called The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; the second was originally called Saint John the Baptist in the Desert, then Bacchus in a Landscape, and sometimes John the Baptist (Bacchus).

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (73.) This paragraph summarizes Freud 1953–74, 11:112–17, with the quotations not in Freud’s sequence; my italics. (74.) See note 59, this chapter; see Freud 1953–74, 11:82–92 (Part 2 of “Leonardo”). (75.) Freud 1953–74, 11: 117. (76.) Barande 1977, 52. (77.) Barande 1977, 25. (78.) As Appignanesi and Forrester 1993, 12, say, for Freud “it is the mother who is the object of the child’s positive and passionate desires, his or her incestuous desires,” italics in original. (79.) Barande 1977, 52. (80.) Barande 1977, 128; ellipsis as in Barande. (81.) Barande 1977. 22 (82.) Barande 1977, 133. (83.) Barande 1977, 22. (84.) Barande 1977. (85.) Barande, whose mother tongue was German, cites a German clause to illustrate the passage’s “moving texture” (1977, 75, and notes 10 and 11). (86.) Freud 1953–74, 11:131–32; cf. Barande 1977, 75. (87.) Freud 1953–74, 11:133; cf. Barande 1977, 76. (88.) Barande 1977, 77. (89.) Barande 1977, 77. (90.) Barande 1997, 109–10 (in quotation marks but unattributed). (91.) Barande 1977, 109–11. (92.) Barande 1977, 111. (93.) Barande 1977, 47–48; 2011, 47–48. (94.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 404, 435: “déblocker.” (95.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 404. Page 31 of 33

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (96.) Those I have consulted who write about “Disturbance” making other points about Julius are Schur 1972, 12–13 117–24, 162–71, 360, 452, 490; 1979b; Bernfeld 1951; Harrison 1977; Kanzer 1969, 1979a, 1979b; Shengold 1979b; Raphael-Neff 1990, 2007; and Steinberger 1997. Studies with significant things to say about Julius unconcerned with “Disturbance” include Blum 1979; GrubichSimitis 1996, 78–79; Atwood and Storolow 1999, 39–49, and Breger 2000, 10–20. Others consulted on “Disturbance” who make important points about it irrespective of Julius include Anderegg 2006; Bonomi 2013; Flannery 1980; Harrison 1966,` 1975; Masson and Masson 1978; Niederland 1969; Shengold 1979b; Slochower 1970, 1971; Stamm 1979; and Sugarman 1998. (97.) See Kanzer 1969, 337–52. (98.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 533. (99.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 467. (100.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 467. (101.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 468. (102.) See Schur 1972, 117, aware that he is dealing with “early experiences [that] are usually ‘screen memories.’ ” But see Schur 1979b, 125: writing after 1912, Freud insists, “This reconstruction did reach the deepest, dynamically crucial point.” (103.) Armstrong 2005, 16, citing Masson 1985, 268. (104.) Schur 1972, 235–36, referring to Freud 1953–74, 4:252. (105.) Freud, “Femininity” (1953–74, 22:121–23); ellipses added. (106.) Breger 2000, 14. (107.) Freud, “Femininity” (1953–74, 22:129); see Strachey’s editorial note 2 about three earlier, less vivid statements of this point. (108.) Breger 2000, 19. (109.) Breger 2000, 14. (110.) Breger 2000, 21. (111.) Raphael-Leff 2007, 1346. (112.) Raphael-Leff 1990, 325. (113.) Grubich-Simitis 1996, 77–79.

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Restoration of the Bose–Freud Correspondence (114.) They cite several authors, including Schur 1972, 170ff. (115.) For a mistaken view, I believe, see Krüll 1986, 133: because “Sigmund could not have put his feelings about his brother into words,’ he probably “was jealous not of Julius, but of Anna.” Krüll’s reading is about Freud keeping a mysterious secret of his father’s. (116.) Citing Abraham 1982. (117.) Cf. Shengold 1979b, 57–58, for whom the child’s statement, “Father, don’t you see I’m burning” is Freud’s unfolding metaphor for a burning desire to journey over and through the mother’s body. (118.) Summarizing Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 485–89. (119.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 489.

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D.

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords Chapter 3 treats the final periods of both the Bose–Freud and Rolland–Freud correspondences, which peter out as Freud leaves thoughts of India behind for his final book, Moses and Monotheism, in which he gives nearly full attention to Judaism. In Rolland’s case, Freud probably tried to rekindle the friendship with his open letter, “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis,” about which Roland was cold and nearly mute. With Bose, ostensibly things ended because of Bose’s not complying with Freud’s request for an article on “opposite wishes” for one of Freud’s European journals. But Freud’s verbal exchanges with the poet H. D. about Bose’s gift, the Viṣṇu statuette on Freud’s desk, give evidence of Freud’s loss of esteem for Bose and suggest that Freud thought that, like H. D., Bose had a maternal transference on him. Bose took the falling-out poorly, and in a 1938 article, before Freud’s death, debunked Freud’s second topography of the ego, id, and super-ego. Keywords:   “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, ” opposite wishes, H. D, Tribute to Freud, Viṣṇu, maternal transference, Bose, “Mechanism of Defiance, ” Freud’ssecond topography

IT IS NOW time to intercalate the two correspondences more deeply. I begin with Rolland’s letter upon receipt of Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, now in

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. period 2 of their correspondence. I end chapter 3 discussing the final, third period of both correspondences. Period 2 10. Rolland to Freud December 5, 1927 “I thank you for being so kind as to send me your lucid and spirited little book. With a calm good sense, and in a moderate tone, it pulls off the blindfolding bandage of the eternal adolescents, which we all are, whose amphibian spirit floats between the illusion of yesterday and . . . the illusion of tomorrow.[1] Your analysis of religion is a just one. But I would have liked to see you doing an analysis of spontaneous religious sentiment or, more exactly, of religious feeling, which is wholly different from religions in the strict sense of the word, and much more (p.60) durable. What I mean is: totally independent of all dogma, all credo, all Church organization, all Sacred Books, all hope in personal survival, etc., the simple and direct fact of the feeling of the ‘eternal’ (which can very well not be eternal, but simply without perceptible limits, and like oceanic, as it were). This sensation, admittedly, is of a subjective character. But as it is common to thousands (millions) of men actually existing, with its thousands (millions) of individual nuances, it is possible to subject it to analysis, with an approximate certitude. . . . I have often had occasion to observe its rich and beneficent power, be it among the religious souls of the West, Christians or non-Christians, or among those great minds of Asia who have become so familiar to me and some of whom I count as friends.” In a future book, Rolland will study “two personalities who were almost our contemporaries,” Swamis Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, whose teachings “proved strongly regenerating for their country and for the world. I myself am familiar with this sensation. All through my life, it has never failed me, and I have always found it a source of renewal. In that sense, I can say that I am profoundly ‘religious’—without this constant state (like a sheet of water which I feel flushing under the bark) affecting in any way my critical faculties and my freedom to exercise them—even if that goes against the immediacy of the inner experience. In this way, without discomfort or contradiction, I can lead a ‘religious’ life (in the sense of that prolonged feeling) and a life of critical reason (which is without illusion). I may add that this ‘oceanic’ sentiment has nothing to do with my personal yearnings. Personally, I yearn for eternal rest; survival has no attraction for me at all. But the sentiment I experience is imposed on me as a fact. It is a contact.”

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. Having “recognized it to be identical (with multiple nuances) in a large number of living souls, it has helped” Rolland to see it as “the true subterranean source of religious energy” that the Churches have “collected, canalized, and dried up, . . . to the extent that one could say that it is inside the Churches (whichever they may be) that the true ‘religious’ sentiment is least available. What eternal confusion is caused by words, of which the same one here sometimes means: allegiance to or faith in a dogma, or a word of god (or a tradition); and sometimes: a free vital upsurge. . . . ”2 (p.61) 11. Freud to Rolland July 14, 1929 “Your letter of December 5, 1927, containing your remarks about a feeling you describe as ‘oceanic’ has left me no peace.” Freud says that “in a new work which lies before me uncompleted,” he starts out mentioning “this ‘oceanic’ feeling, . . . trying to interpret it from the point of view of our psychology. . . . I don’t mention your name but nevertheless drop a hint that points to you.” Freud is now “beset with doubts whether I am justified in using your private remark for publication in this way.” He would “refrain from using it” if it is “contrary to your wishes,” and could supply “another introduction without any loss. . . . ” Freud’s “hint” that his unnamed friend is Rolland is to be found in Civilization and its Discontents’ initial dedication: “The Landtier to his great Oceanic Friend.” 12. Rolland to Freud July 17, 1929 Rolland is “much honored” to have “prompted you to new researches . . . [on] the questions I have posed you.” He gives Freud permission, but since over a year has passed, “I no longer remember very exactly the text of my letter. I was then no doubt at the beginning of my long studies of the Hindu mind, which I am going to publish in a few months, in three volumes devoted to ‘Mysticism and action in living India.’ Since 1927 I have been able to delve deeply into that ‘oceanic’ sentiment, innumerable examples of which I find not only among hundreds of our contemporary Asians, but also in what I might call the ritualistic and multi-secular physiology which is codified in treatises on yoga. At the end of my work, while reading, for comparison, some of the great mystics of Europe, . . . I was surprised to observe once again, that it is not at all true that the East and West are two worlds separated from each other, but that both are the branches of the Page 3 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. same river of thought. And I have recognized in both the same ‘river ocean’. . . .”[3] Rolland will send Freud “my work when it is published. . . .” (p.62) 13. Freud to Rolland July 20, 1929 Freud will not accept Rolland’s “permission” until Rolland has “reread” his letter, “which I enclose herewith. I possess so few letters from you that I do not like the idea of renouncing the return of this, your first one. I am not normally a hunter of relics, so please forgive this weakness.” Freud is glad to hear that Rolland’s “book will appear before my small effort. . . . But please don’t expect from it any evaluation of the ‘oceanic’ feeling. I am experimenting only with an analytic version of it, I am clearing it out of the way, so to speak. How remote from me are the worlds in which you move. To me mysticism is just as closed a book as music. I cannot imagine reading all the literature which, according to your letter, you have studied. And yet it is easier for you than for us to read the human soul.” David Fisher says Freud’s letter shows him “confused”: dating back to 1923, this was Rolland’s fourth letter, not his first. Fisher thinks “Freud’s display of possessiveness, the awkwardness of his prose, followed by the uncharacteristic lapse of memory, suggest resistance vis-à-vis Rolland’s letter.”4 14. Rolland to Freud July 24, 1929 Rolland returns the letter. “It conveys very accurately my present feelings, and I have nothing which I wish to change or add to it. I can hardly believe that mysticism and music are unknown to you. Because ‘Nothing human is unknown to you.’ Rather, I think you distrust them, because you uphold the integrity of critical reason, with which you control the instrument. As for me, since birth I have taken part in both the intuitive and critical natures. . . . ‘The harmony between the opposing forces is that which is the most beautiful.’[5] The great words of Heraclitus that I have made mine.” (p.63) 15. Freud to Rolland January 19, 1930 “My warm thanks for the gift of your twin-headed three-volume work. Contrary to my calculation, my ‘discontented’ little book preceded yours by several weeks. I shall now try with your guidance to penetrate into the Indian jungle from which until now an uncertain blending of Hellenic love Page 4 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. of proportion—σωφροσύνη—, Jewish sobriety, and philistine timidity have kept me away. I really ought to have tackled it earlier, for the plants of this soil shouldn’t be alien to me; I have dug to certain depths for their roots. But it isn’t easy to pass beyond the limits of one’s nature. Of course I soon discovered the section of the book most interesting to me—the beginning, in which you come to grips with us extreme rationalists. That you call me ‘grand’ here I have taken quite well; I cannot object to your irony when it is mixed with so much amiability.” Freud remarks on Rolland’s “criticism of psychoanalysis,” first chiding him for drawing on “the distinction between extrovert and introvert,” which “derives from C. G. Jung, who is a bit of a mystic himself and hasn’t belonged to us for years. . . . We seem to diverge rather far in the role we assign to intuition. Your mystics rely on it to teach them how to solve the riddle of the universe; we believe it cannot reveal to us anything but primitive, instinctual impulses and attitudes—highly valuable for an embryology of the soul when correctly interpreted, but worthless for orientation in the alien, external world. . . . It would be pleasant to discuss all this. From a distance a cordial salutation is better than polemics. Just one more thing. I am not an out-and-out skeptic. Of one thing I am absolutely positive: there are certain things we cannot know now.” In a 1931 footnote, Freud added that since both works were now published, “I no longer need hide the fact that the friend spoken of” in Civilization and its Discontents “is Romain Rolland.”6 Only once it was published and sent to Rolland on March 18, 1931,7 could Rolland see what Freud was up to. Freud begins with Rolland’s letter, which (p. 64) “entirely agreed” with The Future of an Illusion’s analysis of the religion of the “common man,” but went on to point out that Freud had overlooked that an “oceanic feeling” was “the true source of religious sentiments. . . . a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were ‘oceanic,’ a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without.” Freud describes the friend as one of the “exceptional few” who rejects “false standards of measurement” by wealth and power, whose greatness lays in “attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude.” Freud then takes on the oceanic feeling. First, he says that because it is resistant to analysis, “nothing remains but to fall back on the ideational content that is most associated with the feeling. . . . It is a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with external world as a whole.”8 William Parsons insists that Freud admits “that although it was recalcitrant to analysis, a psychoanalytic interpretation was possible if one seized upon its central ‘ideational’ content,” about which Freud had not used the word central. Parsons then calls it the “essential characteristic”: “This understanding of the essential characteristic of the oceanic feeling stressed its statelike character.”9 Page 5 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. But what Freud goes on to “remark” is that the feeling “seems something rather in the nature of an intellectual perception, which is not, it is true, without an accompanying feeling tone, but only such as would be present with any other act of thought of equal range. From my own experience I could not convince myself of the primary nature of any such a feeling.”10 For Parsons, however, Freud’s alleged emphasis on the statelike character of the “oceanic feeling” was maintained over what Rolland had stressed was “its ‘subterranean’ origin, and thus mitigated any attempt to interpret it with respect to the unconscious. Rather,” says Parsons, “Freud employed another strategy: his theory of pre-Oedipal development.”11 But if Freud is thinking pre-Oedipally, which I believe may be granted, this argument makes an unlikely “divide-toconquer” assumption:12 that (p.65) because Freud does not “attempt” an unconscious explanation, he would use a pre-Oedipal construct without meaning one. Freud goes on to say, “An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him. . . . Originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself.”13 The “sensations flowing” into the all-including ego would include unconscious ones. Basically, then, Freud psychoanalyzes this feeling as one that would arise as the ego differentiates itself from the mother’s breast, yet continues to sense a oneness with everything in nature;14 a feeling, he adds, that “only one state . . . —an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological”—approximates: “At the height of being in love the bond between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of the senses, a man who is in love declares that ‘I’ and ‘you’ are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.”15 Having acquiesced to Rolland’s idea and admitted the existence of an oceanic feeling, he will thus give it a place in his metapsychology. But this does not prove the “claim” that it is “the source of religious needs.”16 For Freud, the father’s preeminence remains decisive:17 The derivation of religious needs from the infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it remains incontrovertible, especially since the feeling is not simply prolonged from childhood days, but is permanently sustained by fear of the superior power of Fate. I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.18 (p.66) Freud is now at the point where he will be “clearing” the oceanic feeling “out of the way, so to speak”: Thus the part played by the oceanic feeling, which might seek something like the restoration of limitless narcissism, is ousted from its place in the foreground. The origin of the religious attitude can be traced back in clear

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. outline to the feeling of infantile helplessness. There may be something further behind that, but for the present it is wrapped in obscurity.19 But does Freud leave an opening in this last sentence?20 16. Rolland to Freud May 3, 1931 Rolland sends wishes for Freud’s seventy-fifth birthday. “May you continue to pursue your intrepid work for a long time to come, work that only passion for the search of truth can guide—without desire, without hope, without fear! And allow me to say (in thanking you for having wanted to associate my name with your recent book . . . ) that it is by these last words (“without desire, without hope, without fear”) that I feel morally the closest to you. Your kind dedication juxtaposes with an affectionate irony the ‘Landtier’ with the ‘Oceanic’ friend.” But Rolland says he too is “a Landtier from the French countryside, from the core of Old France, who seems best protected from the ocean breezes! And I am an old Frenchman who is able to see through illusions, who is able to bear life without them, who no longer needs them. . . . I distinguish very clearly in myself: (1) what I feel; (2) what I know; (3) what I desire. What I feel, I have told you, and I have explained it in the introduction to Ramakrishna: it is the (p.67) Oceanic. What I know, it is the: ‘What do I know?’ of Montaigne. And what I desire, is Nothing . . . (Nothing, for me).[21] As for others, may their desires be fulfilled. But I do not aspire to anything more, for myself, other than repose and effacement, unlimited and total” . . . “I am therefore telling you about my feeling—or intuition—(or whatever one calls it)—‘Oceanic’—is absolutely disinterested. I state it, but I am not particular about it. It (the feeling) is a psychological fact, a vital trait of my character. But the curious thing is that this vital trait is, imprinted on the brow of thousands of these Europeans and earthly ‘Landtier,’ who for the most part know nothing about Asia—or even about any Ocean! Since the appearance of my ‘Oceanic’ works, letters have come forth from all corners of the earth (including your Austria), like a gushing of waters that had been suppressed.” Such “forces . . . are not born of a particular period of time They go back as far as I can drive my borer into the past centuries of Europe and Asia. It would be dangerous for the philosopher and man of action to ignore them. Moreover, their existence does not establish, to any great degree (in my eyes), their truth. It only establishes their reality.” 17. Freud to Rolland May 1931

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. “You answered my pleasantry with the most precious information about your own person. My profound thanks. . . . Approaching life’s inevitable end, reminded of it by yet another operation, and aware that I am unlikely to see you again, I may confess to you that I have rarely experienced that mysterious attraction of one human being for another as vividly as I have with you; it is somehow bound up, perhaps, with the awareness of our being so different. Farewell!” There are evident correlations between the two correspondences, and one for which we shall have to delve. Among the evident, Freud’s January 1930 letter can be correlated with a period in his Bose correspondence that seems to find Freud and Bose at their most cordial, but also exploring differences. Freud writes to Rolland less than eight months after the April 1929 letter in which Bose airs his differing views on the Oedipus (p.68) mother and the maternal deity, makes his observations about his Indian patients being less prone to the castration threat than his European ones, and defends his theory of opposite wishes, which Freud answers in May, accentuating the theory of opposite wishes. But being “fully impressed by the difference in the castration reaction” raises the question of what that impression might have meant to Freud. Although Freud is not known to have taken note of generalizable differences between European and Asian (e.g., Indian) patients, he might have anticipated that such differences, if confirmed, could be of interest to other analysts. Or he might have deemed it an interesting enough difference to provoke questions regarding its cultural background. The latter holds the most likely possibility of engaging Freud. For in his January 1930 letter to Rolland, Freud responded to Rolland’s “enchantment with Indian culture” (as Hartnack puts it22), saying he would “now try with your guidance to penetrate the Indian jungle.” The possibility of drawing on Rolland’s fascination with India would be short-lived, since Rolland would abandon his Indian interests in 1931 with the rise of Hitler.23 It is unlikely Freud intended his comment about the Indian jungle as “a joke,”24 but he could not have been very serious about it, either. Ever the taskmaster in his letters to Bose, Freud never entertained a thought of what Bose could have offered in the way of “guidance” in the “Indian jungle.” Freud never mentions Bose in his letters to Rolland, or Rolland in his letters to Bose. Freud states an interest in India, but through European rather than Indian eyes. “I really ought to have tackled it earlier. Until now an uncertain blending of Hellenic love of proportion —σωφροσύνη—, Jewish sobriety, and philistine timidity have kept me away.” His constraints were entirely Mediterranean. Both Bose and Rolland prepared carefully worded disagreements with Freud, which in both cases Freud deflected. To what Bose says with his novel wording about the Oedipus mother, Freud only remarks that he “is fully impressed by the difference in the castration reaction,” but detours to promise to keep his Page 8 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. “attention fixed on the problem of the opposite wish” (p.69) that Bose “accentuates.” In Rolland’s case, Freud tells him, “don’t expect from it any evaluation of the ‘oceanic’ feeling. . . . I am clearing it out of the way, so to speak.” Martin Wangh observes that “the German original of this final sentence is much harsher: ‘ich räume es mir sozusagen aus dem Weg.’ The German phrasing points to a strong feeling of urgency and annoyance about what seems to be an obstacle.”25 Both Bose and Rolland would likely have been disappointed, but only Rolland found words to deflect Freud’s disinterest cordially in his May 31, 1931, letter about being a French “Landtier.” Freud’s letter to Rolland after publication of Civilization and its Discontents, begun with his discussion of Rolland’s concept of the “oceanic feeling” as the true source off all religions, comes perhaps four or five months before Bose’s next undated letter sent in May 1930, in which Bose congratulates Freud on his seventy-fifth birthday and describes the Viṣṇu statuette and the parcel of gifts sent to him. This gift brings me to the connection for which one has to delve. Freud begins his July 1929 letter to Rolland by telling him, “your remarks about a feeling you describe as ‘oceanic’ has left me no peace.” The Vermorels say that in Rolland’s December 1927 letter, his sometimes diffluent pen is “alert and concise; directed in precise fashion to his correspondent, it could not miss hitting the bull’s eye.”26 This registers that the “oceanic feeling” produced a consternation in Freud that lasted the seventeen months between those letters. It includes the time Freud spent on writing Civilization and Its Discontents. It thus looks as if the opening Freud left after he had “cleared the oceanic feeling out of the way, so to speak” registers this finding of “no peace.” If the “origin of the religious attitude can be traced back . . . to the feeling of infantile helplessness,” the “something” that “may be . . . further behind that, but for the present . . . wrapped in obscurity” would have to be the pre-Oedipal infantile helplessness of the nursling at the breast of le maternel singulier or Bose’s “Oedipus mother.” Moreover, Bose’s Viṣṇu statuette and Rolland’s “oceanic feeling” are likely to recall the same Indian iconography and mythology. Since I believe that Freud had come to think of the “oceanic feeling” as an inexhaustible, (p.70) if not altogether gratifying, gift by the time he acknowledged it with “Disturbance,” we may say that Bose and Rolland gave Freud variations of the same gift. I leave for chapters 7 through 9 a demonstration that the statuette of Viṣṇu Anantadeva seated on the coils of the serpent Śeṣa or Ananta is inter-referential with two iconographies: with Viṣṇu lying on Śeṣa as his serpent couch (Viṣṇu as Śeṣaśāyin), and with the baby Kṛṣṇa lying on a banyan leaf (Vaṭapatraśāyin). In both cases, this is on the oceanic waters of the dissolution of the universe.

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. As to Rolland’s usage of the oceanic feeling, in attempting to trace it to texts probably known to Swami Ramakrishna, Jeffrey Masson identifies “certain invariable themes occurring over and over again: feelings of sadness and of an awareness of transience; feelings of disgust with the world or of worldweariness; the pull of the long sleep, of death; world-destruction fantasies; nostalgia.” He finds “these themes which seem to be related not only to each other, but also to the oceanic feeling,” encapsulated in a Mahābhārata (hereafter, Mbh) that provides “the very first recorded mention of Viṣṇu and his māyā, his ‘power of illusion.’ ”27 These “themes” give way toward the end of Masson’s discussion to “moods and feelings that cluster around” depersonalization, such as derealization and déjà vu.28 Thus, Masson lines things up with three of the stated themes, including derealization, in Freud’s “Disturbance,” in which Freud returns to working out his response to Rolland’s oceanic feeling. In Masson’s selected passage,29 King Yudhiṣṭhira addresses the antediluvian Ṛṣi Mārkaṇḍeya, asking him to tell “what you alone have experienced” as a witness to repeated dissolutions (pralayas) and recreations of the universe. Mārkaṇḍeya describes his ordeal of anxiously swimming alone in the “single ocean” of the pralaya until he notices a baby sitting on a leaf of a tall banyan tree. The baby swallows Mārkaṇḍeya. It is Kṛṣṇa as Vaṭapatraśāyin. Mārkaṇḍeya sees the whole universe in the baby deity’s body just as he had left it before the waters of dissolution (p.71) came. After wandering about inside the baby’s vastness, he reemerges from his mouth, does homage to him, and asks about his māyā, which Kṛṣṇa, revealing himself to be Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa, says he uses to create and destroy beings.30 The adult Kṛṣṇa overhears this narrative.31 He is with the five Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī in the forest while Mārkaṇḍeya divulges these mysteries about him, after which Mārkaṇḍeya invites the five and Draupadī to take refuge in “the same” Kṛṣṇa who is seated with them.32 Masson cites V. S. Sukthankar’s retelling, which emphasizes that “Mārkaṇḍeya could not at all imagine how that little helpless child could have survived all that cataclysmal devastation.”33 Fatherless and seemingly “helpless” on the oceanic waters, Kṛṣṇa Vaṭapatraśāyin —we may say—is Viṣṇu’s manifestation as the divine all-devouring pre-Oedipal baby. Of course, we are dealing with authors who may not have known this myth or iconography. But Bose is likely to have known it. There was more than one nineteenth-century Bengali translation of the Mahābhārata, and of course as a text it was culturally “in the air.”34 Freud was impressed by Rolland’s readings on India, and it is likely Rolland would have encountered the story somewhere. But he has left no record that I can find of it.35 However, there is a remarkable passage he wrote immediately after his visit to Freud on May 14, 1924.36 It is from his Vie intérieure, a work of self-analysis written under Freud’s inspiration, which Rolland never showed to Freud and did not publish until, (p.72)

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. unfinished, he did so in 1942.37 Rolland reconstructs, or reimagines, his infantile memories: What strikes me, in reporting my regards toward that far distant epoch, is the enormity of the Ego (Moi).[38] From the first second that it emerges from the abyss, it surges like a flower of a giant water-lily (nénuphar), which goes beyond the pond. The infant cannot measure the extent, such as I can do today: for one does not take consciousness of it except to the measure that one jostles the linings of life; they force the spread-out cotolla to twist, immense and suspended between sky and waters. These repeated tests make it so that for the long years that the growing of the body lasts, the “ego” (“moi”) contracts. It is only after the end of adolescence that it recovers full possession of its shell. But it never recovers the oceanic plenitude of its first days. The moral being of the little one is without proportion with its miniscule height. The rare illuminations which bore into the twilight of memory, to the far horizons, show me the giant Ego (Moi) which is enthroned on a grain of life.39 It is as if Rolland had been meditating on a Śeṣaśāyin/Anantaśāyin oleograph, concentrating on Brahmā in the cup of the lotus that surges vertically from Viṣṇu’s navel, but also on Viṣṇu as he lies filling the horizons. (p.73) Rolland registers the “moral” magnitude he himself had as a pre-Oedipal baby over against the shell he put on with adolescence. But a still more interesting question is, What did Freud know? We know that on December 3, 1931, Freud wrote to Bose, “The statuette is charming. I gave it the place of honor on my desk.” We know that he kept it in that position over a year later when, on Thursday, March 2, 1933, during H. D.’s second appointment with him, Freud took me into the other room and showed me the things on his table. He took the ivory Vishnu with the upright serpents and canopy of snake heads, and put it into my hands. . . . The Vishnu was set in the center with the statues arranged either side.40 A week later, on March 9, H. D. wrote, “Today there are red tulips on the famous table with the row or semicircle, Osiris, Isis, Athené, and the others, with the ivory Vishnu in the center.”41 H. D. “wondered if the seated Vishnu . . . belonged there in the center by right of precedence or preference or because of its shape.” Was placing it in H. D.’s hands and then putting it back in position without comment indicative that Freud had nothing important to say about it, as he did about his little Athena: “ ‘She is perfect,’ he said, ‘only she has lost her spear.’ ”42 Was he keeping Viṣṇu in his “place of honor” simply to recall “the progress of psychoanalysis” and “the proud conquests it has made in foreign countries” and the kindnesses it had aroused? as he had said he would in his Page 11 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. acknowledgment of the gift? Perhaps, given Freud’s illness, it was the best he could do just to revive his self-image of a conquistador who would remember his pledge to keep Viṣṇu in place. Yet it is hard to imagine Freud looking daily at this Viṣṇu statuette without forming some research-based impression of it. Rolland did not refer to the oceanic scenes about Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa in his Ramakrishna and Vivekananda books, but one may wonder what Freud might have gathered from them. Did he use them to “try with your guidance to penetrate the Indian jungle?” Freud never comments again to Rolland on Rolland’s three books. As the Vermorels note, Freud quickly “discovered the section of the book most interesting to me—the (p.74) beginning, in which you come to grips with us extreme rationalists. That you call me ‘grand’ here I have taken quite well; I cannot object to your irony when it is mixed with such amiability.” A page at “the beginning” mentions those “who live in a state of suprarational conscience: socialists, communists, humanitarians, nationalists— even rationalists.”43 That, however, is not what Freud is recalling. The section that most interested Freud was one he could still have found quickly, in an appendix to the third volume. Here Rolland makes a convoluted but stinging assessment of Freud. In opposition to an effort like that of Shri Aurobindo Ghosh “to reintegrate a generative intuition with its legitimate place at the forefront of the spirit’s march toward the scientific conquest of the universe,” we have “the disdainful gesture of the exclusive rationalists, and in particular the psychopathologists, who throw discredit upon ‘the criterion of intellectual satisfaction’ or, as the grand Freud says, with an austere scorn, ‘the pleasure principle,’ which in his eyes belongs to the ‘maladjusted’—that is, they think it is much less in the service of the ‘real’ than a haughty and puritanical faith, of which they no longer discern the prevention, for it is natural to them.”44 One wonders whether Freud was being forgiving, or again forgetful, in calling Rolland “amiable.” What did Freud think of the rest of Rolland’s study? As the Vermorels indicate, Anna Freud told Masson that she wasn’t sure her father had read all three volumes.45 Masson actually says, “Miss Anna Freud informs me that she does not believe that Freud read, in fact, the three volumes on Ramakrishna that Rolland sent him.”46 That Freud might not have read most of Rolland’s study does not suit Parsons, who reads their whole correspondence—on through “Disturbance”—as an ongoing “dialogue” or “debate” about mysticism. He takes Freud’s same January 1930 letter as evidence of his dialogical intention, remarking on his dissenting view of intuition and his aside on Jung, about which Rolland comments in a separate letter “that Freud’s reference to Jung ‘smells of excommunication.’ ”47 Freud is cautioning Rolland’s enthusiasm for intuition and suggesting an affinity between Rolland and Jung as “mystics.” (p.75) But there are serious problems to viewing their correspondence as an ongoing debate or dialogue about mysticism. In this same context, Parsons says, “This letter also undermines Masson’s assertion that Freud never read Rolland’s Page 12 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. biographies.” Parsons takes Freud’s impression of the vastness of Rolland’s readings on India, which he remarks on before the three volumes get to him, as evidence that Freud would have read through the books. Parsons distorts Masson’s statement, leaving out that his “assertion” (which is more of a report) follows from, and is based on, his questioning of Anna Freud, whose part in this Parsons does not even mention. Most likely Masson, while he was head of the Freud Archives in London, asked Anna Freud why Rolland’s volumes in the Archives looked unread. Masson, who edited the Freud–Fliess correspondence in 1985, knew that when Freud was working on The Interpretation of Dreams, he had underlined in Jacob Burkhardt’s History of Greek Civilization. In early 1899, Freud wrote to Fliess that he was “deep into” the book, which, says Armstrong, “is borne out by the evidence of his underlining throughout his copy.”48 “In a passage stressing his own commitment to primary sources,” Freud underlines the following in a Burkhardt passage: What should impel us to read the whole of an author’s work is the perception that only we can find what is important to us. No work of reference can possibly produce by means of excerpts that chemical reaction between a piece of information we have discovered for ourselves, and our own dim foreknowledge of it that makes it our own intellectual property.49 Freud thus suggests his own reading practice, from which we can infer why Masson considered it worth reporting that Anna Freud did “not believe that Freud read, in fact, the three volumes.” If Freud did not read through Rolland’s books on Indian mystics but only thumbed through most of their pages, it could be because Freud could see there was nothing in their “excerpts” that he could make his own “intellectual property.” Rolland’s (p.76) study did not offer philological criticism or a cultural history of India of the type Freud admired that he could excavate or call “mine.”50 Rolland’s three volumes discuss wellresearched facets of Indian history; for instance, his treatment of Ramakrishna’s debts to Caitanya, and his dealings with leaders of the Brahmosamaj (including Keshub Candra Sen) and the Aryasamaj.51 It is doubtful that anyone in the 1920s could have produced a Burkhardt-like cultural history of India that would have engaged Freud as “mine.” A. L. Basham did not publish The Wonder that Was India until 1954. Yet although one cannot say that Freud’s attentions to India were extensive or deep, Freud was not without some resources of his own to relate to the oceanic feeling and possibly even to the Viṣṇu he honored on his desk. Armstrong says, “Freud certainly did not ignore the great spiritual traditions of India.” Armstrong cites the nirvana principle in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and a comparison of cosmogonies in Plato and the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad.52 But Page 13 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. these are more side glances than evidence of interest in India’s “great spiritual traditions.” When Freud wrote to Rolland “the plants of this soil shouldn’t be alien to me. I have dug to certain depths for their roots,”53 there had been no known follow-up. Yet at the end of Civilization and Its Discontents’ first chapter on the oceanic feeling, Freud recalls another friend of mine, whose insatiable craving for knowledge has led him to make the most unusual experiment . . . [has] assured me that through the practices of Yoga, by withdrawing from the world, by fixing the attention on bodily functions and by peculiar methods of breathing, one can in fact evoke new sensations and coenaesthesias in oneself, which he regards as regressions to primordial states of mind which have long ago been overlaid.54 According to the Vermorels, this second friend was probably Frederick Eckstein, brother of Emma, who was a Buddhist “for a while.”55 Freud (p.77) concludes his chapter allowing that “it would not be hard to find connections here with a number of obscure modifications of mental life, such as trances and ecstasies. But I am moved to exclaim with the words of Schiller’s diver;—‘Let him rejoice who breathes up here in the roseate light.’ ” With these words, Freud most likely recalls the warning he reportedly gave to the young university student Bruno Goetz, who claimed that in 1904–1905, Freud told him during their conversations to steer clear of the Bhagavad Gītā and avoid the fate of the diver who does not return from his second dive, for the deep is full of monsters.56 As the Vermorels say, Several times Freud indicates a malaise with the oceanic feeling, which he does not perceive in himself. But this denegation is close to that in “The ‘Uncanny,’ ” where he analyzes at length the uncanny sentiment, at first denied and then attached to the fantasy of life in the mother’s womb. The association of these two themes could clear up Freud’s malaise, and put to the proof the evocation of Schiller in affronting the maternal body.57 Freud’s evocation of Schiller’s diver in Civilization and Its Discontents is thus likely to recall his earlier reference to the Bhagavad Gītā, the centerpiece of the larger Mahābhārata that includes the myths of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin and Kṛṣṇa Vaṭapatraśāyin, which the Bhagavad Gītā itself may thus be said to allude to.58 Freud could thus have related his statuette to the Gītā alone and still have had a sense of its cosmological context. It is now time to wrap up my summarizing by turning to both exchanges’ last years. The span of time in question also permits me to discuss Freud’s 1933–34 work with H. D. I start with the last period of the Freud–Rolland letters, sparse as it is. Since Freud’s last letter of March 1931, which thanked Rolland for being so open about Freud’s evocation of the “Landtier,” their correspondence had Page 14 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. gone fallow for nearly five years, until Freud resumed it with a telegram that accompanied his gift of “Disturbance” for Rolland’s seventieth birthday. (p.78) Period 3 16. Freud to Rolland January 29, 1936 “Best wishes from your faithful friend. Sigmund Freud” [a telegram sent with “Disturbance”]. “Disturbance,” written for a collection to celebrate Rolland’s seventieth birthday, is too long at six pages, too complex, too important, and utterly too packed to summarize. The Vermorels say, “The content of the text transforms the 1904 voyage from Trieste to Athens into a mythic Odyssey, the creation of psychoanalysis as the accomplishment of the interior voyage of its author.” It unfolds in a heroic mode, reviving the romantic spirit the two men share. “It plunges into Greek mythology—reinterpreted into modern times—a source common to the two men, not without Freud’s Jewishness uncannily profiling itself.”59 They further make four points about it: 1. The text is structured as an analytic session (séance);[60] addressed to his double—Rolland—placed in the position of analyst; it gives Freud, by a cross-step, the role of writer in one of his most beautiful writings. 2. This ending of the self-analytic process by letters and works from 1923–36 goes from the illusion of the oceanic feeling to the retrospective analysis of the event of 1904. The person and the (oceanic) remarks of Rolland furnished a support and associations, permitting Freud to unblock [de déblocker] an until-now unfruitful self-analysis. 3. As a résumé and development of Freud’s self-analysis since its origins, this open letter embraces the life and entire work of Freud. It drives toward an afterstroke examination of the trouble du souvenir that is progressive, but lateral and displaced, in the full entirety of the Freudian oeuvre, notably as what is called applied psychoanalysis. 4. It relates the self-analysis with Rolland back to the primordial one with Fliess; it is at the very moment of the rupture with Fliess that the situation of strangeness at the Acropolis occurs.61 (p.79) 17. Rolland to Freud February 8, 1936

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. “I cannot tell you how much I was touched by your participation on the occasion of my birthday. Of all the reasons I have to be thankful to Stephan Zweig, the least of them is not for having introduced us, for it is from this meeting ten years ago that our friendship was born. You know what respect I have for the man I have admired for so long, whose fearless glance is able to penetrate into the depths of the interior abyss. I am happy and proud to have his friendship. . . .” 18a. Rolland to Freud May 6, 1936 An “autographed note . . . elicited by Stephan Zweig for Freud’s birthday.”62 19. Freud to Rolland May 1936 “I want to thank you cordially for the part you played in the celebration of my eightieth birthday.” 20a. Freud to Marie Rolland January 22, 1937 Rolland’s second wife, Marie, “had asked Freud for copies of signed manuscripts of “Disturbance” that could be auctioned off to raise money for the Spanish Republicans. Freud responded: “Herewith two samples of my handwritten production. Do you truly believe people would give money for that? My cordial regards to you and Romain Rolland.”63 Plainly, one of the uncomfortable mysteries of the Freud–Rolland correspondence is the virtual curtain Rolland draws by never responding to (p. 80) Freud’s open letter with anything but a perfunctory, evasive restatement of their friendship. Rolland ended his 1936 thank-you note with respects for a man he admires, whose “fearless regard has known how to penetrate to the bottom of the interior abyss.” Bose sent Freud similar “abysmal” words on his seventy-fifth birthday.64 As the Vermorels say, “one is surprised” that Rolland “has nothing further to say” about “Disturbance.” There is nothing, either, in his Journal intime. They imagine a number of reasons for Rolland’s silence. His wife Marie didn’t know if he had read it or, if so, what he thought of it. She “was now sort of a Soviet-bloc presence in Rolland’s life since marrying him in 1934.” Roland, it seems, had come to be of two minds (djanovien) about psychoanalysis during his pro-Soviet years. In 1935 he had returned from Moscow through Vienna without meeting Zweig or Freud. . . . Forgetting Page 16 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. all that passed between them concerning the oceanic feeling, would he have neglected to respond to the author of such “small talk”? . . . It is true it is very condensed, and what concerns Rolland, as the support-point of this self-analysis, remains extremely secret. . . . The letter is so allusive that what concerns Rolland may have escaped him.65 Did Rolland’s more narcissistic self-analysis leave him unprepared for Freud’s, which dwelt on interpersonal connections? Or could Rolland have read “Disturbance” with the penetrating suspicious hermeneutic that Kanzer has? After the opening birthday salutations, according to Kanzer, Freud proceeds to eliminate Rolland permanently in the Letter and to subtly acquire the characteristics of his “alter ego.” His beautifully written essay displays the full inventiveness of his own genius still advancing toward new frontiers. He is a hero with all the vitality with which he had equipped Rolland at the start of the letter and instead of attaining the “end” awaiting himself, as he (p.81) had predicted in the beginning, he has become the Emperor of the French and even usurped the religious faith of Rolland as well as his nationality: it is he himself who is the supreme figure in the cathedral of Notre Dame. He has won the last of his arguments with the French writer, for the comforts of self-analysis in allaying guilt and offering a reassuring daydream for the dying man, have been demonstrated as effective competition for the comforts of religion.66 “In any case,” the Vermorels conclude, Rolland’s note “ends their correspondence. Both were sick. Rolland may have deemed it a meditation on death. Both would prepare for that in Silence.”67 One can feel Freud’s isolation, hurt, and restraint in writing to Marie Rolland, and sense that in his declining health, he must have found considerable energy and good will to write “Disturbance.”68 This is another point at which it is unconvincing to view “Disturbance” as part of a “dialogue” or “debate” about mysticism. In Kanzer’s reading, Freud annuls religion and mysticism with a “daydream.” The open letter is more apostrophe than dialogue, addressed to someone still idealized who has gone, and virtually remains, absent.69 Rolland haunts the text of “Disturbance” no less than many others in Freud’s past, including Julius, even though Rolland is alive. During the fallow years in his Rolland correspondence, however, Freud resumed his Bose correspondence with surprising initiative and cordiality. Hartnack calls Freud’s January 1, 1933, letter “almost warm-hearted,” with Freud now admitting “regrets about his earlier lack of genuine interest in Bose’s psychoanalytical work.”70 The first two letters are decisive.71 (p.82) Phase 3 Page 17 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. 22. Freud to Bose January 1, 1933 “The first letter of this new year goes out to you. I did study the essay you were so kind to send me and am deeply impressed by it. The contradictions with our current psychoanalytic theory are many and deep-going and I reproach myself for not having given attention to your ideas before. That is not only my case, I suspect that your theory of opposite wishes is practically unknown among us and never mentioned or discussed. This attitude was to be abolished. I am eager to see it weighed and considered by English and German analysts all over. If you will permit me a suggestion: let us have a paper on the theory written especially for an analytic public which may appear in the Zeitschrift and Jones’s Journal at the same time. We will do the translation into German here in Vienna. The essay you sent me is not quite appropriate especially in its first parts as it is meant for the Indian Science Congress. As for my own judgment which you ask for I can only give you first impressions which are of no great value. It needs more time and effort to overcome the feeling of unfamiliarity when confronted with a theory so different from the one professed hitherto, and it is not easy to get out of the accustomed ways of thinking. So don’t take it amiss when I say that the theory of opposite wishes strikes me as something less dynamical than morphological, which could not have been evolved from the study of our pathological material. It appears to me flat, so to say, it seems to lack a third dimension, I don’t think it is able to explain anxiety or the phenomena of repression. Nor could I make the concession that the biological viewpoints in our psychology are out of place. But I am not ready yet to stand up for my own objections. I am still bewildered and undecided. I see that we did neglect the fact of the existence of opposite wishes from the three sources of Bisexuality (male and female) ambivalence (love-hate) and the opposition of active-passive. These phenomena have to be worked into our system to make us see what modifications or corrections are necessary and how far we can acquiesce to your ideas. That is what I expect to be the result of the discussion after your paper is presented to the attention of our analysts and I will be the first to acknowledge our indebtedness to the working of your mind. . . . ” (p.83) 23. Bose to Freud February 1, 1933

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. “I am extremely grateful to you for your kind interest in my work. I shall be very glad to send you a suitable paper on the theory of opposite wish for the consideration of the psychoanalytic group in Europe. It is really very good of you to say that you will have it translated in Vienna. I shall expunge the popular portions of the article that I sent you, and shall add and alter materials by which I hope the article will meet your requirements. I shall try to elucidate the points raised in your letter, such as the dynamic aspect of the theory, the explanation of repression and anxiety. Of course I do not say that my theory will explain all the different facts of anxiety phenomena as known to us about normal and abnormal life. But I do hope that I shall be able to give you a fairly satisfactory explanation on the basis of my theory. I further hope that I shall be able to show to you that my explanations of repression are simpler and more satisfactory than the current views about it. In fact I claim that the theory of the opposite wish is especially suited to explain repression. (Beside wish which by my very definition is a dynamic mental element I admit no other psychic factor capable of bringing about a modification in a given Psychic constellation. My theory of perception is based on my theory of wish.) I have not been able to follow what you mean by saying that the theory lacks a third dimension. If you could make this clearer I might try to meet your objection. I shall be very thankful if you kindly let me know what other points you require me to elucidate further. I have ‘accidentally’ burnt my face and right hand*. . . . In any case I shall try to send it to you before the end of March.*. . . ” Apparently in following up two lost letters from Bose, Freud next writes Bose for the only time in German (I cite the English translation). 24. Freud to Bose October 25, 1937 “You inform me that you have been elected President of the Section of Psychology in the Congress that is to be held in your city in January 1938. I congratulate you on this well-earned honor. A little later you sent me a paper from S. C. Mitra named ‘Contributions of (p.84) Abnormal Psychology to Normal Psychology’ ” and asked “my views” of it for the congress. Since the event is barely two months away, Freud hastens to “accede to your request not only because of the ‘mail difference’ between us, but also because of the uncertainty of life that is inherent in my age.” Freud praises and supports Mitra’s paper. “I feel myself deeply obliged to my follower, who must certainly be young, for his bold representation of our position. Surely he too will not fail to realize that psychoanalysis is as yet imperfect and in many points still uncertain but psychoanalysis is Page 19 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. young and will certainly progress uninterruptedly till no doubt can exist about the value of its contribution to the science of psychology. With hearty wishes for your good health and for the Congress. . . .” 25. Anna Freud to Bose October 31, 1937 “I have passed on your letter to my father and he has answered it himself already. We have both been very interested in reading Dr. S. C. Mitra’s excellent exposition of the subject under discussion. I wish India were not so far away, so that sometime I could come and take part in your work there. With kind regards. Very sincerely yours, Anna Freud.” Phase 3 presents the new problem of Bose’s never having submitted an article on “opposite wishes,” compounded by his going silent and withdrawing from the correspondence. In treating these matters, I will attempt to show that Bose’s withdrawal was not made without rancor, though we never see it until it is there. In letter 22, Freud suddenly takes New Year’s Day of 1933 to state a newly discovered interest in testing out the theory of opposite wishes, and he says it would be timely if Bose put his ideas before the scrutiny of German and English analysts in Europe. Bose responds with letter 23, his last extant one (meaning it is the last of those of which he kept a copy). He begins with an outline of the contribution he plans, restating what Freud hopes for in the article, and then, rather abruptly, he resumes a rather uncomprmoising defense of the views he had already made in letter 16. It is hard to guess what Bose intended by this shift in his letter, which ends so forlornly. It puts himself and Freud at crosspurposes. Freud had set out a list of things he expected Bose to explain, and implies that he had already begun to formulate his response. (p.85) Considering what we are soon to find out about Bose’s eventual reaction to the forthcoming impasse between them, we must be ready to face some unexpected questions. Was Bose expressing annoyance at Freud’s bait-andswitch from encouragement to critique? Did Bose step back from his advance conclusions, sensing that he had gone overboard in restating them? Had he let his injured writing hand take over, by the end of the letter making it an excuse? Did Bose think Freud had set him so many “requirements” he might as well ask for a complete list? Bose saves his most childish question about the length of his article for last. Freud did not answer. But that probably cannot explain why Bose did not come through with an article on “opposite wishes.” By the time Freud wrote his letter in German, he had waited over four and a half years for Bose to send him what Bose said he could deliver in two months. No doubt couching some annoyance behind his shift to German, which, as Bose had told Freud, he would have to ask Page 20 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. a friend to read,72 Freud left the overdue “opposite wishes” article unmentioned and focused instead on the article by S. C. Mitra that Bose had sent to Freud with (it seems) a lost cover letter. If sending a colleague’s article had worked once before to restart their correspondence, this time it finished it. In having the letter in German translated, one can imagine Bose taking it poorly when he heard only formalities about himself, and that he should convey Freud’s praise to the “youthful” Mitra, who was something of a rival and the most likely person to translate the letter in Bose’s hearing!73 Since Anna Freud’s follow-up letter in English also singled out Mitra, it would not have helped. We would have to leave Bose and Freud at such an impasse of mutual irritation and turn now to the evidence for Bose’s outcome of rancor, were it not for two more pieces of evidence that emerge from H. D.’s account of her 1933–34 work with Freud. Janine Burke, who offers the only extensive discussion of H. D.’s handling of artifacts in Freud’s collection, consulted (p.86) all four versions of H. D.’s analysis, including her “irreverent and chatty letters written daily to Bryher”74—H. D.’s longtime confidante and lover. Burke reconstructs H. D.’s and Freud’s interaction by free association, which may, or may not, be all that Freud brought to his Viṣṇu statuette. Her discussion finally serves to introduce the august person of H. D., and provides context for the further two pieces of evidence that H. D. makes available regarding Freud and Bose. Burke notes, as we have, that the “objects Freud drew H. D.’s attention to included Athena and the White Vishnu.”75 They discussed Arthur Evans’s excavations in Crete. “H. D. longed to give Freud a Minoan snake goddess statue, though realising the rarity.” Freud said, “I doubt if even you could do that.”76 Burke asks: “Why did Freud choose Athena and White Vishnu?” Burke continues (ostensibly following what Freud says, which does get back to Athena but not explicitly to Viṣṇu): Freud picked up Athena, telling H. D., “This is my favourite,” and placed it in her hands. “She is perfect, only she has lost her spear.” Having lost her spear, that is, symbolically lacking a penis, Athena images the castrated woman. H. D. “was rather annoyed at the professor”[77] because she had read in one of his volumes that “women did not creatively amount to anything or amount to much, unless they had a male counterpart or male companion from whom they drew inspiration.”[78] In “The Master,” H. D. is incensed by “The old man / with his talk of the man-strength/ . . . / I argued till day-break.” Later in the poem she writes “woman is perfect.’ ”[79] Yet Freud treasured Athena, the masculine, intellectual virgin goddess who belonged to no man, who gave birth to herself. H. D. was aware that Freud meant that “this little piece of metal that you hold in your hand (look at it) is priceless really, it is perfect, a prize, a find (p.87) of the best period of Greek art.”[80] H. D. appreciated that he was “speaking as an ardent lover

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. of art and an art collector.” Freud also reminded H. D. that Athena “is the veiled Isis, or Neith, the warrior goddess.”81 Athena is a “lovely symbol of herself as both a poet and a woman.”82 Finally, Burke turns to Viṣṇu. When H. D. visited Freud’s rooms, the Indian statue stood at the center of his desk. H. D. felt “a little uneasy” before its “extreme beauty . . . which compelled me, yet repelled me at the same time.” During her second session, Freud “took the ivory Vishnu with the upright serpents and canopy of snake heads, and put it into my hands.” It looked like “a half flower cut lengthwise,” “a half-lily,” leading her to remember that, as a child an old gardener had given her a lily. Rushing home, she showed it to her mother (or grandmother) who said, “that will look beautiful on your grandfather’s new grave.” The ivory Viṣṇu was like “the piston of a calla-lily” or a “jack-in-thepulpit,” an image that identified the plant with H. D’s grandfather, a clergyman, “a jack-in-the-pulpit.” Disturbed by the Viṣṇu, H. D. reflected that “the subject did not especially appeal to me.” But it continued to work on her unconscious, as Freud perhaps meant it to, leading her to reminisce about her religious life in the Moravian church. At the Christmas Eve service conducted by grandfather, all the children were given candles to hold, prompting Freud to say, “There is no more significant symbol than a lighted candle. . . . That is the true heart of all religion.”83 To Freud, the old gardener stood for God. So perhaps did H. D.’s grandfather. To H. D., the lily was the “Annunciation-lily,” the flower offered to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel when he tells her she is pregnant with Jesus, and therefore it is a symbol of both virginity and fertility. Burke now asks: “What made H. D. ambivalent about White Vishnu? She described it as ‘this Oriental, passionate yet cold abstraction’ and, though it sat in the centre of Freud’s desk, she was relieved to realize ‘it was not his favourite.’ According to Hindu mythology, the world resides on a multi-headed serpent that represents desire and by sitting on the coiled (p.88) snake, Vishnu masters desire.”84 Burke works toward a generic Freudian reading of the image, going on about snakes in India: To Freud the meaning was various; in dreams, snakes were phallic symbols. The statue had made H. D. think of lilies—calla lilies with their white flutes and golden stamens and as dark jack-in-the-pulpit lilies. Did she know the jack-in-the-pulpit was also called the cobra lily? In 1930, Georgia O’Keefe did a series of paintings titled “Jack-in the Pulpit,” rendering the flower in an increasingly abstract manner and focusing on the fluid, eroticized stamen, the undisguisedly phallic Jack. By interpreting the statue as a flower with Vishnu as the erect stamen and the cobras as the petals, H. D. reads it as a double male image of immense but threatening power.85

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. The lily could also double for the lotus that surges from Viṣṇu’s navel, which Burke does not seem to be aware of. I now turn to the two new pieces of evidence that arise out of H. D.’s handling of the two icons in Freud’s anteroom. Both clues come in passages that Burke skips over while mentioning what surrounds them. As noted, H. D. was uncertain what Freud intended by showing her the objects in the other room. She sought “to meet him halfway”: If it was a game, a sort of roundabout way of finding out something that perhaps my unconscious guard or censor was anxious to keep from him, well, I would do my best to play this game, this guessing game—or whatever it was. So, as the ivory had held my attention and perhaps (I did not know) it was especially valued by him, as it held the center place on his imposing desk (that seemed placed there, now that I come to think of it, almost like a high altar, in the Holy of Holies), I said, realizing my slight aversion to this Indian piece of art, “That ivory—what is it? It’s Indian obviously. It’s very beautiful.” “He said, barely glancing at the lovely object, ‘It was sent to me by a group of my Indian students.’ He added, ‘On the whole, I think (p.89) my Indian students have reacted in the least satisfactory way to my teaching.’ So much for India, so much for his Indian students.”86 Freud said this in early March 1933—apparently on March 8, the day that his desk had red tulips on it with the icons.87 In her letters to her friend Bryher, H. D. recalls Freud’s words at later dates. One was on April 23, 1933: “Be careful what you say about what I say HE says. You know. He thinks the Indian contingent is perhaps the worst of them all.” Also, with H. D.’s flourishes, on May 24, 1933, she gives a more favorable account of the Japanese Psychoanalytical Society, which had performed Oedipus Rex at Freud’s birthday celebration: “He and I agreed that the Jap. may do something, where the Hindoo was all muddles with the uc-n [unconscious] and with ps-a [psychoanalysis] in general.”88 Freud had last written to Bose on January 1 of that same year, and on March 8 it was just over a month since Bose had written back, telling Freud he would “try to send” his “opposite wishes” article to him “before the end of March.” March 8 was thus too early for Freud to be dissatisfied about Bose’s noncompliance. Rather, Freud’s comment to H. D. would seem to reflect his anticipation in awaiting the article, and his judgment in print that would follow. We have already noted in Freud’s January 1 letter what looked to be jottings of his preliminary case against Bose’s theory. It is now clear that Freud had prejudged the issue, and along lines that went back to the beginnings of their correspondence. As a taskmaster, referring to Bose as one of his “Indian Page 23 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. students,” Freud had set Bose a thankless task that Bose had probably already begun to sniff out in his final letter, and upon his further reflection was probably wise to reject. Indeed, placed alongside numerous other comments by Freud about Indians,89 one could say that being Indian was one of the things that made Bose and his theory (p.90) unsatisfactory. H. D. may have caught this in her remarks: “So much for India, so much for his Indian students” and “the Hindoo is all muddles.” The second clue relates to a wider psychoanalytic discussion. According to Burke, Freud believed that because H. D.’s father was cold and remote she had not made the transition to the Oedipal phase; so instead of desiring her father, she still longed for union with the pre-Oedipal mother. He deduced this from her dreams and a “vision” she had while staying on Corfu, as well, of course, from her bisexuality. It was an unusual analytic procedure for Freud, who regarded the bond with the father as fundamental. It meant that H. D.’s “transference” was to Freud as mother, which made him rather uncomfortable. . . . For H. D. “the professor’s surroundings and interests [that is, Freud’s collection] seem to derive from my mother rather than my father.”90 Burke asks, “Was it an element H. D. found attractive and sympathetic—Freud the art collector rather than Freud the austere physician? Was it why the first impression of his rooms had made her feel ‘overwhelmed and upset’? Instead of finding a cool scientist (like her father), she had discovered a passionate art lover (like her mother).”91 It might have confirmed Freud’s analysis that H. D. bypasses her mother to link the calla lily with her grandmother and her grandfather’s “new grave,” possibly a symbol of an ancient birth out of death, leaving H. D. still looking for her mother. Freud was only beginning to use the term “pre-Oedipus” from 1931 to 1933, so H. D. might have been a special case for him, one with whom he took the rare option of personifying a female in the transference.92 (p.91) Here, with my comments, is the passage where H. D. writes most directly about her maternal transference with Freud. She begins: “The home in some indescribable way depends on father-mother. At the point of integration or regeneration, there is no conflict over rival loyalties.”93 As Adam Phillips points out before quoting only these lines, in the same year that H. D. wrote this section of Tribute to Freud (titled “Writing on the Wall”), she wrote the poem “Tribute to the Angels,” in which she took a darker view of the parental pair, reversing the order between them: what is this mother-father to tear at our entrails? what is this unsatisfied duality Page 24 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. which you cannot satisfy?94

The rounded picture H. D. thus offers of this father-mother/mother-father begins to sound like Bose’s Oedipus mother. It probably reflects on, or anticipates, the fuller picture of her work with Freud, in which, during the time she returned to Vienna in 1934: Freud took on the role of father in transference, particularly what he called the “father-who terrifies,” a part that allowed H. D. to work through . . . aspects of her “war Phobia” and the repressed traumatic experiences of her childhood, such as finding her wounded father stumbling dazedly and bleeding profusely from a head wound in a tram accident he received when she was about seven. From the primal mother of H. D.’s dreams, Freud moved to the “primal scene” of the child’s traumatic introduction to parental love-making and the entanglement of eros and thanatos.95 H. D.’s passage about her maternal transference continues: The Professor’s surroundings and interests seem to derive from my mother rather than from my father, and yet to say the “transference” (p.92) is to Freud as mother does not altogether satisfy me. He had said, “And—I must tell you (you were frank with me and I will be frank with you), I do not like to be the mother in transference—it always surprises me and shocks me a little. I feel so very masculine.” And now the clue, which once again Burke skips over: I asked him if others had what he called this mother-transference on him. He said ironically and I thought a little wistfully, “O, very many.”96 The timing of this remark, made on March 9, 1933,97 when Freud had just been telling H. D. about his “Indian students” and was still awaiting Bose’s article on “opposite wishes,” makes it a strong probability that Freud featured Bose highly among the “very many” who made “this mother transference on him.” Bose ended his last letter (letter 23) with: I have “accidentally” burnt my face and right hand rather badly. This has incapacitated me for any work for the present. I can barely sign my name. I hope to be all right in a month’s time when I intend to take up the rewriting of the article. In any case I shall try to send it to you by the end of March. Could you suggest any limit to the size of the paper so that it may not be too big for the journals. . . . Bose was sounding increasingly dodgy and insecure, down to the unexplained quotation marks around the “accidentally” introducing the news that burns to his face and right hand will delay things, even as he presents a dubious twomonth timetable, asking Freud to answer him so that he can make the changes Page 25 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. within that time. Taru Candra Sinha mentions that “Once he got himself badly burnt in a patients house, in trying to control the fire that broke out in that house while he was there.”98 Alternately, Hartnack mentions that in 1934, at the Thirteenth International Psychoanalytical Conference in Lucerne, it was announced, “From India we have the news that the President, Dr. Bose, met with a grave motor accident, but we are (p.93) reassured to learn that he has made a good recovery.”99 Either may be what caused Bose’s burns. But from the description to Freud, it sounds more like he had a kitchen accident or was lighting firecrackers. Was the “accidentally” meant to raise the knowing Freudian eyebrow? Freud would have been left to guess, like any mother. He did not respond. I thus come to my evidence that Bose was feeling increasingly left hanging, which must soon have taken the form of what I have called rancor. He called it defiance. As we shall see in chapter 6, Bose, in 1938, published his clearest statement on the Oedipus mother in an article titled “The Mechanism of Defiance.” Consider Bose’s defiant ending: Had the Freudian ego submitted to the demands of the super-ego, freedom from painful symptoms could have been obtained but at a tremendous sacrifice. In the Oedipus story Oedipus had to blind himself and retire from the world. It is conceivable that my patient could also have obtained peace of mind by following a similar course of action. That sort of cure is not worth attaining. The cure that results from overcoming the super-ego by defiance and revenge and subsequently realizing its nature is certainly likely to be more useful and permanent. My idea is that under normal conditions of development Oedipus wishes are not adjusted by yielding to the castration threat of the super-ego as has been supposed by Freud but by overcoming the obstruction imposed by the hostile father and mother images and the subject’s final identification with them. The theory of opposite wish gives us a simple explanation in understanding these processes and the interrelations of the Freudian ego, the id, and the superego.100 Indeed, one characteristic that Bose attributes to the patient’s mother throughout this article is an unexplained “unwillingness.” Possibly Bose was projecting his own transference of Freud here as “the unwilling mother.” A question that will come up in chapter 6 is, thus, whether Bose’s 1938 article on defiance could be his belated answer to the 1933 ending of his Freud correspondence—not an article such as Freud had requested, and (p.94) probably not meant as one for Freud to read, but one meant as Bose’s reply to their finished conversation, to close it out. I raise that question now, along with an additional one: Why did Bose frame almost his entire argument about defiance using Freud’s topographic terms of ego, id, and super-ego, rather than Page 26 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. take up “the defiance mechanism in terms of my own interpretation,” which he deferred to a brief coda.101 He seems to want to show his defiance in Freud’s current language. Defiance is only one of the shapes, and the last, that Bose’s maternal transference would have taken. One gets the impression that what really counted earlier for Bose was the personal access, collegiality, and empathy he thought he had succeeded in forging with Freud. Bose—in his own terms—could have thought he had fulfilled a wish to bring out his guru’s maternal side.102 That may even have sustained Bose through the writing of his last letter. But it cannot account for his not submitting the article or of discontinuing the correspondence. While Freud was writing Moses and Monotheism and slaying the father for the last time, if Bose was bringing out Freud’s maternal side he would have been turning Freud into a soon-to-be unwilling dead mother. Notes:

(1.) This ellipsis (not those that follow) and all italics are in Parsons 1999a, 173– 74. (2.) The italics are in Rolland’s text. (3.) The ellipsis is in Rolland’s text. (4.) Fisher 1976, 24–25. (5.) Rolland wrote Heraclitus’s sentence in Greek; Parsons 1999a, 222n20. (6.) Freud 1953–74, 21:65n1. (7.) Parsons 1999a, 222n24. (8.) Freud 1953–74, 21:65. (9.) Parsons 1999a, 38–39. (10.) Freud 1953–74, 21:65. (11.) Parsons 1999a, 39. (12.) Parsons 1999a, 37, says Freud fails to address a “ ‘subterranean source,’ a deeper layer to the unconscious, which was religious in nature and capable of being rendered psychologically meaningful,” my italics. (13.) Freud 1953–74, 21:65. (14.) See Ackerman 2017, 11: “I will try to demonstrate that notwithstanding Freud’s abiding interest in the Oedipus conflict, the oceanic feeling is

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. foundational to the psychoanalytic situation, as it is based on an earlier situation, the union of two people in the mother-infant bond.” (15.) Freud 1953–74, 21:66. (16.) Freud 1953–74, 21:72. (17.) See Ackerman 2017, 20: “this primordial feeling . . . is a relic of infancy, a time when we were indeed one with the world, a residue of the mother-infant bond. . . . And, most important, it is an expression of a universal condition, the presence of the unconscious, which truly is on a continuum with our conscious ego states”—even though Freud “sees no justification for regarding this feeling as the germ that gives rise to religious needs,” for which he turns to the father; cf. Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 340. (18.) Freud 1953-74, 21: 72 (19.) Freud 1953–74, 21: 72. (20.) See again Ackerman 2017, 25: “Freud could assert that this was a feeling he had never had, one he sees simply as a relic of infantile experience. On the other hand, some aspect of this reliquary sentiment seemed to be invoked by the very technique of psychoanalysis”—in, as Ackerman shows, the flow of free associations and the eliciting of love in the transference, as Freud describes them in The Interpretation of Dreams (1953–74, 4:101–16). She continues: “Because the preoedipal is bound up with the mother-infant bond, Freud avoided it. . . . While Freud’s resistance to the oceanic feeling may relate to his wish to emphasize the oedipal model, it may also reflect a sense of danger in the oceanic merger, a danger Freud sensed but did not fully articulate, one that Melville makes more clear” in juxtaposing Ishmael and Ahab in Moby Dick. (21.) Ellipsis and italics here and following in the original. (22.) Hartnack 2001, 238. (23.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 346: Rolland loses interest in India in 1931, coinciding with the rise of Hitler; “Rolland wrote that his interest in India was a dream of several years” (383). (24.) Fisher’s view: “Unwilling to make his way through his friend’s jungle; perhaps he feared it would be too primeval, too amorphous to yield analytical interpretation” (Fisher 1982, 259–60). (25.) Wangh 1988, 262, cites Sigmund Freud Briefe 1873-1939 (Frankfurt: S. Fisher Verlag, 1960), 385. (26.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 308. Page 28 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. (27.) Masson 1980, 51. (28.) Masson 1980, 60. (29.) Masson does not explain why the two passages he cites would antedate others in the Mahābhārata that speak of Viṣṇu’s māyā (notably BhG 4.7–8), or give a citation for the first or explain why he prioritizes it. From a line he cites (Mbh 3.186.9a), it seems a prologue (3.186.1–11) to the second. On Mahābhārata textual issues, see FM, ch. 4. (30.) Mbh 3.186.23–29. (31.) Mbh 3.186.77–187.47. (32.) Mbh 3.187.50–53. (33.) Masson 1980, 52, from Sukthankar’s “study of the myth” (1944), but given without citation. (34.) Pradip Bhattacharya (email to author, December 19, 2016) says the earliest Bengali translation is Kalpasanna Singha’s, in prose; 1858–66, 17 volumes, the first in any Indian language. We can probably infer that Bose had a broad knowledge of the epic from Basu’s description (1999, 45–50) of Bose’s 1948 Bengali book on the Bhagavad Gita: a five hundred and sixty-page tome that begins with “two small pieces titled Juddhakhetre Gitar Avatarana Keno (why is the Gita situated in war) and Mahabharata Gita (the Gita in the Mahabharata)” (45). The rest, after dispensing with the traditional three ways or mārgas, offers a rationalist’s menu of twenty one mārgas by which one can “overcome internal grief” (antyantik dukkha) (46). (35.) It is not cited in his books on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda or his Inde Journal 1915–43 (Rolland 1960). (36.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 337–38. (37.) Rolland 1960, 23–24; cf. Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 338, 224, and 268– 94, on the book and its relation to Freud. (38.) I stick here and below to Strachey’s Latin translation “ego” for Freud’s German das Ich, literally “the I,” but Rolland’s usage more accurately translates the German. See Bettelheim 1984, 53–61, including, “In French translations of Freud, das Ich is nearly always rendered as le moi; das Es [the “Id”] is rendered as le ça or le soi; and the Über-Ich [super-ego] is le surmoi. In Spanish das Ich is translated as el yo” (60). Also pertinent is Obeyesekere’s (2012) astute observation that Freud’s “dream book implies an even more radical position. The ‘I,’ or ego, does not appear in the formation of the dream in the first place. The physical person of course appears in the formation of the dream but pictorially, Page 29 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. in a screen as it were, outside of the thinking ‘I.’ What is striking about the dream-work . . . is that condensation and displacement can occur without the ‘I’ being involved” (38). Among many quotations from The Interpretation of Dreams cited to support this insight, “Freud adds that the hallucinatory features of dreams appear when ‘some kind of ‘authoritative’ activity of the self has ceased” (Freud 1953–74, 4:51; Obeyesekere 2012, 37). Obeysekere (2012, 35-47)argues that dream visions arise from unconscious ‘ “it-thinking” apart from the Cartesian cogito, which may thread them into conscious narration only in secondary process elaborations. “It-thinking” would apply to the beginning of Rolland’s recollection (his “regards toward that far distant epoch” and “the enormity of the Ego (Moi),” while the rest shows his cogitation. (39.) Rolland, Vie intérieure, 23–24 in Rolland 1959. (40.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 118–19, 115 for the date; cf. Friedman 1981, 38–39. (41.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 147, 143. (42.) H. D. [1956] 1969, with italics in original. She discusses Freud’s whole statement (69–70). (43.) Rolland 1930, 1:15. (44.) Rolland 1930, 3:209, my translation. (45.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 320. (46.) Masson 1980, 44n1. (47.) Parsons 1999a, 75–76 and 203n2. (48.) Armstrong 2005, 177, citing Masson 1985, 344. On Freud’s wider practice in underlining works by various authors, see Mitchell-Boyask 1994, 29–37. Grubich-Simitis 1996, 92–143, discusses Freud underlining in editing his own texts. (49.) Armstrong 2005, 180. (50.) See Armstrong 2005, 170–82. Freud was also influenced by Protestant philological methods in reading ancient and classical texts (Mitchell-Boyask 1994). (51.) Rolland 1930, 1:35–37, 116–81. (52.) Armstrong 2005, 98. (53.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 314: the “plants” could be the “principle of nirvâna,” as discussed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Page 30 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. (54.) Freud 1953–74, 21:78. (55.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 340; Parsons 1999a, 45, thinks Freud refers to Rolland. (56.) See Parsons 1999b, 43–46. (57.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 341. (58.) Kṛṣṇa or Arjuna speak of Kṛṣṇa’s role in creations and dissolutions (pralayas; BhG 7.6, 11.25–32, 14.2), and Kṛṣṇa says “I am Ananta of the Nāgas” (10.23a). (59.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 410–11. (60.) Citing Kanzer 1969. (61.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 455. (62.) Parsons 1999a, 223n28.,I use the letter “a” to mark off exchanges that are additional to what I count as the actual correspondence. (63.) Parsons 1999a, 223n28. (64.) See chapter 7, this volume. (65.) Freud recognized these difficulties, writing Stephan Zweig that it had little to do with Rolland and mentioning two allusive proverbs it included that combine the theme of giving more than one has; see Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 403. (66.) Kanzer 1969, 343. (67.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 420–26. (68.) He complained to Zweig it was supposed to make no political allusions; he was working on Moses and did not wish to divulge it because of the political climate in Vienna, complaining about Wilhelm Schmidt; he wanted to send Rolland something affirming he was Jewish. But by January 15 he sent it. (69.) See Hiltebeitel 2015. (70.) Hartnack 2001, 141–42. (71.) Hartnack 2001, 142–43, abridges Freud’s letter and skips Bose’s. (72.) See phase 1, letter 11, in chapter 1, this volume.

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. (73.) Suhrit Chandra Mitra was a departmental colleague of Bose’s who had trained in experimental psychology in Leipzig (Hartnack 2001, 89–90). Hartnack (99) mentions “tensions between these two” that “lasted as long as Bose was the head of the department,” which were “resolved when in 1938 Bose became professor of psychology and Mitra became chairman.” Kapila (2007, 148n41) says Mitra wrote several internationally published articles, and “wrote extensively on psychoanalytic theory.” His “Psychology and Life” (International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1935) may be the article in question. (74.) Burke 2006, 306. The letters are edited in Friedman 1981. (75.) Burke 2006, 308–309; “white Vishnu” is Burke’s term. (76.) Burke 2006, 309; H. D. [1956] 1974, 175; Friedman 1981, 126 and 138–39 (H. D.’s friend Bryher confirms it would be hard to get one). (77.) H. D. typically called Freud “the professor.” (78.) Burke 2006, 309; H. D. [1956] 1974, 69. (79.) Burke 2006, 309; H. D.[1945] 1974 455. H. D. condenses this in a letter to Bryher: “I don’t weep now, it’s all very day-after-the-resurrection, complete with Madonna-lily, his ivory Vishnu” (Friedman 1981, 43). (80.) Burke 2006, 309; H. D. [1956] 1974, 70, 187. (81.) Burke 2006, 312. (82.) Burke 2006, 312. (83.) Burke 2006, 31, citing H. D. [1956] 1974, 67 and 124. (84.) Burke 2006, 312–13, quoting H. D. [1956] 1974, 68. (85.) Burke 2006, 313. (86.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 68. (87.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 145 and 147. (88.) Friedman 1981, 320. (89.) Meeting Freud in Vienna on June 11, 1935, the Bengali linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee “sang a hymn from the Brahma-Samhita, both in Sanskrit and English.” After listening “Freud said gravely, ‘So.’ Chatterjee wanted a “straight answer” to “What is the real thing, the permanent or abiding thing in existence.” Freud answered him four times, the first time saying, “I have found no connection between man’s life and some permanent abiding thing about which you speak. Here, on this earth, with death everything pertaining to man has an Page 32 of 34

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D. end.” After “exactly half an hour,” Freud asked Chatterjee to leave because he had a doctor’s appointment (Hartnack 2001, 138–39). Freud wrote to Ferenczi that, after calling on Rabindranath Tagore “in Vienna on the latter’s request” and being visited “a little later” by “another Indian, Gupta, a Professor of Philosophy in Calcutta, . . . My need of Indians is for the present fully satisfied” (Jones 1953–57, 3:128). Hartnack adds that “Gupta” was the great scholar of Indian philosophies, Surendranath Dasgupta. (90.) Burke 2006, 308–309, note 20; H. D. [1956] 1974, 146–47. See H. D. [1956] 1974, 18, 20. (91.) Burke 2006, 309. (92.) In 1932, Freud wrote, almost as a premonition of treating H. D.: “in instances where a one-sided and long attachment to the mother has preceded or negated attachment to her father, the pre-Oedipus stage in women gains an importance which we have not attributed to it hitherto.” Cf. Appignanesi and Forrester 1993, 390–91, on H. D.’s “mother fix” and Freud’s rising interest in the pre-Oedipal while also enacting the part of “a fallible man capable of maternal tenderness”; Friedman 1981, 132. (93.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 146. (94.) Phillips 1974, 204. (95.) Friedman 1981, 432; see also 485–86; and H. D. [1956] 1974, 138–45 for H. D.’s own details. Guest asks, “the inevitable question”: “Of what benefit was her analysis with Freud?” Her careful answer concludes, “It was her creative more than her psychic world that Freud helped” (Guest 1984, 217–18). (96.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 146–47; cf. Burke 2006, 309; and Friedman 1981, 51–52, 69, for H. D.’s more colorful terms to Bryher. (97.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 145. (98.) Sinha 1955, 69. (99.) Hartnack 2001, 112. (100.) Bose [1938] 1951, 74. (101.) Bose [1938] 1951, 58: “Towards the end of the article I have briefly indicated the defiance mechanism in terms of my own interpretation.” (102.) The guru’s identity with father and mother is proverbial in Hindu lore.

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Unraveling of the Bose–Freud Correspondence, with More Light Shed from the Freud–Rolland Correspondence and from Freud’s 1933–34 Work with H. D.

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Opposite Wishes

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Opposite Wishes Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords The first of the book’s next three chapters that deal with concepts of Bose by which he sought to challenge Freud in their letters, chapter 4 addresses Bose’s signature theory of opposite wishes and his aggressive advocacy of it. It is a subject Freud encouraged him to write about while stating his own tentative but firm and consistent disagreement with it. In his longest article, “A New Theory of the Mental Life,” Bose’s stock example of an opposite wish to be beaten suggests that he promoted his theory as an answer to Freud’s explanations for sexuality and aggression. Upaniṣadic, Vedāntic, and Sāṃkhya-Yogic ideas also seem to lie within these Bosean formulations, including his views on psycho-physical parallelism, a “theoretical ego” in which waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states are unified, which operates like a jīvātman, or “living self,” and opposite wishes as a karmic coincientia oppositorum. Keywords:   opposite wishes, wish to be beaten, sexuality, aggression, theoretical ego, psycho-physical parallelism, Vedānta, unified consciousness, karma, jīvātman

THIS CHAPTER AND the next two each take up one of Bose’s stand-out ideas. In each, I set the concept within Bose’s ongoing work and think through its implications in his exchange with Freud. This chapter touches on how both analysts theorized harsh surprises, and I introduce it with a tone-setting passage in which Bose speaks for his theory’s accuracy. Bose illustrates how his theory of opposite wishes “enables the analyst to predict beforehand the possibility of the emergence in consciousness of a particular repressed wish from an examination of the grammatical forms of speech.”1 Bose describes a patient who, “although in actual life . . . was one of the mildest of men, he would find immense pleasure Page 1 of 28

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Opposite Wishes in indulging in all sorts of fantasies of violence.”2 In his fantasy, the patient shifted grammatical expressions back and forth from passive to active verbs and used different pronouns: “At night as a preliminary to sleep,” he “must have a stereotyped phantasy of abduction and rape.” First, “he was evidently playing the passive masochistic feminine role” of the girl; then came an active identification with the “sadistic” wish of the “ruffians” who raped her; then a passive instance of being forced under threat of violence by the leader of the ruffians to “take part in the abduction and the subsequent gang-rape”; then, having removed the ruffians from the scene, “the phantasy was expressed in the form, “I am forcibly abducting a girl and ravishing her,” which some time later (p.96) “was replaced by ‘a girl is being forcibly abducted and ravished by me.’ ” At last, “the first-person pronoun ‘I’ came into the field and dominated the phantasies until they were ultimately discarded” and the patient could sleep without them.3 Bose’s predictive claims for his theory may put us on guard; moreover, they stand behind his insistence on its utility. One wonders whether anyone found Bose’s case and methods useful during the recent street protests over gang rape in India. Freud could have mentioned that he observed such shifts in passive and active voice and pronouns in his “A Child is Being Beaten”4 without supposing opposite wishes. Let us also note how the “I” as ego only emerges late, in a secondary process articulation, in line with Gananath Obeyesekere’s insight into Freud’s inkling that “I-thinking” differs from pictographic “it-thinking” found in fantasies and dreams.5 I noted Freud’s reservations about opposite wishes in chapters 1 and 3, and discussed Bose’s shirking of Freud’s invitation to feature an article on the theory in two European psychoanalytic journals that Freud spoke for. We can now factor in Freud’s remark to H. D. about how his “Indian students have reacted in the least satisfactory way to my teaching.” This remark was almost certainly aimed at Bose’s theory of opposite wishes. Freud’s barely glancing as he said this might now be considered an attempt to sidestep any feelings about Bose’s baffling campaign. Freud might have felt he had tried his best in an impossible situation. We must still, however, consider some lively matters that fall onto tracks they closed off between them.

The Primacy and Sufficiency of Opposite Wishes Bose dedicates his book-length article, “A New Theory of the Mental Life” (1933; henceforth “New Theory”) to opposite wishes. We are no longer talking about “The Genesis of the Oedipus Wish,” referred to in Bose’s (p.97) January 1929 letter, in which Bose “ventured to disagree” with Freud “in some respects.” Nearly the whole “New Theory” article pitches for this theory as a riposte to Freud. Bose disputes Freud’s second id-ego-superego topography.6 And he Page 2 of 28

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Opposite Wishes writes the last twenty-six pages as a point-for-point rebuttal of Freud’s new ideas in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id. Bose’s theory still finds advocates and detractors among analysts. Salman Akhtar and Pratyusha Tummala-Narra appreciate its redeeming features, noting a “remarkable passage” in which Bose “moves his otherwise one-person model to a sophisticated two-person psychology” that “contains the seeds of ideas regarding projective identification and intersubjectivity long before these concepts were explicitly developed in the West.”7 Sudhir Kakar’s curt assessment, however, is that “he developed his overly didactic therapeutic technique, primarily aimed at cognitive change, which was based on his theory of ‘opposite wishes.’ ”8 Ashis Nandy reinforces Kakar’s view, even though curiously he never mentions Bose’s theory. Nandy remarks—without citation—that when Bose wrote in English, he “was ‘too logical’ and ‘mechanical’—the judgement was Freud’s,”9 although Freud never makes this precise judgment in the Bose correspondence. Nandy is saying that when Bose wrote in Bengali, he did so from a more culturally authentic “remembrance.” I approach Bose’s opposite wishes theory with two interpretative entrées. The first, by Amit Ranjan Basu, introduced in chapter 1 with reservations about Nandy,10 draws its main insights from two of Bose’s books in Bengali: Swapna, on dreams, and his book on the Bhagavad Gītā: What we have gathered from this reading of Swapna is Bose’s unique way of developing a critique of psychoanalysis as received (p.98) from the West. The text also reveals the ambivalence between Freudian theory and Bose’s hypothesis. Bose asserts his own theories and rejects some of the basic tenets of psychoanalysis, yet continues to project Freud through a refracting glass. The world of dreams is made available for another explanation by a non-Western psychoanalyst, whose interpretation makes the ‘wish’ a dialectical and dramatic category. We also notice that this is taking place in the vernacular, and outside the typical disciplinary boundary.11 In saying that Bose “makes the ‘wish’ a dialectical and dramatic category,” Basu attributes an inherent “dynamic” to Bose’s theory such as Bose frequently claimed.12 Basu thus addresses that aspect of Freud’s critique of it. In March 1929, Freud wrote, “In fact I am not convinced by your arguments. Your theory of the opposite wish appears to me to stress rather a formal element than a dynamic factor.”13 Basu continues:

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Opposite Wishes according to Freud, there exist many sexual and aggressive wishes in the human mind since childhood. The super-ego that develops in the child’s mind through social customs, education, religious doctrines, and other restraining influences pushes the sexual and anti-social wishes from the conscious to the unconscious. Freudian therapy tries to discover these unconscious wishes in the patient’s mind through psychoanalysis and helps him come to terms with them.[14] But Bose did not want to give primary importance to influences like social customs and education in the repression of such wishes. He believed that every wish had its opposite wish in the mind. The wish to kill and get killed, the wish to donate and receive donations or the wish to oppress and be oppressed—there are many opposing wish-couples in our mind. If the intensity of these opposing wishes is equal,[15] then they make each other inactive. On (p.99) the other hand, if one wish is stronger than the other in intensity, then the second wish is driven into the unconscious by the first one. According to Bose, all influences from the external world—social or religious customs, education, culture—stimulate one of the wishes from the opposing couple, and with the growing dominance of the stimulated wish its opposite gets repressed in the unconscious. The repressed wish remains in the unconscious and is never destroyed.16 Bose, however, said as much in English, within the discipline’s boundaries. In “New Theory,” he says, “According to my theory of repression a wish is only repressed by its opposite wish and the social and environmental factors play a secondary role. Basu seems to be alone in finding that Bose did not want to give primary importance to influences like social or religious customs, education, culture, and other restraining influences. I believe that Basu’s insight into Bose’s priorities is supportable. If he is right, it certainly marks a different intent from Freud’s, and will require some exploration. I refer to this as Bose’s short view on the primacy of opposite wishes. Basu also says that Bose accepted Freud’s “id-ego-superego construct” but modified it, while discountenancing Freud’s “libido theory” and “instincts” (which for Bose were too “biological”). Basu is right about Bose’s discounting the “biological,” which actually goes hand in hand with his subordination of social customs and education to the self-sufficiency of wishes. In reducing the significance of the biological consistently and strongly,17 Bose sets the basis for Freud’s statement, on January 1, 1933, that he could not “make the concession that the biological viewpoints in our psychology are out of place.” Indeed, in discountenancing Freud’s “biological” view of the role of the instincts and libido theory, Bose also did without Freud’s long-view notions of a phylogenetic prehistory.18

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Opposite Wishes We will also find that Bose’s modifications of the “id-ego-superego construct” were more drastically intended than Basu realizes. As we shall see, in discountenancing the libido theory and instincts along with refusing (p.100) “primary importance to influences like social or religious customs, education, culture, and other restraining influences,” Bose was virtually putting the id and the superego out of business, leaving only the ego.

Tarun Candra Sinha: Bose’s Disciple and Champion A second interpretative entrée, which, like Basu’s, will be with us through much of the rest of this chapter, is intriguing for showing how one of Bose’s disciples sought to clarify the differences between Bose and Freud. Tarun Candra Sinha had joined Bose’s inner circle in 1923 as an Associate Member (a candidate for membership19) of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society one year after its founding. Following Bose’s death in 1954, in 1955, in a special commemorative issue of Samīkṣā, the journal Bose founded in 1947,20 Sinha writes affectionately of Bose’s life and career in a short biographical sketch. In the course of this article, he highlights a palatable version of the theory of opposite wishes that conveys his own attachment to it and surprisingly stresses that it has an underlying continuity with Freud’s views: His theory of opposite wishes is in fact a further contribution on the Freudian theory of repression. The bisexual character of the mind is the basis on which, due to external or internal stimuli the repression may work. From bisexuality, or different masculine or feminine tendencies different wishes develop. Only in the action attitude of such wishes, the conflict and subsequently the repression may result. It is found that when the ego associates mostly with the active attitude and tries to reject the passive attitude under the faulty impression of passivity being equated with negation of the ego, that the conflict ensues.21 I suggest that Sinha makes this exposition palatable by starting from “the bisexual character of the mind” and defending the passive attitude as not merely negative.22 What Sinha says here all seems to come out of his (p.101) familiarity with Bose’s oral teachings or be based on familiarity with Bose’s clinical practice. I have italicized the phrase “action attitude” in Sinha’s statement, since it bears a similarity to the term “action situation” which he will emphasize in a subsequent article. Sinha now chooses two and only two examples of such an action attitude or situation. The first centers on seeking and receiving love, and the second focuses on childhood eating behaviors: In the “love situation, . . . A’s wish to love B has its counterpart in the mind of A in the form of receiving love from B. When these two wishes, which are opposite in nature, crave for fulfillment at the same time, it is only then that conflict starts. The conflict may end in either putting one of the wishes

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Opposite Wishes under check or by alternate satisfaction of both the wishes, if the situation permits, and if the ego accepts both of these attitudes.” Sinha’s second example is “the case of inanimate objects such as in eating a cake the wish to be eaten up by the cake is repressed. In certain stages of development such wishes are clearly manifested during play of the children.”23 One can probably hear Bose’s teaching behind these two affable examples, which, while each one holds an instructive little surprise, are easily assimilable. The second in particular can preview our discussion of Bertram Lewin’s triad of wishes of babies at the breast: the wishes to eat, to sleep, and to be eaten.24 Sinha then goes on to praise Bose’s emphasis on empathy and the logical self-evidence of his theory, and putting the best light possible on Bose’s exchange with Freud, says that Freud found Bose’s theory “difficult to reject.” Sinha says the theory is not anti-Freudian in essence, but attempts to clarify certain propositions better by throwing new light on the mental mechanism.” Bose “would trace a definite wish underlying in any anxiety. . . . In analyzing patients he tried to point out the existence of the exact wish . . . in every situation and would try to remove the misconceptions in the way of its acceptance by (p.102) the ego. His insight into the activities of the mind was so keen and clear that he could explain most of the problems very quickly. But he never was dogmatic in his sayings. The greatest virtue in him was his bold confession of his ignorance where he had no data on which to found his opinion this way or that. . . . A true scientist must have this virtue and he had it. He was a true scientist.25 Here, Sinha finally raises two matters that are problematic: Bose’s confidence that he can unearth a single “exact wish . . . in every situation,” and his rather dogmatic—I called it uncompromising—response to Freud in his February 1, 1933 letter.26 Evidently, Sinha did not wish in this memorial article to go into Bose’s persistence in defending his theory. But we can say that this article does manage to give a congenial presentation of Bose’s theory that is less problematic than Bose’s own, which, as we shall see, Bose complicated by choosing, at least for publication purposes, the wish to be beaten as his stock example. Eleven years later, in a 1966 article, Sinha again summarizes the theory, in the meantime having risen through the ranks of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society to become its president (Bose’s third successor in that post) in 1962.27 This time his article accompanies a reprint of the Bose-Freud letters. Justifiably finding it “difficult to keep myself out of the picture,” he writes of his own youthful admiration for Bose. When Sinha prepared this article to be “read at the 24th International Psychoanalytic Congress, Amsterdam, July 1965,” and for publication in a 1966 issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, he had one of our ongoing questions in mind: the one about Bose’s noncompliance in Page 6 of 28

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Opposite Wishes meeting Freud’s request for an article on opposite wishes. Sinha comments, “I do not know whether Bose sent his promised paper on ‘Opposite Wish’ to Freud nor is it known whether Freud had studied the point further in his own patients. I wrote to Miss Freud on these points.”28 He does not say whether she answered. Twelve years after Bose’s death, Sinha meant to deliver “the main features of Bose’s theory” both in person to an audience of European analysts such as Freud had wanted Bose to address over thirty years earlier and in one of the two journals that Freud had said he would keep open for a Bose article. Sinha (p.103) wanted to fill this gap in loyal opposition, stating that he found Bose’s theory “more rational” and “more logical” than Freud’s.29 Sinha summarizes mainly from Bose’s two broadest works, The Concept of Repression and “New Theory.”30 His opening paragraph on the theory of opposite wishes begins with two points: 1. There is “some difference” between the “presence” of pairs of opposite wishes “in all the different situations of life” and Freud’s understanding of “ambivalence.” 2. Wishes always involve an “action situation.” Sinha’s second point that every wish involves an “action situation” was anticipated here. It is a useful term, apparently adapted from Bose, that Sinha seems to have coined himself.31 Like Sinha, we shall find it useful in clarifying some of Bose’s statements. On the first point, Sinha seems to pick up on the uncertainty that Freud posed to Bose when he asked, “I wonder what the relation of the opposite wish to the phenomena of ambivalence ‘may be.’ ” Although Freud was probably responding to a section titled “Ambivalence” in “New Theory,”32 his scare quotes around the words “may be” are evidently a teaser playing on the term, which Sinha (like Bose) seems not to notice, as they are missing from Freud’s letter as his article reproduces it.33 Bose, rather unambiguously, had stated: In my opinion no other theory except that of opposite wish will satisfactorily explain ambivalence as this phenomenon has been called. (p. 104) Ambivalence is one of the clearest forms of expression of opposite wishes occurring in pairs and is a strong proof of the correctness of the theory.34 As we saw in chapter 2, Bose’s answer included his opposition to what he presented as Freud’s view that hate and sadism, as primary,35 may develop independently of love. For Bose, “the opposite of the wish to love is the wish to be loved.” Bose concluded this section on ambivalence by drawing this point out, and by refuting Freud’s views on the eros and thanatos instincts in the name of a higher transcendent painlessness. In recognizing the “perfect masochist” who

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Opposite Wishes “will get pleasure even in being cut up,” Bose’s view might accommodate some present-day martyrs. Toward the end of his article, Sinha says how ambivalence would arise in Bose’s “ego psychology,” where the “mechanism of symbol formation and sublimation” is variously “employed by the ego in enjoying the pleasure of the repressed wish”: The infantile ego builds up fantasies of its own from the experiences gained and interpreted by it. Depending on individual leanings, it may be presumed that the ego of the individual may be stimulated more in one or some receptive organ-pleasures in its childhood than the other. On the other hand, the ego may have a particularly sensitive response toward one of such pleasures. . . . [The ego will thus have a greater or lesser] capacity to create symbols and to work out sublimations for an undesirable repressed wish by utilizing the infantile fantasy materials and tendencies in modeling them to a form acceptable to the matured ego.36 Sinha shows that Bose’s ego psychology was developmental, from pre-Oedipal “infantile fantasy materials” onward. While Hartnack makes the (I think) justifiable point that Bose rarely discusses his patients’ childhood experiences,37 Bose commits himself to the pre-Oedipal theoretically as the source of the most enduring opposite wishes.38 (p.105) Hartnack shows from some of Bose’s later writings, including “New Theory,” that “[t]he basic oppositions in Bose’s notion of wishes are between active and passive, subjective and objective, and ego-fugal and ego-petal kinds of wishes”; “Bose characterized any wish as a combination of these three oppositions.”39 Active and passive heterosexual and homosexual wishes are symbolized in love wishes;40 the subject–object opposition makes room for empathy;41 and ego-fugal and ego-petal types of wishes are exemplified in giving. The “wish to make a gift to a person and feel the person’s sufferings are reduced” is typically ego-fugal, “for the direction of interest is towards the object.” The wish “to make the gift and feel that one is kind” is just the opposite —that is, ego-petal. “In an ideal wish situation,” one in which “the full implication of the action is understood and appreciated,” the ego should be capable of both.42 Presumably these are what Sinha means by “action situations,” and clearly there could be ambivalence arising from childhood in any of them. Let us now examine Bose’s chosen example of the wish to be struck, for which the action situation would be crucial. I will then conclude this chapter by taking up two philosophical ramifications not discussed by Sinha: the Vedāntic resonances of Bose’s ego psychology in his notions about a “theoretical ego,” and his so-called psycho-physical, parallelism. Page 8 of 28

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Opposite Wishes Bose’s Stock Example of Opposite Wishes Bose explored a wide range of wishes. Yet in making the point “that for every wish there is an opposite wish working in the unconscious mind,” the stock example by which he repeatedly demonstrates what lies at rock bottom of his axiom is “when A wishes to strike B, he also has the wish to be struck by B, but such a wish is usually repressed.”43 Bose deploys this (p.106) surprising formulation frequently in The Concept of Repression and in “New Theory,” as well as in other writings, always to new ends. For instance, in “Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish,” he takes it that “In every individual there is an unconscious desire to be struck so that when this finds a sort of involuntary satisfaction by the assault, its opposite, the desire to strike, rises in consciousness and is felt as the desire for revenge.”44 It is also to “clarify this situation” that Sinha adduces the “action situation” as part of Bose’s views: “From the example given we have the subject A and the object B and an action situation, viz., to hit. In every wish situation, Bose says, there must be a subject, an object, and a relationship between the subject and the object, or an action situation.”45 As noted, “action situation” seems to be Sinha’s own coinage, about which he makes a “general” point: “Whenever we come across a strong defensive action attitude in conscious life, we may be certain of its opposite wish remaining in the unconscious level. In general, then, activity is opposed by passivity.”46 Unlike wishing to kiss and wishing to be kissed, however, Bose’s choice of wishing to hit and wishing to be hit has a counterintuitive feel to it. Although it is obviously a “striking” case on which to ground a theory, it raises unusual questions. Does Bose cite a human example? Would it not better describe the psychology of a snake? Can it tell us something about Bose that he should make it the touchstone of his theory? And can it be traced back into early child development like kissing and being kissed? Neither Bose nor Sinha addresses these questions. But they seem fair ones, worth trying to answer. I bring the first two questions together. Bose does cite one example. In the first of his case studies in “New Theory,” he acknowledges the problem and indicates some of his assumptions. Writing about a patient with “obsessive fear of being stabbed from behind,” whose therapy brought out dreams of “passive homosexual traits” and retaliatory fantasies against toughs and hooligans, Bose comments: and if we could assume that behind the fear of being stabbed there was the unconscious wish to be stabbed, of course symbolically, as (p.107) was confirmed by analysis, the opposition between the passive unconscious wishes and the active conscious wishes would at once be apparent.47

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Opposite Wishes We can see Bose’s assumptions and how he finds verification of them in the control situation of his psychoanalytic practice. Whether a wish to be beaten is more characteristic of snakes than of people, I must, of course, plead even greater ignorance as to its applicability to snakes.48 Third, about Bose himself, let us note that with its stock example, his theory of opposite wishes becomes comparable with Freud’s Oedipal theory as a rival theory, in that both are about repressed and shocking unconscious wishes to harm or kill. Each also recognizes sexuality as the center from which most unconscious motivations spring: Says Bose, “It is round the hub of sex, using the word in the widest sense, that our activities mainly revolve.”49 Each author also claims the universality of his theory, and each was equally tenacious in advocating it to the point of paranoia in its defense. That said, Bose’s use of the stock example undergoes a change from 1921 to 1933. In the 1921 book on repression, four discussions of what he soon dubs “our familiar example” explore the following issues. He begins with a discussion of the logics of “different types of contradictions.” To make the point that only the formulation “A wants to be beaten by B” qualifies as an opposite wish, he cites other formulations that are just contradictory, among them “A wishes to love B” where A’s wish to beat B “may be simultaneously present so that there would be no occasion for opposition.”50 Second, he discusses conditions under which A’s repressed wish to be beaten by B may come up in consciousness in modified symbolic forms through projection or identification (where “identity” comes with “vicarious pleasures,” as when A, who wants to beat B, sees A1 pushing B).51 Third, he takes on different feelings A might have “when A is beaten by B and submits to the situation with resignation” and “the opposite case of A having to beat B under compulsion,” yielding “an insight into (p.108) the psychology of different types of obedience, pleasurable and painful duty, etc.”52 Fourth, he treats the ethical issues of the conscience of P who witnesses A beating B and wants to punish A “for his offense by thrashing him” according to “the primitive and primary principle of revenge,” never perceiving “the absurdity of the situation.”53 In “New Theory,” however, Bose begins and ends his discussion of the stock example as an exploration of “retaliation.” Of the three passages that use the stock example,54 I will discuss only the first, going into it in some detail, as it is the richest and most revealing. Having just discussed the stock example and showed “that retaliation gave vent to tension resulting from a compulsory submission to an unpleasant situation willfully induced by another person,” Bose says, For the purpose of our analysis I shall take a simple case of retaliation from normal life. A strikes B; B retaliates by striking back A. In retaliating, B behaves exactly like A. . . . Judging from the standpoint of the act only, one might say that in retaliation, the act remaining constant, the subject Page 10 of 28

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Opposite Wishes and object reverse their roles. From the standpoint of the object it will be seen that in the primary situation B is compelled to play the passive role whereas in retaliation he plays the active part. This is exactly the opposite of A’s position; A is active in the original situation but is compelled to play the passive part while B is retaliating. The reversal of the subject–object relationship gives us the clue to the mechanism of retaliation.55 Bose continues under a new heading of “Retaliation, Revenge and Retribution,” beginning: “So long as B is not able to retaliate he feels an unpleasant sensation which is replaced by pleasure during the execution of the retaliatory act.” He asks, “To what is this unpleasant tension due? What is the source of the pleasure in retaliation?” Saying that “it will not do to say that all this is self-evident and requires no explanation,” he answers, “It is easily seen that the satisfaction that accrues from the retaliatory act is attached to the fulfillment of the retaliatory wish. All wishes (p.109) during realization give rise to pleasure and when inhibited give rise to painful tension.”56 Note that up to this point, retaliation operates differently from the situations dealt with in 1921 and elsewhere. Bose has not yet posited an opposite wish for B of wishing to be hit. One might suppose that retaliation does not rule that out, and that before B strikes back, it could be part of “the unpleasant tension” that he or she is building up. But Bose does without such a mixed situation: The action phase of a wish-fulfillment situation determines the quality of feeling experienced in the subject. There is pleasantness when the act is unhindered and unpleasantness when there is any obstruction to it. We therefore find that in being struck, B develops a wish which is exactly identical in all respects with the wish felt by A in striking, except for the subject–object relationship which is seen to be reversed. The genesis of this wish could only be explained by the supposition that it was a reaction which was equal and opposite to the original action. It is only now, having set forth B’s “exactly identical” “equal and opposite reaction,” that Bose invokes the missing masochistic criterion of the stock example: If we assume that in B there existed the pair of opposite wishes, to strike and be struck, even before A came into the field we can find an easy solution to the problem. These opposite wishes under the ordinary conditions of life would mutually inhibit each other and would not obtrude themselves on B’s consciousness. There would be unpleasantness in the act of giving a blow and receiving it. In receiving the blow from A, the unconscious wish to be struck was fulfilled, and the opposite wish, now freed from its restraint, clamoured for satisfaction, and appeared in the

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Opposite Wishes conscious mind. So long as it was not fulfilled the unpleasant tension continued to trouble B. The initial beating of B by A, however, leaves Bose with more possibilities for A, but he still avoids a mixed situation, just as he did with B. “We shall find that most probably A felt himself in the position of an injured person (p.110) when he struck B, so that the wish to strike developed, after a real or imaginary satisfaction of the opposite passive wish, in a manner exactly similar to that in the case of B.” Or possibly A was unprovoked by B and “had been compelled to play the aggressive role owing to circumstances over which he had no voluntary control. This would free up “the opposite wish to be struck,” which “would arise in his conscious mind as a fear of assault from B, i.e., he would develop a dread of retribution.”57 It finally appears that as unconscious, the wish to be struck can have rather ordinary outlets in consciousness, which would never recognize it for what it really is without the Bosean analyst. Such ordinary outlets would be among what I have been calling “mixed situations.” Mixed situations may remind us that, while critiquing the formality of Bose’s theory, Freud had wondered “what the relation of the opposite wish to the phenomena of ambivalence ‘may be.’ ” That B might feel a wish to retaliate alongside a wish to be struck is, I suppose, still possible. But such ambivalence is theoretically uninteresting to Bose, whose theory requires the isolation of opposite wishes in their pure forms. In “A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Origin of Sexual Perversions,” Freud uses passive and active, feminine and masculine, and masochistic and sadistic as parallel oppositions to talk about unconscious and conscious wishes and repressions, at times almost sounding as if he were running Bose’s theory of opposite wishes through a test a few years before he had heard of him. Freud draws out continuities and twists between the opposites in three phases of what he considered one protean childhood fantasy attached to “feelings of pleasure” and leading to “masturbatory satisfaction.”58 Instead of positing wishes in a pure formal opposition, Freud takes them diachronically through “profound transformations”59 and explicitly mixed and ambivalent situations. For instance, he says that “being beaten also stands for being loved (in a genital sense), though this has been debased to a lower level owing to regression.” Freud often spoke of opposite wishes, but in different ways from Bose.60 (p.111) Unlike kissing and being kissed, and several other wish situations that Bose occasionally mentions, hitting and being hit lend themselves to a theory of retaliation. I do not know whether the unconscious harbors any such wish-pairs in their pure forms, or to put it more in the terms of Bose’s engineering metaphor, whether it is “wired” with them, but it is chronologically interesting that Bose should have changed his discussion of the stock example from one about its formal logics and ethics into one about retaliation in his 1933 publication. In 1921, Freud was an unknown quantity whom he idealized from a Page 12 of 28

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Opposite Wishes distance. By 1933, however, Bose could have begun to feel an “unpleasant tension” from Freud’s disagreements with his theoretical views and, as a “normal situation,” begun to theorize retaliation as an outlet, even while cordially continuing their correspondence. When he writes about a patient whose “retaliation gave vent to tension resulting from a compulsory submission to an unpleasant situation willfully induced by another person,” he could have foreshadowed his own eventual venting in “The Mechanism of Defiance,” which he would write after Freud had put him on the spot to write about opposite wishes for a European readership. Here, I underscored several ways in which Bose’s stock example set up his theory as a rival to Freud’s. The formal similarities and parallels between the two theories are, however, hardly sufficient to make out that Bose would have developed his theory to rival Freud’s directly. For pure shock value, surely even he could have seen that he would come up short, since his theory lacked the dramatic “family romance” components that Freud’s so clearly had. We shall thus have to look elsewhere for Bose’s underlying motivations.

Bose’s Theoretical Ego and His Vedānta What appears to have been at the heart of Sinha’s agenda, however, was to highlight Bose’s postulation of “a theoretical ego,” which Bose says he “would posit for the theory of opposite wish.” At the end of “New Theory,” Bose calls the “theoretical ego” his “guiding principle,” identifying it with “what may be called the unity principle” that guides “all the different types of wishes.”61 For Sinha, Bose’s formulation is “more profitable” than “the (p.112) ego postulated by Freud.” Here is Bose’s full statement, which Sinha abridges: The Freudian ego mobilizes the repressing forces and maintains the censorship; it is the agency which controls the voluntary muscles and differentiates between the real and the imaginary world and serves the biological purposes of protecting the organism from mischief by imitating the higher types of adaptation. It is to be differentiated from the id from which instinctive strivings arise. The Freudian ego does not comprise within itself the whole of the mental life of the individual. Many persons would object to this restriction of the usual connotation of the term, but it must be remembered that the Freudian ego is an empirical entity postulated to meet special requirements. The ego that I would posit for the purpose of the theory of opposite wish may be called the theoretical ego. Generally speaking, it may be said to be a hypothetical entity which maintains the continuity of mental experience both conscious and unconscious during all times; to speak figuratively it is the thread which keeps the individual beads together in a necklace; it is further that entity which makes a human being feel that there is a sharp contrast between himself and all other things; the ego always connotes a Page 13 of 28

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Opposite Wishes distinction between the subject and the object, between the ego and the alter-ego, between the experience and the experienced. It is the average man’s “I” that feels the continuity of experience and the strivings of life. It is the great reservoir of all wishes both conscious and unconscious. It includes within itself the Freudian ego, the id and the super-ego, in fact, all manifestations of mental life. It harbours within itself contradictory elements.62 We have noticed that Basu seems to explain the foundations for such a concept by noting how Bose eliminates functions of the id and the superego. We can now explore how Bose’s theoretical ego takes us into the idioms of Hindu mysticism. The aquatic “great reservoir” that “harbours within itself contradictory elements” is Bose’s intimation of something akin to Romain Rolland’s “oceanic feeling,” and the “figurative” image of beads on a thread, which Sinha elides, evokes Bhagavad Gītā 7.7, where (p.113) Kṛṣṇa says “on Me this universe is strung like clustered pearls upon a thread.”63 For Bose, however, it is “that entity which makes a human being feel that there is a sharp contrast between himself and all other things,” and thus to that extent it differs from Rolland’s “oceanic feeling” which, as Freud stresses, is unitive. Yet one might not see too much difference from the conception of the “originary ego” that Freud drew in Civilization and Its Discontents—as the Vermorels note, while he was beginning to think though Rolland’s oceanic feeling. They quote what Freud says in that context: “originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, an all-embracing— feeling which corresponds to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it.”64 We have seen that Sinha shows that Bose commits himself to the pre-Oedipal theoretically as the source of the most enduring opposite wishes. Freud’s “originary ego” would not meet the philosophical requirements of Bose’s “theoretical ego,” but both are meant to account for pre-Oedipal experiences. Freud had barely begun to consider how such an “originary ego” related to the everyday ego, but the Vermorels show that the problem already engaged him: “the nursling does not yet differentiate his ‘ego’ from the exterior world and learns to do so only little by little, recognizing the sources of excitation of which the foremost and the most ‘desired’ is the ‘maternal breast.’ ” Sinha, however, does not follow up on a significant entailment of Bose’s “theoretical ego” to discuss Bose’s concept of identification, or more often, of “identity.” First, already under some development in The Concept of Repression is a move beyond sublimation and symbolization to an understanding of subject– object sympathy (eventually empathy) and “identity.” In the dissertation, “identity” is initially defined in terms of “vicarious pleasures,” as when A, who wants to beat B, sees A1 pushing B.65 But “identity” is also “the basis of the reality principle,” and it raises the possibility of “complete and perfect Page 14 of 28

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Opposite Wishes identification” where manifest and latent wishes would be neutralized.66 Then in “The Genesis and Adjustment of (p.114) the Oedipus Wish,” Bose worked out these processes in terms of a “mechanism” of “identity of reaction” (also called “action-identity” and “identity of action”) in which, after a passive identification with a parent, a child models his or her actions after that parent (first, the mother), after which the child can phase into a sympathetic “ego identity” with that parent (and in the “perfect” case, with both parents).67 It is striking that Bose pitches the concept of identity toward “perfect case” situations and toward the “reality principle.” In these cases, he meant by identity and reality something entirely different, and more philosophical, than Freud.68 Sinha, in his earlier, first portrait of Bose, makes Bose’s Vedāntist leanings quite plain: “In his philosophical attitude he was a Vedantist, but he never interfered, nay helped his wife, with their worship of the deity. He considered it his duty to do so.”69 Anyone with even just a slight familiarity with Vedānta can have recognized it in several of Bose’s ideas and images already mentioned: his oceanic overtures, the pearls on a string, and the emphasis on maintaining that mind is a continuum during dreamless sleep, sleep and wakefulness. Bose’s nondualism also underlies the “theoretical ego” he posits “for the purpose of the theory of opposite wish”; an ego who’s “action situation” is “the great reservoir of all wishes both conscious and unconscious” that “includes within itself . . . all manifestations of mental life.” If such a theoretical ego is also “the average man’s ‘I’ that feels the continuity of experience and the strivings of life,” it is a jīvātman, a “living Self.” Freud, by 1933 or 1934, would have probably passed the minimal threshold of slight familiarity with Vedānta to enable him to get at least the tenor of this thinking. There is some evidence that even by 1904–05 he regarded the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā as “genuine classics,” and the suggestion that at least a minimal refamiliarization with Vedāntic themes—minimal, that is, depending on how much he read of Rolland’s three-volume study—was part of his 1923–39 correspondence and friendship with Romain Rolland.70 (p.115) By this time, also, a difference is discernible in how Bose acknowledges his Advaitic allegiance in his two main works. In The Concept of Repression, he admitted Vedānta as part of his philosophical frame of reference. In “New Theory,” it goes unmentioned. Regarding his theory that “originally all wishes are pleasurable and it is only when they are in conflict that unpleasantness arises,” in 1922 he says, If we push this theory to its extreme limit in a person absolutely free from repression, there would be no unpleasantness in this world. How far this is practicable is a question of the greatest significance. It is curious to note that according to the Vedanta philosophy the all-wise man enjoys eternal bliss even in this most miserable world; to him there is nothing unpleasant. Page 15 of 28

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Opposite Wishes Vedanta believes that this state is reliable and history in India would go to support this in the case of many individuals. How far this Vedantic doctrine of pleasantness and unpleasantness coincides with my own I am not prepared to say.71 Bose acknowledges Vedānta while sounding noncommittal.72 His theory “does not come into conflict with other theories. . . ; it goes deeper than most. . . . Its logical character and apparent completeness should not stand in the way of its acceptance by empirical workers, and it should not be confounded with any philosophical doctrine of a similar nature because of its wide applicability in mental life. On the other hand these characteristics are all indications of the trustworthiness of the formulation.”73 By 1933, Bose’s “New Theory” could have drawn back from such comments, aware that they could expose it to criticism. As to Freud, apart from whatever further guidance on Vedānta he may have picked up from Rolland, there is evidence that he developed a susceptibility to rapid Vedānta fatigue when meeting with Indians.74 (p.116) It is, however, not just Vedānta that concerns us in Bose’s theory of opposite wishes; his theory includes a theory of action that is hard to disentangle from a Vedāntic understanding of karma. Basu says that in his book on the Bhagavad Gītā, Bose, as a “rationalist-secularist,” explicitly rejected the idea of karma and specifically reincarnation from past lives.75 As far as I can see, Bose never uses the term “karma” in his writings, but I have left a couple of small “herms” along our route to discussing it. One was left in chapter 1 in discussing Citragupta, who assesses the circuits of karma so that Yama, judge of the dead, may assign a suitable rebirth. Another was my promise to get back to Sinha’s attribution to Bose of an “action situation” “in every wish situation.” Bose’s theory of opposite wishes has a penumbra of karma about it. The seesaw mechanism in particular has something of the manner in which Citragupta weighs good and bad karma. We might also note where Freud writes to Bose, “It needs more time and effort to overcome the feeling of unfamiliarity when confronted with a theory so different from the one professed hitherto.” Freud’s “unfamiliarity” could have overtones of the unheimlich, the “uncanny.” It is the uncanny sense Freud might, I think legitimately, have had that what Bose meant by a theory of opposite wishes held reminders of karma. Bose might have had good Vedāntic reasons to avoid the term “karma.” As Eliot Deutsch states, “from the metaphysical and epistemological framework of Advaita [“non-dualist” Vedānta], the status of karma as a ‘convenient fiction’ logically follows.”76 If Bose wanted to correlate his theory with Advaita logically, he need not have mentioned karma. Further, given karma’s implication of previous and future lives, which Advaita itself leaves as “undemonstrable” by its Page 16 of 28

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Opposite Wishes admitted pramāṇas, or “means of knowledge,”77 Advaita may have provided Bose with logical grounds to limit his psychoanalytic discussions to one lifetime.78 But even granting Bose such sophisticated detours, Advaita subscribes thoroughly to the “law of karma,” and no one who thought about it could overlook the possibility that a theory of opposite wishes could have something to do with the general Vedāntic outlook that the realized self overcomes “the pairs of opposites.” (p.117) Once we recognize that “desire” (kāma) is a synonym for “wish” (as in “Cow of Wishes” for Kāmadhenu), a sufficient locus classicus for Bose to have had in mind on karma and opposite wishes would be these famous lines from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad: A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action. And so people say: “a person here consists simply of desire.” A man resolves in accordance with his desire, acts in accordance with his resolve, and turns out to be in accordance with his action. On this point there is the following verse: A man who’s attached goes with his action, to that very place to which his mind and character cling. Reaching the end of his action, of whatever he has done in this world— From that world he returns back to this world, back to action.

That is the course of the man who desires. Now a man who does not desire —who is without desire, who is freed from desire, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self—his vital functions (prāṇa) do not depart. Brahman he is, and to Brahman he goes.79 Reincarnation aside, this could have been Bose’s Upaniṣadic proof-text, had he wanted one, for the Vedāntic triad of sat-cit-ānanda, as it substantiates that Being in Brahman implies Consciousness as “resolve” (kratu), and supplies an equivalent for Bliss in the fulfilled desire for the self that could confirm Bose’s insistence that pleasure without pain is a “primary feeling.” The passage speaks only of conscious desires and not repressed “opposite wishes” that await karmic results from an unconscious. As befits Advaitic Hinduism in which consciousness is a monistic absolute, there can strictly speaking be no unconscious. Yet Advaita can account for the real-enough feeling of fear one experiences in mistaking a rope for a snake, through its concepts of māyā (“illusion”), avidyā (“nescience”), (p.118) adhyāsa (“superimposition”), and sadasadvilakṣaṇa (what is not Brahman as “neither-real-nor-unreal”).80

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Opposite Wishes Karma and Bose’s Parallelism We have noted that Nandy says that when Bose wrote in Bengali, he did so from a more culturally authentic “remembrance.”81 Bose never forgot, no matter whether he wrote in English or Bengali, that his primary audience was Indian. Bose seems to have orchestrated his views on karma differently in these two scholarly languages, not mentioning karma in English while rejecting its association with reincarnation in Bengali. Possibly the silence in English was because he judged it to be an Indian issue, or perhaps he thought that Western psychoanalytic readers might see any discussion of it as clouding the issue. Either way, his reticence could suggest another answer to why Bose never wrote a paper on opposite wishes for international analytic readers. For me, though, the absence of discussion of karma is like a missing link. Karma’s unacknowledged penumbral status suggests that it could have been useful to Bose’s presentation of opposite wishes, particularly had he reinforced his parallelism with it. As a doctrine in Indian thought, karma has long presented parallelistic solutions to the riddles it raises—and even for just one life. A basic example is the conviction that actions reap either moral or physical results, whether they be of words, thoughts, or deeds; and, getting more complicated, they do so in “unforeseen” ways that were “not there before” yet as “beginningless” as ignorance and the soul.82 As Arvind Sharma says, concluding an article titled “Karma in Advaita Vedānta,” The point to be especially appreciated here is that both karma and mokṣa relate to an ultimate state of affairs but that such ultimacy relates to the empirical realm in the case of karma and the metaphysical realm in the case of mokṣa. If one surveys the world as one normally (i.e. dualistically) experiences it, it seems at times that the virtuous suffer and the (p.119) wicked prosper—that it lacks justice. Advaita . . . maintains that such injustice is only apparent and not real—that ultimately appearances notwithstanding, cosmic justice prevails.83 For Bose, opposite wishes were the very basis for “normal” (i.e., dualistic) experiences. Bose the “parallelist” took the route of positing “a dual substratum, one physical and the other psychical, for each object,” which “makes it possible for us to understand how the same object can affect two such different orders of entities as mind and matter.”84 He theorized the unconscious mainly on the basis of such Vedāntic ideas, conclu ding that it is “indispensable” for the “explanation of memory and of certain mental processes that emerge into consciousness without rhyme or reason defying the general trend of the conscious personality.”85 Although Bose rejected ideas about reincarnation, a karmic framework made analytic room for the integrated self, mind, or “theoretical ego” that his Vedānta-oriented readers and patients could recognize as synonymous with the jīvātman: the self caught up in saṃsāric life that would nonetheless be theoretically (ontologically and “ultimately”) free not only from reincarnation Page 18 of 28

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Opposite Wishes caused by karmic conditioning, but from biological drives—however much the latter required Bose to acknowledge medical materialism with a dualist psychology—and also, as Basu professes, free from social, cultural, educational, and religious conditioning. My sense is that Bose well knew that a rationalist-parallelist’s karma was working in the penumbra of his “unfamiliar” theory, and that Sinha probably knew. Maybe Nandy also knew. Freud could probably only have sensed its “unfamiliarity.” But it is important to recognize that it was not a decisive factor in his pursuing Bose’s clarifications through their correspondence. Freud was neither a dogmatist nor a purist, and he no doubt recognized, as he did for a while with Jung,86 that acceptable therapeutic (p.120) results might come from a culturally or religiously adaptive psychoanalytic theory. But whether or not he knew or sensed that he and Bose were letting karma remain unacknowledged, he could have felt that Bose’s theory was unheimlich, or “uncanny,” in two of the precise senses he gave the term. If Bose’s theory of opposite wishes had this penumbra, it would have had the positive adaptive feature of tapping into any of his Indian patients’ understandings of previous and future lives, ghosts, and revenants. But it would also have made Bose’s theory a throwback to what Freud considered the dim prehistory of animism in the childhood of the human race.87 Freud, meanwhile, was creating a new difficulty for Bose with regard to his first topography of consciousness, the preconscious, and the unconscious—the topography that Bose continued to work with and favored over his second. Bose’s arguments always returned to the point that opposite wishes were defined by being conscious and unconscious. But with the publication of The Ego and the Id, Freud had determined that “the criterion of consciousness was no longer helpful in building up a structural picture of the mind”:88 “Being conscious” is in the first place a purely descriptive term, resting on perception of the most immediate and certain character. Experience goes on to show that a psychical element (for instance, an idea) is not as a rule conscious for a protracted length of time. On the contrary, a state of consciousness is characteristically very transitory; an idea that is conscious is no longer so a moment later, although it can become so again under certain conditions that are easily brought about. In the interval the idea was—we do not know what. We can say that it was latent, and by this we mean that it was capable of becoming conscious at any time. Or, if we say that it was unconscious, we shall also be giving a correct description of it.89 In chapter 6, there will be an occasion to wonder what Bose means by a wish being conscious or unconscious. We will also see there that, at least by 1938, Bose was inclined to dismiss Freud’s second topography of (p.121) id-egosuperego,90 which entailed this quasi-Buddhist acknowledgment of the fitfulness Page 19 of 28

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Opposite Wishes of consciousness that was so antithetical to Bose’s Vedāntic reading of a permanent consciousness accessible to the Self. Let us now turn to Bose’s parallelism and the defense he made of it. We need to address the “dynamic” in Bose’s “framework,” which introduces terms like “identity” that are basically philosophical. Elaborating on the terms “parallelism” and “parallelist” already developed in The Concept of Repression,91 in “New Theory” Bose called himself a “parallelist” with reference to an idea aired in 1930, when he used it in a shorter form: “the modern theory of psycho-physical parallelism.”92 Now he calls it the “theory of pan-psychic psycho-physical parallelism”: If we assume a dual substratum, one physical and the other psychical, for each object we can steer clear of all philosophical tangles. I am aware of the fact that philosophers fight shy of the idea of a theoretical substratum but for the purposes of a scientific hypothesis the assumption of a substratum is a justifiable measure. The psychical part of this hypothetical substratum, which by itself is unknowable, provides the basis on which psychological projections take shape making it cognizable as an external object. The dual nature of the substratum makes it possible for us to understand how the same object can affect two such different orders of entities as mind and matter.93 Bose implies that he takes this position apart from Freud, saying that the “theory of the dynamic unconscious mind” was “developed” by Freud “not as a corollary to the theory of psycho-physical parallelism but to meet the requirements of psycho-pathology.”94 But Bose could have claimed (p.122) Freud as a precursor, since in his early 1890 study Aphasia, as Jones puts it, Freud “declared himself an adherent of the doctrine of psychophysical parallelism95—although Freud does not adopt the term itself, and is somewhat more tentative than Jones indicates: The chain of physiological processes in the nervous system probably does not stand in any causal relation to the psychical processes. The physiological processes do not cease as soon as the physical ones begin; the physiological chain continues, but from a certain moment onwards there corresponds with each link in it (or several links) a psychical phenomenon. Thus the psychical is a process parallel to the physical.96 Adam Phillips remarks on Freud’s “profound ambivalence” in wanting to separate psychoanalysis out from the physical sciences. . . . There were, in other words—extraordinary as it might seem, even to Freud himself— psychoanalytic facts that were not subject to biological description. . . . “Psychoanalysis,” he would later write in 1916, “must keep itself free from

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Opposite Wishes an hypothesis that is alien to it, whether of an anatomical, chemical, or physiological kind.”97 Both the early Freud and Bose were thus beholden to a position with many variations that involved reworking ideas of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Kant. Its name may have been coined by Wilhelm Wundt, and its chief theorization comes in G. T. Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). One of its later exponents was Albert Einstein.98 But its vogue had exhausted itself in Euro-American circles by the late 1920s while Bose was advocating it.99 Bose claims that “immense strides have been made in the domain of psychology under the impetus of the parallelistic theory which has led to the postulation of the unconscious mind.”100 He starts from a rejection of (p.123) the “supposition that the memory of past events is stored up as impressions in the brain cells which provide the basis for continuity during the unconscious phase”:101 This theory is unacceptable to the psychologist who believes in parallelism, as it implies that mind can arise out of matter which constitutes the brain cells. The parallelist . . . believes that the mind existed all the time during sleep and wakefulness and it was only consciousness that was wanting. . . . [T]here is nothing to prevent us from believing in the existence of unconscious mental states which maintain the continuity of personality during lapses of consciousness. . . . Unconscious mind as a theoretical concept does not involve any self-contradiction. In fact it is a logical corollary of the theory of pan-psychic psycho-physical determinism and is indispensable as an explanation of memory.102 The connection with memory would seem to bridge the mental and material “orders” of Bose’s “parallelism” by relating subjective experience to perceptions and objects. Bose’s “New Theory” explains perceptions in this fashion: The wish is a form of mental energy that acts like a physical force, and thus brings about a change in an existing group of perceptions. All forms of actions, beginning from a deliberate act of choice to a simple reflex act, may be supposed to be motivated by wish in some form or another. . . . Perceptions are determined by wish; in fact they are forms of latent wishes.103 Before this, in The Concept of Repression, Bose had backed up his concluding chapter on smells, mainly sexual ones accessible through “careful introspection,”104 with a discussion of perception that leads to the question of when unconscious wishes give rise to illusion.105

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Opposite Wishes (p.124) We may now credit Nandy for a finer formulation of Bose’s parallelism than even Bose’s. Nandy says that although Bose’s “New Theory” “is the handiwork of a psychologist versed in and committed to the nondualist Vedantic tradition, it can be read as making a systematic case for a dualist psychology rooted in the Vedanta.”106 As we shall see in chapter 5, Bose’s Vedānta is creatively eclectic in relation to other schools of Indian philosophy, including the dualist Sāṃkhya. Apūrva, or “that which is not there before,” is a Mīmāṃsā concept for a mysterious force inherent in the sacrifice to bring about results that do not rely on the agency of the devatā stipulated by the rite, which is thereby superfluous to the outcome. For Śaṅkara, however, “results come from brahman himself.” Notes:

(1.) Bose 1933, 101. (2.) Bose 1933, 101. (3.) Summarizing Bose 1933, 101–103. (4.) Freud 1953–74, 17:179–254. (5.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 31. Obeyesekere (2012) illustrates the distinction by two imagery-oriented statements by H. D.: “I wish to recall the impressions, or rather I wish the impressions to recall me”; and “Let the impressions come in their own way, make their own sequence.’’ Her “example suggests that other kinds of thoughts also can appear in the mind when discursive ‘I-thinking’ has been partially suspended, as in free association or in related conditions such as reveries and daydreams” (42–43, citing H. D. [1956] 1974, 14). (6.) Bose 1933, 70–80. (7.) Akhtar and Tummala-Narra 2005, 5. The passage seems typical and these authors give it an optimal reading: “The latent wish, which in its manifest form, would exactly correspond to the situation of the object, finds satisfaction by the subject unconsciously identifying himself with the object. Unless this identification takes place the object is not apprehended by the psyche of the subject and remains a nonentity as far as the subject is concerned. This identity is the bond of relation between the object and the subject and on it depends the true appreciation of the nature of the object” (Bose 1921, 122–23). (8.) Kakar 2005. (9.) Nandy 1996, 376. (10.) See chapter 1, this volume, note 2. Page 22 of 28

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Opposite Wishes (11.) Basu 1999, 45. (12.) In “New Theory,” he writes, “the term unconscious has been reserved for the dynamically unconscious or repressed material” (Bose 1933, 62); “the dynamic nature of unconscious wishes becomes apparent during interpretation of dreams and neurotic symptoms” (66). (13.) See chapter 3, this volume. (14.) Basu has “helps them come to terms with it.” (15.) Basu has “are equal.” (16.) Basu 1999, 42. (17.) See Hartnack 2001, 137: “Nowhere in his writings did Bose attribute any biological basis to human behavior.” His “new theory” refers to Freud’s views among those of “certain workers” whose “theories are biological rather than psychological.” (18.) Hartnack 2001, 128. (19.) Hartnack 2001, 109–10. (20.) Sinha 1955, 67. (21.) Sinha 1955, 65–66. (22.) On paradoxes in the “work of the negative,” see Green 1999, 206–10, 216– 20. (23.) Sinha 1955, 66. (24.) See chapter 8, this volume. (25.) Sinha 1955, 66–67. (26.) See chapter 3, this volume. Bose–Freud correspondence, letter 23. (27.) Sinha 1966, 434–38. (28.) Sinha 1966, 427, 432. (29.) Sinha 1966, 433. (30.) Respectively, from 1921 and 1933. Bose says his Concept of Repression was his first attempt to offer his theory of opposite wishes a “logical structure.” About “New Theory”: “A deductive presentation, such as is inevitable here to a

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Opposite Wishes certain extent, is likely to emphasize the logical structure of the theory and to obscure from view the facts of experience on which it rests” (Bose 1933, 85). (31.) The term “action situation” seems to be Sinha’s formalization from Bose’s many usages of the two words separately. Bose supplied an exhaustive Index to The Concept of Repression, indexing fifty-four usages of “action” words, plus sixty-eight combined with other words; “situation” with twenty, plus fourteen combined. Neither term comes indexed under the other. “New Theory” thrice mentions the triad subject, object, and act (Bose 1933, 65, 103, 118), and relatedly subject, object, and verb (117), and, like Sinha in his earlier 1955 article, uses “action attitude” (93, 119, 121, 129) and “action phase” (127, 133), but never “action situation.” (32.) Bose 1933, 146–51. (33.) Sinha 1966, 430, omits the punctuation. (34.) Bose 1933, 146. (35.) Bose 1933, 149–51; cf. 125: “The feeling of pleasure is sui generis.” (36.) Sinha 1966, 438. (37.) Hartnack 2001, 128. (38.) See Bose 1933, 54–59. (39.) Hartnack 2001, 131, 132; see Bose 1952a, 5. (40.) Hartnack 2001, 133, citing Bose 1952b, 57. (41.) Hartnack 2001, 132; Bose 1938, 12, cited Rādhā imagining herself to be Kṛṣṇa. See Hartnack 2001, 128, on Bose’s “view of a basic unity of all of life rather than a subject–object dichotomy.” (42.) Hartnack 2001, 132–33, citing Bose 1952b, 57. (43.) Simha 1966, 432. (44.) Bose [1928] 1949, 227. (45.) Sinha 1966, 432. (46.) Sinha 1966, 432. (47.) Bose 1933, 93; see 90–94 for extended discussion. (48.) See FM, chapter 5, where I discuss a Mahābhārata story about a serpentwoman’s son. Page 24 of 28

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Opposite Wishes (49.) See Bose 1933, 59. (50.) Bose 1921, 37–38. (51.) Bose 1921, 92–96. (52.) Bose 1921, 137–39. (53.) Bose 1921, 152–53. (54.) Bose 1933, 103–105, 117–18, 152–53. (55.) Bose 1933, 103–104. (56.) Bose 1933, 104. (57.) Bose 1933, 104–105. (58.) Freud 1953–74, 17:179. (59.) Freud 1953–74, 17:185. (60.) Another example, from The Interpretation of Dreams, differs from Bose’s usage in mixing elements from “different systems”: Freud’s “general assertion that a hysterical symptom develops only where the fulfillment of two opposing wishes, arising each from a different psychical system, are able to converge in a single expression” (Freud 1953–74, 5:569, italics in original). (61.) Bose 1933, 153. (62.) Bose 1933, 128–29, my italics. (63.) Trans. Zaehner 1969, 247. (64.) Freud 1953–74, 21:68. The Vermorels (1993, 337) note that, despite his reticence, Freud does offer a psychoanalytic interpretation of this feeling. (65.) Bose 1921, 93–94. (66.) Bose 1921, 123 (“reality principle”), 135 (“complete and perfect identification”). (67.) Bose [1928] 1949, 230–33; see discussion that follows. (68.) We shall, however, observe other instances in chapter 6 where Bose uses reality principle in a more Freudian sense. (69.) Sunha 1955, 69.

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Opposite Wishes (70.) Rolland’s volumes are filled with Vedānta, beginning with Ramakrishna’s initiation (1930, 64–82). (71.) Bose 1921, 61–62. (72.) In 1921, speaking of the “mystic significance” of the numbers 1, 2, and 3, Bose coyly compares unitive Vedānta with triplicity representing the Oedipal triangle: “Monists” “find only one possibility of action”; “Dualists” are “those look forward to the fulfillment of two kinds of wishes”; and “psychoneurotics and others, in whom there is struggle between two opposite factors and a final compromise formation, always attach a great significance to the number three” (Bose 1921, 63). (73.) Bose 1933, 136. (74.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 73. On Bose’s defense of psychoanalysis against Tagore’s early dislike of it, see Biswas 2003, 53 and note 1, 59–73, on Tagore’s late-life turnabout in appreciation of Freud. (75.) Basu 1999, 48. (76.) Deutsch 1973, 69n5. (77.) Deutsch 1973, 69–76. (78.) Hartnack 2001, 131, notes an instance where Bose says, “death makes way for rebirth.” (79.) Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.9.5–6, trans. Olivelle 1998, 120–21. Deutsch 1973, 67, opens his karma chapter with this passage. (80.) Thanks to Vishwa Adluri, for this “real-enough feeling” (personal communication, February 23, 2013). (81.) Nandy 1996, 376. (82.) I refer here to the Vaiśeṣika concept of adṛṣṭa, the Mīmāṃsa concept of apūrva (see further chapter 5, this volume), and the Advaita concept of anādi. (83.) Sharma 1990, 236. (84.) See note 91, this chapter. (85.) See notes 92–94, this chapter. (86.) See Kerr 1993, 287. Freud in 1910 told the Viennese contingent opposed to Jung’s promotion as lifelong president of the International Psychoanalytic Association: “Most of you are Jews, and therefore incompetent to win friends for

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Opposite Wishes the new teaching. Jews must be content with the modest role of preparing the ground. . . . The Swiss will save us—will save me, and all of you as well.” (87.) See FM, chapter 1. (88.) Strachey (editor’s comment), in Freud 1953–74, 19:7. (89.) Freud 1960, 25; Freud had developed these reservations in a more preliminary way in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1953–74, 17:19, 24– 27). Italics are in the original. (90.) Not developed until Freud’s The Ego and the Id (1927), worked out from ideas in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (see Kerr 1993, 500). It is younger than Freud’s “first topography” of the unconscious, preconscious, and consciousness. For Freud’s uses of “topography” in The Ego and the Id to describe “the spatial or ‘topographical’ idea of mental life,” see Freud 1960, 31. Comparing the two topographies, see Ricoeur 1977; for discussion bearing on South Asian materials, see Obeyesekere 1990, xx–xxi, 63, 84, 243–45, 250–54, 256, favoring the first topography, with which Bose would likely agree. (91.) Bose 1921, 3, 6–12, 16–17, 145–46. Cf., however, Bose 1930a, 138, 143, introducing some uncertainty without the qualifier “pan-psychic.” (92.) Bose 1930a, 143. (93.) Bose 1933, 44. (94.) Bose 1933, 48. (95.) Jones 1953–57, l:367–68. (96.) Freud, Aphasia, as quoted by Jones 1953–57, 368. (97.) Phillips 2014, 75–76. (98.) See Heidelberger 2003, 233–45. (99.) Heidelberger 2003, 250–55. (100.) Bose 1933, 45–46. (101.) Bose 1933, 47. Cf. Bose 1930a, 145: “A psychologist, in fact, has no necessity of admitting that anybody has brains!” (102.) Bose 1933, 47–48, cf. 71. (103.) Bose 1933, 129.

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Opposite Wishes (104.) Bose 1921, 162–82, 172, on “careful introspection” of foods, farts, body odors, and perfumes. (105.) Bose 1921, 50–51. See further, Bose 1926; Hartnack 2001, 99–102. (106.) Nandy 1996, 368. Cf. 355 on “attempts by Bose to locate psychoanalysis in the Vedantic tradition”; “the space thus created for psychology also accommodates a heavily textual version of the advaita as the core of Indian consciousness” (372). Bose’s father, too, “was known for his managerial efficiency, financial probity, and Vedantic scholarship” (346).

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity”

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Chapter 5 treats Bose’s discussion of “the sources of the maternal deity” by which, conjointly with his treatment of “the Oedipus mother,” he challenged Freud in a 1929 letter. The key text is Bose’s “Psychological Outlook of Indian Philosophy,” a 1930 address to the Indian Philosophical Association. Here Bose juxtaposes two approaches to deity. First, he cites Freudian projection theory, leaving open what a projection theory of “the sources of the maternal deity” would look like, but implies that it would be equally childish. He then turns to methods of envisioning devatās or “divinities,” and recalls debates over “what is a devatā” that were carried out between the philosophical schools of Mīmāṃsa and Vedānta in the early classical period. Thus a sophisticated, mature, and unchildish way of defining the sources of maternal deity emerges. Keywords:   projection theory, father deity, theism, Bhagavad Gītā, maternal deity, devatā, Mīmāṃsa, Vedānta, Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud

UNLIKE CHAPTER 4, which is about an idea that runs through most of Bose’s writings, chapters 5 and 6 derive from just a single thought in two connected sentences that occur in Bose’s Freud correspondence about the Oedipus mother’s being the source of the “maternal deity.” The Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image, and this is a fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that much of the motivation for the “maternal deity” is traceable to this source.1 I will unpack Bose’s carefully worded statement, considering the two terms in their reverse order of appearance. Bose leaves little indication other than the Page 1 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” closing word source what he means by “the motivation of ‘maternal deity.’ ” Does “motivation of” refer to her motives for acting as she does in her myths, or is it the motivations behind her as a phenomenon? Bose wrote rarely about myths, and since he is writing to Freud, it is likely he would imply something that Freud could relate to in his own ideas about deity. I assume that Bose implies what he names as Freud’s theory of “projection,” and suggests that just as a male God is a projection of the father, the maternal deity would be a projection of the “combined parental image.” As I have urged, this would imply for Bose a preOedipal projection—that is, one psychoanalytically prior to the projection of the father. Yet Bose supplies two theories on “the motivation of ‘maternal deity.’ ” One is found in his April 1929 letter, and the other is in a 1930 article outside of his Freud correspondence. I begin with the theory that Bose (p.126) develops in his article, and get to what he says in correspondence only afterward.

God and Goddesses in Bose’s 1930 Article Shruti Kapila seems to be the only person to have discussed Bose’s 1930 article, “The Psychological Outlook of Hindu Philosophy,” which appeared in the Indian Journal of Psychology. She interprets Bose as moving past earlier differences with Freud to mark out a new difference from him, not over God and goddesses but over religion: While for Freud the psychoanalyzing of religion and its explanation meant a call for the end of religion, in Bose it became the starting point for an alternative idea of the mounting of difference with his European counterparts. He argued that the individual’s relationship in . . . pursuit of the godly etches out his selfhood. . . . He argued that these different modalities of the self could be traced to the ancient and historical past with the arrival of related deities in appropriate epochs. . . . In this context religion served as a palliative for human suffering and was deemed therefore “practical” for Bose rather than as the obsessive, collective neurosis that it was for Freud.2 The point is reasonable. The practicality Kapila stresses could be related to the adaptive overtures Bose made through his understanding of Vedānta, just discussed in the last chapter. But Kapila oversimplifies Freud and insufficiently covers the passages in which Bose speaks differently about God and goddesses. Bose, she recognizes, “argued that ‘man creates his god out of his own mental image’ and that the heavenly father was a bigger prototype of the earthly father as an outcome of a projection of the unconscious,” whereas goddesses and other polytheistic deities emerged “in appropriate epochs . . . as an expression of contemporary concerns.”3

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” This does not take us very far into these passages, which I interpret as contrastive. Bose speaks of the motivations behind goddesses and other polytheistic deities as going beyond meeting the satisfaction of childish needs— as a projection made in childhood would do for any (p.127) deity, female or male. Bose makes scientific claims for what I call a more adult way of interpreting Hindu deity that begins from practices of introspection and visualization and cuts across both the Vedic and Hindu pantheons. More than its having Vedic antecedents, I am interested in the rationale it supplies for understanding post-Vedic Hindu deity and the Greco-Mediterranean Goddess. Would Bose’s approach also apply at least minimally to the Greek pantheon, since this study is about Indian and Greco-Mediterranean goddesses who were of interest to Freud? Since Greek divinities are also invoked by visual qualities and formulas,4 we may say that the comparison is significant. As to the second theory in Bose’s correspondence with Freud, we shall see that GrecoMediterranean connections are plentiful for tracing the maternal deity to the Oedipus mother. Bose’s 1930 article was presented as an address to the Indian Philosophical Congress, founded in 1925 by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Rabindranath Tagore. In its early years, the congress had five sections: Logic and Metaphysics, Indian Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion.5 The 1930 meeting would have included a mix of presenters on Indian and Western topics that were congenial to Bose’s contribution. Quite early in the article, Bose accepts Freud’s use of projection theory for a divine father. Only much later does he get into the question of divinity including goddesses, in a section titled “The Hindu Pantheon.” The approach makes nothing of the child’s maternal projections and says little about goddesses as mothers. Rather, it draws on an analysis of deity (devatā) in accord with ideas of the Indian philosophical schools of Mīmāṃsā and Advaita Vedānta. If Bose were taking up an issue to stimulate the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1930, we would not expect it to be over Freud’s theory of male deity. In fact, the article never mentions Freud. Yet Bose does seek to mark off distinct psychological and philosophical domains. And here, the threads of continuity and contrast emerge from his approach to the male deity and to the goddesses within polytheism. (p.128) The way Bose makes Western Philosophy disappear in his two opening moves befits his youthful days as a magician. First, he chides philosophy for treating psychology as a “handmaid . . . from time immemorial” and philosophers for being seldom “interested in psychological problems as such; . . . whenever they have used any psychological material,” it has been “as a stepping stone to some philosophical generalization.” In mentioning psychology among Page 3 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” the “hard” natural sciences—physics, chemistry, and astronomy, whose “deductions and discoveries . . . have in a similar way been used to build up definite philosophical systems”—he seems poised to take up a critique of Western Philosophy. Then he turns to Indian philosophy, which he says “stands on a peculiar footing. In no Western system of philosophy has the psychological material been so dominant.”6 The psychologist “can at most examine and evaluate the psychological facts gathered by the philosophers.” He is talking about philosophers who have “gathered” Indian data. Since the analysis of devatā will be psychological, these two moves together guarantee that the explanations of both father deities and female deities will be as scientific as the hardest natural sciences. It is useful to show where Bose fits these two explanations into the scope of his article. With nineteen sections, the article has the discussion of father god projections in the sixth section, titled “Search for the Brahman.” Discussion of female devatās comes in the eighteenth section, “The Hindu Pantheon.” Bose’s route to that sixth section takes him through the following subtopics: 1. Philosophy and Psychology 2. Indian Philosophy 3. Obscure Passages 4. Types of Obscurity 5. The Rishi’s Mind 6. Search for the Brahman So far, I have quoted only from the first two sections. In the third section, Bose says that he is “inclined to think that we have failed to realize” the “true significance” of obscure passages. In the fourth section, he “contends that the psychological outlook which seems to me to be at the basis of Indian philosophical thought will enable us to explain (p.129) many difficult passages . . . in a rational manner and will remove their prevailing obscurity to some extent.” He classifies three “types of obscurity” in the Upaniṣads, selecting “haphazard” examples of each, ostensibly to demonstrate that “obscurity” is common to them all.7 In the fifth section, he brings up “that peculiar mental trait which psychologists have called empathy” to gain access to “the mental constitution of the ancient rishis,” whom he introduces as “unsophisticated people having an immense faith in their own experience and unrivaled courage of conviction.” Bose’s Ṛṣis are ideal types whom he can ask the following questions regarding the “obscurity” of the Brahman: [W]hat made the rishis take up the search for this obscure entity? How did they arrive at the knowledge that the Brahman exists at all and how did they find out the characteristics of this Being?8

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” All this is prefatory to section six, which brings up psychoanalytic projection theory to account for God as a father. Bose now shifts from the Upaniṣads to the Bhagavad Gītā, making his frame of reference post-Vedic and theistic. He cites BhG 7.16cd, where as he translates it Kṛṣṇa says that “four types of persons search for God—viz., those who are in danger, those who have a thirst for knowledge, those who have a strong desire to acquire wealth and happiness, and lastly those who are wise.”9 Bose concentrates on the second type: the man who has “a thirst for knowledge” or is a “knowledge seeker” (jijñāsur).10 He gets to him only after he dispenses with the fourth type, the jñānī. Kṛṣṇa spends the next three verses lauding the jñānī as the best of the four, but Bose leaves him “out of account for the purpose of the present discussion” because (p.130) “the wise person seeks God because he has already felt His presence.” Bose’s comments on Freudian projection theory come here, where he cites the first and third types as examples of those who might welcome divine paternal assistance offered in a theistic text: The psychology of the person who seeks the help of God when in danger, or of the man who offers prayers for the furtherance of his ambition is easy to understand. It is a natural tendency of our mind to wish for outside help when our efforts fail in any direction. The child looks up to the father when in difficulty and psychoanalysts have proved that the hankering for a heavenly father is directly traceable to this childish trait which continues to persist in the adult in the unconscious mind. The heavenly father is a bigger prototype of the earthly parent and being a projection of the unconscious tendency of our mind is immune from the demands of the realty principle so that he is invested with all sorts of inconsistent qualities like “all-kindness and all-powerfulness.”11 The remark about immunity from the reality principle shows an attentive reading of Freud’s The Future of an Illusion12 in the light of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. From this standpoint, the doctrine that God created man out of His own image had better be replaced by the assertion that man creates God out of his own mental image. You will presently see how the rishis of old located the power of creation within the human soul. At this stage you must remember that the psychological explanation of the creation of Godhead leaves the question of the actual existence of God unsettled. An innate hankering makes a man believe in the elixir of life or the philosophers’ stone, which will convert every base metal into gold, but this does not preclude the possibility of the ultimate discovery of such substances. The wish to be able to communicate with people at a distance has been realized by the discovery of the wireless.13

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” (p.131) I am reminded of Randy Kloetzli’s report that an Elephanta tour guide, in 1980, said that a sculpted wall panel in one cave showing Śiva and Pārvatī at some distance from each other “proves that in those days they had walkie talkies.” But Bose’s full statement is part of an oppositional evaluation. The “innate hankering” accompanies the childish “hankering for a heavenly father,” but the Ṛṣis will take their psychological explanation to a deeper plane. Bose’s disclaimer actually reinforces the childishness of the initial “hankering.” With this reduction of the psychoanalytic projection theory to childishness, Bose then moves back to the second type who searches for the Brahman, the jijñāsur: I now come to that important class of persons who seek God because of a thirst for knowledge. The motive here is exactly like that of a scientific worker who wants to discover a law of nature or who wants to test the validity of an assertion by another scientist. Scientific curiosity has thus been recognized by the Gita as a legitimate motive for the search for Godhead.14 The Gītā’s appealing to scientific curiosity may be anachronistic, but let us keep to Bose’s comparison of the jijñāsur and the “scientific worker.” Bose has given him the same motivation as the ancient Ṛṣis for wanting “to discover a law of nature or . . . test the validity of an assertion by another scientist.” Bose’s route from the sixth to the eighteenth section now follows largely nontheistic twists. Again, it is useful to refer to Bose’s subheadings. 7. Scientific Problem 8. Hypothetical Enquiry 9. A Comparison 10. The Greatest Entity 11. The Ego 12. Authority of the Vedas 13. The Five Sense Doors 14. The Five Elements 15. Creation—Modern View 16. Creation in Samkhya (p.132) 17. The Three Guṇas 18. The Hindu Pantheon 19. Psychological Outlook Bose’s seventh section returns him to the Upaniṣads, where he will remain for most of the article, away from theism. The seventh section opens with a medley of questions asked by Upaniṣadic sages meant “as an illustration of the scientific type of enquiry for Godhead”:15 for example, “Whence do we come?” “Which is our support?” (Śvet. Up. 1.1); “What is the number of forces that keep the animal body alive and which of them is the principal one?” (Praśna Up. 2.1); Page 6 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” “Which are the sense-organs that go to sleep and which are the ones that remain awake?”; “How do dreams arise?” “Which is the agent in the body that feels pleasure?” (Praśna Up. 4.1); “Who controls the mind?” (Kena Up. 1).16 These questions are evidence “that the search for Brahman was not always the [Ṛṣis’] primary concern . . . the rishi did not start with any preconceived notion about Brahman, and very often he had no notion of this being at all when he first started on his enquiry.”17 From sections eight through eleven, Bose then carries along a single “hypothetical enquiry”: there is nothing of mysticism in these questions and the effort at answer is irreproachable when judged by the scientific standard of the present day. If the rishi ultimately came upon such an obscure entity as the Brahman it was only because his enquiry logically and quite naturally and inevitably led him to this point. . . . He was mainly guided by his psychological sense, i.e., his own unsophisticated experience. He had no text-book by Newton or Einstein to consult.18 Having reestablished the scientific bona fides of his model Ṛṣis and made them his “hypothetical workers,”19 Bose demonstrates how they could have sought and found the obscure Brahman by asking “Which is the ultimate support of everything?” and arriving at the conclusion “that the ultimate (p.133) support is bigger than the things supported, . . . so that the ultimate support would be the biggest entity we can conceive of.” The Ṛṣi who pursued this line of inquiry relentlessly past all tentative conclusions would come to the Brahman, the word for which “signifies that which is big.”20 Bose then compares the results of his “hypothetical enquirer . . . with those actually arrived at by some of the rishis of the Upanishads.” He mentions three of them in Chāndogya Upaniṣad 1.8–9 who take the ultimate foundation of the Sāman “high chant” to be, respectively, heaven, this world, and space (ākāśa). The answers of the first two, who agree that “one should not take it beyond” the ritually operative worlds in question, suggest a proto-Mīmāṃsic self-restraint. In contrast, the third answer, giving the sāman an unlimited foundation, has a proto-Vedāntic feel to it. Bose’s hypothetical worker, however, sees two further moves beyond “space” that take the inquiry to its “obscure” destination. First, having moved “our enquirer” from earth-embracing air to an open plane where he can see “that his space is bounded above by the immense blue vault of the heavens called by the name of ‘Dyau’ by the rishis of old,” the worker thinks, “The dyau is limited below by the different points of the compass and is the biggest entity. The ‘dyau’ is the Brahman.” But after “careful observation of the dyau he finds that the position of the stars and the heavenly bodies change from day to day till after a year the original configuration comes back. It is within the fold of time that the dyau goes on changing. Therefore, time is the larger entity and Time is the Page 7 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” Brahman.”21 Further, “If we go into deep introspection we find that the experience of time, unlike that of visual space, does not come through the intermediary of any special sense organ.” Bose’s thus begins to trace the renunciation of sense experience as a psychologically important feature of the Ṛṣis’ introspective inquiries. Time is directly apprehended by the mind as it were. . . . The “time feeling” is specially marked in all those mental experiences, which have the characteristic of change in them; all such experiences take place in time. It may, therefore, be said that the experience of time is a wider experience which includes all other experiences. The time of the physicist is only an outward projection of the psychologists’ (p.134) time experience. Time as an entity is the biggest entity of all. . . . Our enquirer is perfectly right when he says, “O Time, everything happens within thy fold, none can escape thy embrace. Every being is born in Time and dies in Time. Thou art Eternal and Thou art the Brahman. My salutation to Thee.”22 The next move is made in section ten. Reminding us “that the rishi’s attitude was psychological throughout,” Bose says, “so when he, like our hypothetical worker, arrived at the conclusion that Time was the final entity he must have realized the psychological significance of his findings.” Further, Physical time is an elusive object which cannot be apprehended by any sense organ, whereas psychological time is a matter of direct experience. The dominance of a psychological entity over the physical one must have struck certain rishis. . . . With the postulation of Time as the Brahman the emphasis was shifted from the outside physical world to the inner mental world. It must have been realized at the next stage, that the experience of Time was after all only part of the ego’s experience. The ego therefore was the greatest entity.23 Bose is ready to pronounce the search for Brahman complete in the “hypothetical ego,” which we met in chapter 4 as Bose’s cover term for the Advaita Vedāntic ātman. Bose’s hypothetical Upaniṣadic worker has to have been able to look back at the Vedic and Upaniṣadic search for the Brahman with the foresight of the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā. With its signature formulation “time cooks” (kālaḥ pacati),24 the Mahābhārata teaches kālavāda, a “doctrine of time,” through its massive and intricate unfolding,25 while in the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa says “I am Time” (BhG 11.33). Bose’s hypothetical worker needs to have heard from Kṛṣṇa, since the Upaniṣads in fact supply no Ṛṣi (p.135) to match how Kṛṣṇa—and Vyāsa—link time narratively with the mind, the Self, and the Brahman.26

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” From section eleven through eighteen, however, Bose remains at the plane of the Upaniṣadic “Ego,” working out its psychological ramifications in Upaniṣadic and Sāṃkhya-derived terms. I will not follow these discussions in detail, but do note that they underscore the psychological importance of the three gunas of “illumination,” “activity,” and “delusion.” As we begin to approach what Bose says about devatās, we must note what he says in section twelve about “Authority of the Vedas,” which impacts that discussion. Bose restates his case for the bona fides of the Ṛṣis, but now for both the Upaniṣadic and Vedic Ṛṣis: You will now understand the significance of my previous assertion that the rishis did not start with philosophical speculation. The discovery of the Brahman was an incidental affair and the philosophy that grew out of it was a later product. This is why every system of Hindu philosophy depends on the authority of the Vedas and Upanishads which are records of introspective experiences of unsophisticated minds. No philosophy can get beyond the facts of experience. The Vedas being a storehouse of the natural impressions and hankerings of the human mind give us a mass of psychological data for the building up of a philosophical system.27 Bose then makes the Ṛṣis’ cumulative Vedic-Upaniṣadic search the basis for an unusual scientific explanation for the classical doctrine of apauruṣeyatā, which states that the Vedas are “not of human origin.” He does not attribute it, as is customary, to the sanctity of the Vedic oral tradition or the correct use of its mantras, but to the Ṛṣis’ spirit of independent inquiry: Just as the facts of observation in physics and chemistry are independent of the intelligence of truthful observers, so the human passions, cravings and impressions recorded in the Vedas and Upanishads may be described as independent of the intellect of (p.136) their unbiased observers. This is very likely the explanation of apourasheyata [apauruṣeyatā] of the Vedas and this is perhaps the reason why the Vedas were looked upon with such reverence even by those ancient scholars who did not believe in God.28 His claim that this cumulative scientific independence extended to “those ancient scholars who did not believe in God” suggests that when Bose gets to his discussion of devatās, he will be speaking not so much as a “rationalist secularist” himself, but with an awareness of the Mīmāṃsā position, for which belief in deities is a less than pressing issue. As Francis Clooney asks in summary of the Mīmāṃsā view: What is a devatā, according to these Mīmāṃsakas? The very question and the subsequent arguments are premised by the Mīmāṃsakas on the expectation that such questions can be answered from within sacred texts themselves—not as bearers of stories about devatā, but as linguistic Page 9 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” documents encoded with clues about what can be known and said and done, according to correct grammar and logic. If we maintain a nonreductive sense of the claim that language alone really matters, we can say that for the Mīmāṃsakas the devatā are integral components of the language which is about them and which uses them in broader and larger statements: devatās are meaningful words, nothing more and certainly nothing less. . . . Devatā can be properly spoken only in proper Sanskrit, even if referents must be allowed into that Sanskrit realm. If so, of course, the problems of translation remain all the more formidable.29 Yet Bose is hardly the dedicated ritualist. Setting further grounds for the scientificity of his basic approach, he does not dismiss the psychoanalytic accentuation of the obsessional character of ritual as another scientific insight into religion: (p.137) From this standpoint, Vedic rites will be comparable with the apparently unintelligible rites which are often developed by neurotics and psychotics and which owe their origin to the deeper unconscious layers of the mind. Psychoanalytical investigation is likely to throw light on this point.30 Bose then concludes this section on “Authority of the Veda” by contextualizing the wide berth he assigns to psychological approaches to the Brahman. The method of approach illustrated in this paper is not the only method to arrive at the conception of the Brahman. Since the Brahman is of the nature of pure consciousness any psychological experience when deeply introspected is likely to lead to the realization of the Brahman. In the Upanishads, many such methods of approach are to be found.31 One other matter has thus emerged that is of interest along the way from section six to eighteen for coloring Bose’s approach to devatās: his insistence on introspective access to pure consciousness, which Advaita Vedānta would ultimately identify with the Being and Bliss of the Brahman. It is to be noted that most of the present-day psychologists do not admit a pure consciousness without a context; consciousness must be of this or that. But the pure consciousness of the rishis is no imaginary concept. It is to be realized in actual experience by ardent effort. I have only made an attempt here to arrive at it intellectually. It took one hundred and one years of hard meditation on the part of Indra to realize this pure consciousness which is identical with the Brahman.[32] . . . [W]e have no reason to doubt the correctness of the introspective experience of the rishis of old mentioned in such detail in the Upanishads. It is open to anyone to make an effort to realize the Brahman. Certain psychological Page 10 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” laboratory experiments point (p.138) to the presence of pure consciousness as described by the rishis, but I need not refer to them here.33 Bose contrasts the modern scientific theory of creation, which “begins at the wrong end as it were” by making consciousness “the last to develop,” with the “Hindu theory” of Sāṃkhya, which makes it “the first element.”34 He also draws on his assurances about pure consciousness to make a distinction between knowledge of external things and knowledge of the inner workings of the mind. The only knowledge which will reveal the ego is introspective knowledge of the mind. But the human mind is naturally so constituted that it has a preference for running after external objects and events rather than concern itself with its own workings. . . . Introspection of the mind is the method advocated by the Hindu philosophers to find out the nature of the ego.35 Both passages are illustrative of Bose’s tendency in the later portion of the article to speak for what is Hindu—presumably to warm up his audience for his penultimate section eighteen on “The Hindu Pantheon.” Bose leads off with “The Hindu pantheon consists of innumerable gods and goddesses who have their special devotees. This fact has been responsible for the charge of idolatry and polytheism being brought against the Hindu religion.”36 Admitting that there could be an “anthropological explanation of the problem” (raised by this charge37), which he says he will not discuss, he elects to “deal only with its psychological aspect”: The numbers of devatas or gods in the Vedic period seems to be smaller than at the present time. New gods have been introduced into the pantheon from time to time and some of the older gods have lost their importance. The original meaning of the term devata is “the shining one.” In the Upanishads the indriyas or sense doors have often been (p.139) called devatas. These facts give us a clue to the mystery of the recognition of the different devatas by the Hindu philosophical systems. The indriyas or sense doors are called devatas or shining ones because they illuminate or bring into consciousness outside objects. The objects themselves must be supposed to have certain characteristics which make them fit agents to receive the light of consciousness.38 Bose invokes the “modern theory of psycho-physical parallelism” according to which “physical agents cannot bring about a psychic change.”39 As we saw in chapter 4, with this theory Bose attributes to matter, whether in its physical or biological form, a parallel universe with what is found on the psychic plane, which now applies to both senses and sense objects:

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” The implications of this theory are that objects have their psychic counterparts and it is only because of this that they can affect our sense organs and give rise to sensory impressions which are changes on the psychic plane. From this standpoint the devata is the psychic counterpart of an object and the rishi was right in calling both the sense organs and objects, which can be looked upon as unitary wholes [,] as devatas. Both the groups have the capacity to illumine the mind by producing consciousness. Thus every object has its corresponding devata.40 Now comes the brief discussion of female divinity: The rishi is perfectly explicit when he says, “jalābhimāninī devatā,” “vidyudabhimānī devatā”[41] etc., i.e., the “devata” which illuminates water, the “devata” which illuminates lightning, etc. It is the illuminating agency that is the “devata.” All objects of importance and all groups of ideas have their special “devatas.” There were the (p.140) god of thunder, the god of winds and rains¸ the god of the mountains, the goddess of the river, the god of death, the god of creation, etc. As the social conditions changed different deities made their appearance according to the importance attached to special events. The Deshamata or goddess representing the motherland is in the course of being incorporated within the Hindu pantheon. In a suburb of Calcutta, there is a goddess of cholera who receives offerings from innumerable people.42 Only three of the eight devatās named are goddesses. But if one recalls that Bose has registered that the older Vedic pantheon is smaller than the current one which continues to grow, it is significant that the only two devatās he chooses to exemplify growth are female: one, a local folk goddess of a disease; the other, the Deśamātā, goddess of the motherland or “mother of the country,” more often today called Bharat-mātā, or “Mother India.” Unlike the Vedic river goddess Sarasvatī, neither of them can be said to speak Sanskrit as her mother tongue. Once one factors all this in, what is striking is that Bose is saying that the Vedic approach to devatā still works in Hinduism. The last section, titled “Psychological Outlook,” then leaves the impression that psychological access to illumination by devatās is provided by “deep introspection,” with “no need to bring in any mystic explanation.”43 I had to turn to colleagues for an explanation of the unfamiliar phrases over which the unnamed Ṛṣi was said to be not merely “right” but also “perfectly explicit.” I thank Dipak Bhattacharya and Ashok Aklujkar for their emails. On March 31, 2013, Bhattacharya was the first to alert me to Śaṅkara’s commentary on Brahmasūtra 2.1.5 “for the concept.” But Śaṅkara does not clarify why Bose has these examples as something “the Rishi . . . says.” Śaṅkara does use citations in commenting on Brahmasūtra 2.1.5—for instance, to indicate Page 12 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” how Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad 2.14 makes “express use of the word ‘divinities’ in order to preclude the idea of the mere material organs being meant, and in order to include the superintending intelligent being.”44 But where are the phrases from? And who is the Ṛṣi? Bhattacharya in a subsequent note on April 4, 2013, then mentioned some (p.141) second-hand familiarity with Bose and opened a possibility to contextualize Bose’s intervention: As far as I know from his acquaintances and personal friends among the previous generation of my family, he was very learned and enlightened but not a formally trained Sanskritist. Among such amateur scholars one does not find strict methodology in dealing with Sanskritic material. . . . The words jalābhimāninī devatā, should effectively mean the presiding deity of water or “the godhood that exists in water.” This was seen as pagan deism by Indologists with Christian theological background.45 Aklujkar then agreed with Bhattacharya’s initial posting and proposed a modification of his paraphrases: “jalābhimāninī devatā and vidyudabhimāninī devatā are usages derivable from the Veda (Brāhmaṇas/Upaniṣads in the present context) or they are summations representing a class of statements like the ones mentioned by Śaṅkara in his bhāṣya [commentary] on Brahmasūtra 2.1.5: they are not direct or exact citations (such practice of condensing Vedic statements is quite common in Pūrva- as well as Uttara-Mīmāṃsā”). Aklujkar recommends that Bhattacharya’s “Deity meaning self to be water etc.” be paraphrased “with something like ‘Deities in certain Vedic contexts identify themselves with objects of the physical world; they are spoken of as entities infusing the objects with themselves. . . . Bose’s choice of ‘illuminate’ is not good. What he probably means is something like ‘enlivens, makes (the specified object) come across as sentient.’ ” Aklujkar also suggests two issues in Indian philosophy to which Bose’s “point must be logically related: (a) the difference of opinion between Jaimini and Bāḍarāyaṇa regarding the nature of Vedic devatās, and (b) the difference of opinion about whether the senses should be thought of as sentient or material in nature.” Aklujkar captures some of the implications of Bose’s theory of psycho-physical parallelism. A devatā is enlivened on a psychic or sentient plane, where it is experienced psychologically, and not on the physical or material plane. This suggests that Bose is alert to the second difference in opinion about whether the senses should be thought of as sentient or material in (p.142) nature, which Śaṅkara addresses, favoring the sentient position. The first difference, however, is also revealing. I have quoted Bose’s idea that the cumulative evidence for the scientific independence of the Ṛṣis extends back to “those ancient scholars who did not believe in God,” and I have noted that this comment suggests an Page 13 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” awareness that, for the Mīmāṃsā, belief in devatās is a less pressing issue than it is for Advaita. Yet Advaita, which Bose espoused openly in his early writings, overlaps with his notion of psycho-physical parallelism. We thus need some clarification of the differences between Mīmāṃsā and Advaita regarding devatās. Mīmāṃsā includes the radical possibility that Śabara, its first and main commentator on Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsāsūtra, “refuses to rule out”: śabdamātram devatā, or “devatā is nothing but word.” The Mīmāṃsā position, which denies the gods centrality and corporeality, also denies their “ability to give the results desired by the sacrifice.” These “come from the action itself via, in Śabara’s terminology, the resultant apūrva which links the perished sacrifice and the still future results.”46 Apūrva, or “that which is not there before,” is a Mīmāṃsā concept for a mysterious force inherent in the sacrifice to bring about results that do not rely on the agency of the devatā stipulated by the rite, which is thereby superfluous to the outcome. For Śaṅkara, however, “results come from brahman himself.”47 Even in a Vedic ritual, results come equally obscurely. But Śaṅkara’s immediate context, writing in the ninth century, is not the outcome of acts (karma) done in a Vedic rite but, rather, the outcome of pūjās performed to a god in a temple. Says Clooney, Śaṅkara’s view is “now modeled . . . not on the Vedic, preMīmāṃsā deities, but on the popular theistic deities of Hinduism.”48 Here we can see how Bose replicates Śaṅkara’s approach in moving from Vedic deities to popular goddesses. “Vedāntins partially restore the role and reality of the gods, for equally indirect purposes, because their attention has shifted away from the sacrifice.”49 For Śaṅkara, “all this applies only to the “ordinary” (vyāvahārika) realm of conventional truth, not the pāramārthika level of ultimate truth.50 On the vyāvahārika plane, (p.143) “Vedāntins assert the competence of the gods for meditation and the existence of their bodies (vigraha).”51 One must have a body to realize transience and decay; “Only embodied beings know the dissatisfaction that leads to the taking up of meditational practice.”52 These are the Advaitic roots of Bose’s psycho-physical parallelism: representing a deity to the mind requires that the deity have material features. For as Śaṅkara says, The Vedic injunctions, assigning sacrificial offerings to Indra and other gods, presuppose certain characteristic shapes [svarūpa] of Indra, etc., because without such the sacrificer could not represent Indra and the other gods to his mind. And if this or that divinity were not represented to the mind it would not be possible to make an offering to it.53 Bose cites Indra’s one hundred-plus years of “meditation” to realize the Brahman because, commonsensically, “The gods must be not mere names but definite ‘persons,’ one might say, to make worship of them purposeful. That a god has a vigraha—a material form—is necessary for the plausibility of the whole

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” scheme of sacrifice, and by this rationale they are also competent to meditate.”54 As suggested by Bhattacharya, Bose is also navigating one more issue: Indian sensitivity to colonialist charges of “pagan deism,” which we have seen Bose acknowledge in introducing his section “The Hindu Pantheon.” This charge takes one to an underlying point in this book. Freud’s scientific explanation of a monotheistic father deity cannot explain Hinduism: a religion in which there are too many deities to explain just the male ones as fathers, not to mention the many divinities who are female, with most of them called (if not actually being) mothers.55 The charge is made from a vantage point that Bose challenges by calling attention to the childishness of the projections or wish fulfillments that yield religions of a father. (p.144) Let me now turn to some comments by Jeffrey Kripal, who surrendered his anonymity as a reader of the manuscript for this book for Oxford University Press. As I have just passed all the milestones from the last two chapters that Kripal recapitulates, it is now, finally, a good point to cite what he says. Taking my discussion in a different and thought-provoking direction, Kripal offers his comments as a fellow historian of religions. He “was deeply moved by the ways that the Bose material might function as an early ‘theory of religion’ based on Hindu materials now and not on Protestant Christianity or Catholic missiology.” He found “the material on Advaita Vedanta, psycho-physical parallelism and the ‘hypothetical ego’ ” to be “marvelous” in support of a “theory of religion”: a theory of divinity or devatā worthy of our reflection and consideration, if only we could take it up and think with it. The results would be provocative enough. Within this theory, after all, monotheism becomes more than a little naïve. Actually, it becomes literally “childish” to the extent that it is a function of paternal projection. Philosophical forms of Hinduism become more developed or mature now. In this same theory of religion, moreover, there is a real possibility of access to “pure consciousness” beyond or outside any referent, context or historical condition. There is also a critique of scientific and academic materialism as beginning “at the wrong end” (to the extent that it derives mind from matter) and an invocation of Samkhya, which makes consciousness the “first element” and starting point instead of the last, that is, that refuses to see consciousness as some kind of meaningless and pointless epiphenomenon of brain matter. Within this same potential theory of religion, finally, there are multiple models of deity. Deities might be language games or ritual necessities (as we find in Mimamsaka philosophy). Or they might be “practical” devotional needs, manifestations of Brahman for those who have not yet realized the real nature of religion and worship, that is, for those who have not yet realized Brahman as pure consciousness without a referent or historical condition.

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” It is fascinating how this reverses the well-studied colonizing or ethnocentric impulses of the study of religion.56 Kripal extends the discussion of Sruti Kapila about Freud and religion with which I began this chapter, and treats Bose’s appeals to science as a (p.145) potential contribution to the study of religion among the human sciences. I thoroughly agree, and thank him for his intervention.

Bose’s Correspondence with Freud: Goddesses and God, Projection, and Wish Fulfillment As to Bose’s other approach to the maternal deity, I have assumed that because he mentions it in his correspondence with Freud, it involves the idea of “projection” that he attributes to Freud. Why is it that, having explained the idea of male deity as a projection of wishes toward the father, did Freud not do the same for mother goddesses—either as projections of the mother or, like Bose, as projections of a joint-parental imago? One can imagine that had Freud taken more interest in what Bose had to say about the “Oedipus mother,” he might have found it interesting and have benefited, and might have gotten Bose to say more as well. Already by the time of his “Leonardo” study in 1909, Freud had identified a number of Mediterranean goddesses as “phallic mothers,”57 and could have revisited them through Bose’s construct, which was elastic enough to accommodate them. Freud had numerous goddesses in the collection on his desk and shelves—among them, a bronze Athena with the representation of Medusa’s head on her breastplate; a Baubo (Egyptian, Ptolemaic period, late fourth century BCE) lying on her back, spreading her legs and exposing her genitals like the Hindu Lajjā Devi;58 a Greek terracotta Artemis (second century BCE); a bronze Venus from France or the Rhineland (first or second century CE); a Greek terracotta head of Demeter (sixth century BCE); a prized Isis being suckled by Hathor (ca. 600 BCE); a statue of the Egyptian warrior goddess Neith (ca. 600 BCE); and the “perfect” Athena without her spear that Freud showed to H. D. (Roman, first or second century CE after a fifth century BCE original).59 Freud had identified this Athena (p.146) to H. D. with the “bisexual” Neith,60 showing that his interest in bisexual goddesses, which went back to his “first dig” into Egyptian mythology that accompanied his break with Fliess in 1904, and was important in his 1909 article on Leonardo da Vinci, still intrigued him in late 1933, indicating that he had not totally shifted his interests to his ideas about the austere “intellectuality” or “spiritualty (Geistigkeit) of Mosaic religion.61 But Freud, it seems, was content to leave goddesses individually and collectively to anecdotal discussions, and as to the whole topic, to theorize them poorly. His chief efforts went into assigning “mother goddesses” a place in a pseudo-evolutionary understanding of a matriarchal period, drawing on the implausible and, even in Freud’s time, largely discredited theories of Julius Bachofen about “mother right.”

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” In Totem and Taboo, hanging his views on Bachofen’s idea that during the matriarchal period paternity was unknown, he wrote, I cannot suggest at what point in the process of development a place is to be found for the great mother goddesses, who may in general have preceded the father gods. It seems certain that the change in attitude to the father was not restricted to the sphere of religion but that it extended in a consistent manner to that other side of human life which had been affected by the father’s removal—to social organization. With the introduction of father deities a fatherless society gradually changed into one organized on a patriarchal basis.62 What counts for Freud was phylogenetically carried along despite the improbably “wide” spatial and prehistoric gaps: “the gulf between the new fathers of a family and the unrestricted primal father of the horde was wide enough to guarantee the continuance of the religious craving, the persistence of an unappeased longing for the father.”63 Even after likening his “discovery” of the “pre-Oedipus” to the opening up of the Minoan (p.147) civilization (1932)— indeed, even after hearing H. D.’s wish to find him a Minoan snake goddess (1933)—Freud was still tinkering, trying to fit his indefinite matriarchal formulation into an improved evolution of religion. In Moses and Monotheism, after the first religion, totemism, came humanization of the worshiped totem; then, At one point in this evolution which is not easily determined great mothergoddesses appeared, probably even before the male gods, and afterwards persisted for a long time beside them. In the meantime, a great social revolution had occurred. Matriarchy was succeeded by the reestablishment of the patriarchal order. The new fathers, it is true, never achieved the omnipotence of the primal father; there were many of them, who lived in associations larger than the horde had been. They were obliged to be on good terms with one another, and remained under the limitations of social ordinances. It is likely that the mother-goddesses originated at the time of the curtailment of the matriarchy, as a compensation for the slight upon the mothers.64 Freud had finally managed to make even matriarchy belittling to women. From here on, male gods first appear “as sons beside the great mothers and only later clearly assume the features of father figures. These male gods of polytheism reflect the conditions of the patriarchal age. They are numerous, mutually restrictive, and occasionally subordinated to a superior high god. The next step, however, leads us to the theme with which we are concerned: the return of a single father god of unlimited dominion.”65

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” Although they are not what presently concern him, the Greco-Mediterranean and Hindu pantheons would come under the penultimate grouping in this evolutionary tour, with gods who “are numerous, mutually restrictive, and occasionally subordinated to a superior high god.”66 But Freud has one more lesson to bend this evolutionary schema to what does concern him: “The Christian religion did not maintain the high level in things of the mind to which Judaism had soared. It was no longer strictly monotheist, it took over numerous symbolical rituals from (p.148) surrounding peoples, it reestablished the great mother-goddess and found room to introduce many of the divine figures of polytheism only lightly veiled, though in subordinate positions.”67 As noted, Freud’s theory on the origins of the father deity, and thus of monotheism, is described as a projection theory, and is said to revive and elaborate the projection theories of Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx.68 But Freud never uses the term “projection” to describe his approach to the father deity in the three books that develop his views. Only in Totem and Taboo does he refer at all to projection; and it is not to address ideas of God but, rather, those about demons, whom he explains “as projections of hostile feelings harboured by the survivors against the dead.”69 When he returns to the subject, Freud does say that he is circumventing “the general problem of the origin of the tendency to project mental processes into the outside,” but that it is “safe to assume that the tendency will be intensified when projection promises to bring with it the advantage of mental relief.” But if he means this to refer to the relief given by a divine father, he does not say so. He seems to leave the possibility dangling. It may be significant that Freud develops his views more as a theory of wish fulfilment than of projection. Through the first two books, the stated wishes determine his agenda. In Totem and Taboo, where he has yet to name his theory, it is the wishes of “the mob of brothers” not only to kill their father but also for each one to take his father’s place with the women (their mothers and sisters) that become “the two repressed wishes of the Oedipus complex” when they are replaced by the prohibition against killing the totem and when incest is curtailed by a rule of exogamy.70 In The Future of an Illusion, Freud threads wish fulfillment through his argumentation. He says, “it would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.”71 His imaginary interlocutor then (p.149) opts for religion while conceding the theory’s main point: “since we are obliged to impose on the growing child some doctrinal system which shall operate in him as an axiom that admits of no criticism, it seems to me that the religious system is by far the most suitable for the purpose. And it is so, of course, precisely on account of its wish-fulfilling and consolatory power, by which you claim to recognize it as an illusion.”72 In Moses and Monotheism, however, wishes drop out of the presentation: Page 18 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” [T]he man Moses impressed this character on them by giving to them a religion which increased their self-esteem so much that they thought themselves superior to all other peoples. Thereafter they survived by keeping apart from others. Mixture of blood interfered little with this, since what held them together was an ideal factor, the possession in common of certain intellectual and emotional wealth. The religion of Moses led to this result because (1) it allowed the people to take a share in the grandeur of its new idea of God, (2) it asserted that this people had been chosen by this great God and were destined to receive evidences of his special favour and (3) it forced upon the people an advance in intellectuality which, important enough in itself, opened the way, in addition, to the appreciation of intellectual work and to further renunciations of instinct.73 It is curious that wish fulfillments drop out in Moses and Monotheism where the projected idea of god is that of the Jewish people. Could this be because that idea responds to Freud’s own wishes? One of the claims Freud made about the Jewish projection of the father deity is that it derived from “the peculiar religious genius”74 of the Jews to reject images: Among the precepts of the Mosaic religion there is one that is of greater importance than appears to begin with. This is the prohibition against making an image of God—the compulsion to worship a God whom one cannot see. . . . [I]f this prohibition were accepted, it must have a profound effect. For it meant that a sensory perception was (p.150) given second place to what may be called an abstract idea—a triumph of intellectuality over sensuality or, strictly speaking, an instinctual renunciation, with all the necessary psychological consequences.75 Katherine Jones, the translator of the 1939 Vintage edition of Moses and Monotheism (and the wife of Ernest Jones), calls attention to the phrase “instinctual renunciation” with a footnote, apparently in the words of Freud, whom she had consulted: “I use this phrase (Triebverzicht) as an abbreviation for ‘renouncing the satisfaction of an urge derived from an instinct.”76 Judging from Jones’s placement of the footnote, this is the first use of the term “instinctual renunciation” in Moses and Monotheism, after which Freud makes it his guiding idea in the rest of the book, ultimately mentioning “the problems of renunciation of instinct” as his entrée to “the element of grandeur” that defines the “historical truth” of the Jewish religion as a “tradition” through its people’s traumas.77 Freud thus uses a shorthand that makes wishes hard to spot. Bose, of course, could ask, does it not conceal the “satisfaction” of a wish? Freud first cites “an analogous case in individual psychology” in the formation of the super-ego:

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” [W]hereas instinctual renunciation, when it is for external reasons, is only unpleasurable, when it is for internal reasons, in obedience to the superego, it has a different economic effect. In addition to the inevitable unpleasurable consequences it also brings the ego a yield of pleasure—a substitutive satisfaction, as it were. The ego feels elevated; it is proud of the instinctual renunciation, as though it were a valuable achievement.78 Next, Freud speaks of Moses as the “great man” who helps him begin to explain “the satisfaction arising from instinctual renunciation” in that, he “is precisely the authority for whose sake the achievement is carried out” because “in group psychology the role of the superego falls (p.151) to him.”79 We could say up to this point that Freud’s own wishes for the deferred satisfactions of scholarship and his career-long identification with Moses, who, like God, chose the Jews,80 drive this inquiry. Freud explains two of these satisfactions or fulfillments in ways that make the implied wishes seem inseparable from his own. First, and most transparently, is the respect for intellectual work that came with the “advance in intellectuality” and demanded “renunciations of instinct”; second is being led by a “great man” with “traits of the father”: “The decisiveness of thought, the strength of will, the energy of action are part of the picture of a father—but above all, the autonomy of the great man, his divine unconcern which may grow into ruthlessness. . . . We should have been led to realize this from the word itself; who but the father can have been the great man in childhood?”81 Let us remind ourselves of Romain Rolland’s caustic remark that describes Freud in the period when he is turning his last energies to Moses and Monotheism: about the “disdainful gesture of the exclusive rationalists . . . who throw discredit upon . . . ‘the pleasure principle,’ which in [Freud’s] eyes belongs to the ‘maladjusted’—that is, they think it is much less in the service of the ‘real’ than a haughty and puritanical faith, of which they no longer discern the prevention, for it is natural to them.”82 Meanwhile, Bose’s Ṛṣis are the Vedic counterpart to Moses, supplying the Hindu answer to what can be achieved without a Freudian “great man.” Could we say that the occlusion of wishes in Moses and Monotheism might have something to do with a new complexity in Freud’s last years and wishes? Ultimately, Freud leaves one to puzzle over how it is that his theory covers “projecting” or “wishing for” an invisible god, and further, being chosen by one. Back to our question of why Freud did not offer a projection theory of “mother goddesses,” Sprengnether offers a good answer. In view of the parallelisms Freud draws between women and nature and men and civilization, and having noted the slight chronological priority Freud keeps (p.152) giving to mother goddesses over father gods, making them in effect pre-Oedipal, she says Freud “is everywhere reluctant to attribute power to the figure of the preoedipal mother.”83 Freud did not (wish to) permit the interval of the mother goddesses to Page 20 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” match or inherit the “unlimited dominion” of the primal Oedipal father. We also might credit Freud with seeing that a maternal projection of deity would have to be of a different order of complexity than his paternal one. Freud kept it fairly simple in projecting a single father deity from the primal murder of one human father. Had he followed what I have suggested was Bose’s invitation to study a projection of the bi-parental “Oedipus mother,” would he not have faced a different order of complexity? Obeyesekere says he will “tentatively view the mother-goddess cult as a ‘projective system’ in the sense that Freud initially discussed in The Future of an Illusion.”84 He observes that “mother goddesses are omnipresent in the regions of southern Asia that have come under the influence of Hinduism,” and that “by contrast, Theravāda Buddhism in Southeast Asia has not produced a dominant mother-goddess cult, except for the Pattini cult in Sri Lanka,” which has Hindu associations.85 He adds that mother goddesses will not occur in projective systems if the formal theology or higher doctrinal tradition does not tolerate it and if there exist institutions to compel conformity to the doctrinal ideal . . . [as in Theravāda more widely and in] the three great monotheisms—Judaism, Islam, and Protestantism . . . [in which] this doctrinal stance is not confined to mother goddesses alone; it is a product of religious rationalization that has little tolerance for any forms of popular religiosity.86 In speaking of “projective systems” in Freud’s sense, Obeyesekere says he will “provisionally accept the notion of a ‘projective system’ as giving the individual the psychological security to cope with his inner (unconscious) anxieties by projecting them outward into a preexisting cultural (p.153) belief system.”87 Yet here complexity kicks in when Obeyesekere attempts to reduce Hindu mother goddesses to three “maternal images”: In Hindu India everywhere there are two contrasting images of the mother, first as the cow, passively and unconditionally nurturant, and second as a terrifying mother goddess, vengeful, demonic, and unpredictable, the Kālī image. . . . Mediating between these two extreme images is a third image— the Pārvatī model—that is neither nurturant nor vengeful, but benevolent. This image is that of the mother as “father’s wife,” the faithful wife of the great god of the Hindu pantheon (Śiva or Viṣṇu).88 Obeyesekere says that “in Buddhist Sri Lanka no such divisions of the maternal image developed,” and that “in general” Pattini “is believed to be a benevolent deity, closer to the Pārvatī model.”89 Forgetting such inconveniences as Mother Earth, Gaṅgā, the virginal Durgā, the fickleness of Viṣṇu’s wife Śrī, and that Kālī is not just “demonic,” Obeyesekere is obviously beholden to his variant of the “split mother” concept I cautioned against in chapter 1. But with at least three Page 21 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” mother images at work rather than just one, as with the protective divine father, Obeyesekere still shows that a projection of the single mother is unsatisfactory. Or, God forbid, to project mother goddesses on the basis of one or more human mothers might have called on Freud for something more Jungian: for instance, the transformative yantra-like schema of poles (good mother/terrible mother; positive anima/negative anima) and axes by which Erich Neumann maps “the dynamic and the polyvalence of the archetypal structure of the feminine” with “a number of goddesses who illustrate the nature and effect of the poles” in his The Great Mother.90

Bose and Freud: Religion and the Human Sciences Whether Bose’s explanation of devatās or his concept of the Oedipus mother are as scientific as Freud’s explanation of the projection of the (p.154) father is not easy to answer. Since I discuss the Oedipus mother in chapter 6, I speak primarily to devatās for the remainder of this chapter, but it not difficult to see that Bose’s two theories could be combined: the “Oedipus mother” arising with the wellspring of goddess-worship, and the theory of devatās explaining its diversification. Although Bose used the term “introspection” to talk about self-analysis, Freud spoke of introspection as akin to “intuition,” of which he wrote to Romain Rolland on January 19, 1930, that while “your mystics rely on it to teach them how to solve the riddle of the universe; we believe that it cannot reveal to us anything but primitive, instinctual impulses and attitudes—highly valuable for an embryology of the soul when correctly interpreted, but worthless for orientation in the alien, external world.”91 Yet where Freud mentioned intuition and introspection together three years earlier in The Future of an Illusion, he said that while they are uninformative about religious riddles, they may still play a role in interpreting one’s own mental life.”92 In Bose’s sense, however, Freud’s own introspection was a powerful tool in the development of psychoanalysis. Freud addressed it to his own dreams, screen memories, memory residues, presentiments, and neuroses—not, like Bose, to deities. But the vividness of Freud’s dreams, memories, and presentiments survives or revives itself in imagery. Clearly, the renounced instinctual “satisfaction” that comes from “the compulsion to worship a God whom one cannot see” concerns the sense of sight, valued so highly by Freud that he equates blinding with castration. Memorable images fill Freud’s works, from the “dream navel” in The Interpretation of Dreams to the images in “Disturbance,” in which, for instance, the Vermorels bring up how Freud deals with the unconscious representation of death as nonarrived in his anecdote about the Moorish king Boabdil.93 Indeed, what are we to say of the “oceanic feeling” as a feeling of something virtually invisible, for which Freud reluctantly agrees to Page 22 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” test out a scientific explanation? As Obeyesekere points out, Freud, in his dream book, perceives that although dreams are “completely egotistical” the “I” appears as a picture or is externalized into images that float before us in our state of (p.155) sleep. . . . It is not surprising therefore that for Freud the dreaming mind functions like a “compound microscope or a pictographic apparatus.” Hence in dreams the “everyday sober method of expression is replaced by a pictorial one.” The “I” does not think out the dream during sleep; thinking in dreams is a passive occurrence. Even Freud’s undefined “dream ego” or “dreaming self” is not the ego of waking consciousness.94 Obeyesekere wants to differentiate between two types of thinking from these observations by Freud: the passive “it-thinking” of daydreams, dreams, and visions; and the active “discursive ‘I-thinking’ ” available to narrativize the primary process “it-thinking” in a dialectical relationship via secondary process elaboration.95 Yet Obeyesekere says that the dream book only “implies” this “radical position” that “the ‘I,’ or ego, does not appear in the formation of the dream in the first place.” Obeyesekere suggests that he himself has arrived at this insight from his familiarity with the story of the Awakening of the Buddha through three watches of the night: in the first two, he envisions the whole cosmos as the backdrop against which he sees his own and others’ karma; and in the third, he unfolds the idea of the egolessness of that whole karmic process through his teachings about conditioned co-production and the four noble truths. Perhaps Freud’s stopping short of this radical position comes from his not being a Buddhist or, more likely, he would have balked at finding the dream ego to have been “passive,” which he so often tied to femininity and hysteria. For us, the upshot is that Bose’s introspective method of interpreting goddesses among devatās as an “illuminating agency” of consciousness is an example of visionary “it-thinking.”96 Our question, of course, is about the scientificity of the methods, not about the truth claims of Judaism and Hinduism, both of which would agree that a problem lies in seeing deity: in one case, saying his invisibility is essential to God’s being unseen; in the other, formulating conditions in which deities—like hallucinatory sensations—may be seen introspectively. Once this question is raised, however, the notion of advances in (p.156) intellectuality cannot be claimed for only Judaism. As we have seen, Bose’s approach rests on a method that goes through approximately three thousand years of intellectual advances, from the Vedas and Upaniṣads through the Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, and Vedānta, to the Ṛṣis, to the experience of time and the universality of theoretical ego through an explicit renunciation of the senses.

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” In explaining goddesses with reference to Advaita formulations of devatā, Bose is in accord with an “old tradition” attributed to Śankara of pañcāyatanapūjā, which, to accommodate popular forms of temple Hinduism, certified Durgā, along with Gaṇeśa, Sūrya, Viṣṇu, and Śiva, as suitable for worship, “explaining that all deities were but different forms of the one Brahman”97—again, only on the plane of vyāvahārika, or “practical reality.” Here we may recall a clue to Bose’s approach that we have had since chapter 1: Bose’s interest in iconography, including photographs and portraiture (even of an unseen subject), all of which for Freud is ultimately idolatry. On the flip side of Bose’s visual interest, unlike Freud, Jung, Otto Rank, and many other analysts, Bose, at least in his English writings, shows no great interest in mythology. In his article on dreams, which has a long section on symbolism, he mentions no myth explicitly, though he shows an awareness of them. In water dreams, the subject usually sees an expanse of water in which either he or someone else dives; or somebody is taken out of the water. Analysis shows that the dream symbolizes a phantasy of birth. A desire to come out of the mother’s womb or to enter it is present in the unconscious mind of most individuals, and the dream fulfills this desire. The water in the dream, it is believed, signifies the water in the womb. It is interesting to note that many mythological heroes have their origin from water.98 Bose could have Moses, Karṇa, or Mārkaṇḑeya and Kṛṣṇa in mind here, but he does not say so. Where Bose shows familiarity with myth, it is in connection with iconography, as will be seen in chapter 6. Even there, Bose’s main thread of interest runs through the visual, which probably accommodated his Advaitic introspections. Bose’s visual method of (p.157) retrieving “The Hindu Pantheon” from “the charge of idolatry and polytheism being brought” under colonialism also answers to Freud’s understanding of religion through trauma and the Return of the Repressed One finally has the impression that much of the language of scientificity claimed by Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis is based on the silence of children and primitives as its primary subjects,99 a silence with which colonial subjects were expected to be complicit. (p.158) Notes:

(1.) IPS [1964] 1999, 17. See chapter 2, this volume, letter 16, of April 11, 1929. (2.) Kapila 2007, 136–37. (3.) Kapila 2007, 136, 137. (4.) See Whitman 1958, 102–27, esp. ch. “Image, Symbol, Formula.” (5.) Wadia 1950, however, recalls that N. N. Sengupta, professor of philosophy at the University of Calcutta, was co-founder with Radhakrishnan and that Tagore was the first president. Page 24 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” (6.) Bose 1930a, 119–20. (7.) See Bose 1930a, 121–23. The three types are (1) “passages which are both understandable and acceptable as propositions worthy of reasonable consideration”; (2) “passages which savour of mysticism and which are difficult to accept as reasonable statements”; and (3) “passages in which absolutely no sense can be made out at all.” Bose exemplifies these by (1) Kaṭha Up. 2.23, on the ātman choosing its knower; (2) Śvet. Up. 22.12, on becoming free from disease, decrepitude, and pain when the five elements rise with the fire of yoga; and (3) the “song of the dogs” (Chāndogya Up. 1.12). (8.) Bose 1930a, 123. (9.) BhG 7.16. (10.) Edgerton 1952, 75, which, in full, is: “Fourfold are these that worship Me, (All) virtuous folk, Arjuna: The afflicted, the knowledge-seeker, he who seeks personal ends, And the possessor of knowledge, bull of Bharatas.” (11.) Bose 1930a, 123–24. (12.) See Freud 1953–74, 21:49, 55. (13.) Bose 1930a, 124. (14.) Bose 1930a, 124. (15.) Bose 1930a, 125. (16.) I replicate only questions that in my opinion best make Bose’s case. (17.) Bose 1930a, 126. (18.) Bose 1930a, 126. (19.) Bose 1930a, 130–31. (20.) Bose 1930a, 127. (21.) Bose 1930a, 128–29. (22.) Bose 1930a, 129. (23.) Bose 1930a, 131. (24.) See Mbh 1.1.188a, 12.217.39d, 12.231.25a, 12.309.90d, and 17.1.3a. The final usage is by Yudhiṣṭhira (who has heard the middle three) to Arjuna on

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” hearing of the death of Kṛṣṇa, adding “Time, time” (kalāḥ kālo iti bruvan, Mbh 17.1.4b) as he sees it is now time for the Pāṇḍavas to leave the world. (25.) See Hiltebeitel and Kloetzli 2004, 559, 577–83, discussing Vassilkov 1999 on epic kālavāda. (26.) On the Upaniṣads’ brief references to time (kāla), with no narrative or Ṛṣi, see Śvet. Up 1.2–3, 3.2, 6.1–6. (27.) Bose 1930a, 134. Bose’s single reference to a ṚgVedic Ṛṣi in the search for the Brahman, —to Vāmadeva of ṚV 4.18.13—suggests that further treatment of the mantra literature would be about less philosophical experiences: “Bamadeva . . . says: ‘Owing to my poverty I had to eat the entrails of the dog, I prayed to the gods for wealth but all to no purpose. I saw my beloved wife humiliated before others, but now God in the guise of a hawk has come to me with the nectar from heaven.’ ” For Bose, “the Rishi Bamadeva’s life was not a happy one. His sufferings drove him to search for God” (125). (28.) Bose 1930a, 134. (29.) Clooney 1997, 380. (30.) Bose 1930a, 134. (31.) Bose 1930a, 134–35. (32.) Indra takes 105 years to trump the demon Virocana in realizing the self through his longer perseverance (Chāndogya Up. 7.8–12). (33.) Bose 1930a, 133–34. (34.) Bose 1930a, 136–37. (35.) Bose 1930a, 140. (36.) Bose 1930a, 143. (37.) Bose does not say what he means by “anthropological.” (38.) Bose 1930a, 143. (39.) Bose 1930a, 143. (40.) Bose 1930a, 143. (41.) I thank Dipak Bhattacharya for his March 31, 2013, email correcting Bose’s spelling of these phrases; and Ashok Aklukkar’s April 4, 1913, email confirmation of Bhattacharya’s corrections. Aklujkar added that Bose was “following the confusion of v and b/bh in his native Bengali” and that “the lack of Page 26 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” diacritics” was “common in Indian periodicals.” Bose had jalavimanini devata, bidyudavimanini devata. (42.) Bose 1930a, 143–44. (43.) Bose 1930a, 145. (44.) Thibaut 1981, 304. (45.) Email from Dipak Bhattacherya, April 4, 2013. (46.) Clooney 1988, 289. (47.) Clooney 1988, 289. (48.) Clooney 1988, 291. (49.) Clooney 1988, 284. (50.) Clooney 1988, 291–92. (51.) Clooney 1988, 284; cf. 285. (52.) Clooney 1988, 287. (53.) Śaṅkara, commentary on Brahmasūtra 3.2.11, cited in Clooney 1988, 287– 88. (54.) Clooney 1988, 288. (55.) See Mbh 13.83.36ff., in which Umā curses the gods’ wives to barrenness. (56.) Jeffrey Kripal, reader’s report of this volume and most of FM, received May 11, 2017. (57.) See Sprengnether 1990, 77–78, on Freud 1953–74, 11:93–97; Freud took them either to “denote the primal creative force of nature” or to represent the boy’s original attribution of a penis to everyone, including his mother (Freud’s preferred interpretation). (58.) On Lajjā Devi and Baubo, see Bolon 1997. (59.) See Gamwell and Wells 1989, 53–54 (Isis), 105 (Artemis), 110–11 (Athena), 112 (Venus), and 161 (Demeter). See also Burke 2006, 92 and plate 11 (“perfect” Athena). See also Gamwell and Wells 1989, 215 (Baubo) and 285 (Neith). See the website www.kajima.co.jp/csr/culture/freud/collection/greece03.html “Freud as Collector” on images from a 1996 exhibition in Tokyo. (60.) H. D. [1956] 1974, 70, 187; see chapter 3, this volume, note 72. Page 27 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” (61.) See Schorske 1993, 39: “In his first Egyptian dig, Freud’s findings were related to bisexuality, the phallic mother, the union of opposites in religion and even in language. In the second dig, undertaken in search of the origin of the Jews, we find a different Egypt, one wholly characterized by masculine achievements, with Geistigkeit and instinctual repression at the center.” (62.) Freud 1953–74, 13:145. (63.) Freud 1953–74, 13:149, my italics; cf. 13:144 on the “germ of matriarchy.” (64.) Freud 1953–74, 23:83. (65.) Freud 1953–74, 23:83–84. (66.) Freud, 1953–74, 23: 84. see FM, ch. 4. (67.) Freud 1953–74, 23:88. (68.) See Pals 2006, 68, 70, 72, and 76. (69.) Freud 1953–74, 13:62; see also 13:61–65, 91–93; in this context one finds his single usage of “project”: “It is natural to him [“primitive man”], something innate, as it were, to project his existence outwards into the world and to regard every event which he observes as the manifestation of beings who are like himself.” (70.) Freud 1953–74, 13:143–44. (71.) Freud 1953–74, 21:33. (72.) Freud 1953–74, 21:52. (73.) Freud 1953–74, 23:123. (74.) Freud 1953–74, 28:65. (75.) Freud 1953–74, 28:112–13. (76.) Freud 1939, 144. Translator Jones says, “I have also had the advantage of consulting the author on some doubtful points.” (77.) Freud 1953–74, 23:127–28. (78.) Freud 1953–74, 23:116–17. (79.) Freud 1953–74, 23:117. (80.) Freud 1953–74, 23:45. As the Vermorels put it, “His hypothesis could pass for vague delerium: I, the new Moses, creator of psychoanalysis, am the new Page 28 of 30

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity” Moses, surged from my own thought like Athena, fully armed, from the head of Zeus.” (81.) Freud 1953–74, 23:109–10. (82.) Rolland 1930, 3:209, my translation. (83.) Sprengnether 1990, 117. (84.) Obeyesekere 1984, 428. (85.) Obeyesekere 1984, 427. (86.) Obeyesekere 1984, 428, his italics. (87.) Obeyesekere 1984, 428. (88.) Obeyesekere 1984, 427. (89.) Obeyesekere 1984, 427. (90.) Neumann 1972, 75–83, and 83 for his schema III. (91.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 6. (92.) Freud 1953–74, 21:31–32: “they can give us nothing but particulars about our own mental life, which are hard to interpret.” (93.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 532. (94.) Obeyesekere 2012, 37–38, citing successively Freud 1953–74, 4–5: 358, 536, 341, and 85. (95.) Obeyesekere 2012, 33. (96.) For earlier discussion of these views of Obeyesekere’s, see chapter 3, this volume, note 31 and chapter 4, note 3. (97.) See Klostermaier 1989, 55; Kane 1962–75, 2:716–17. (98.) Bose 1930b, 72–73. (99.) Little Hans, whom Freud analyzed around age five, did have ideas about God. He once asked his father, “Does the Professor” [Freud] talk to God?” Freud writes, “I should be extraordinarily proud of this recognition out of the mouth of a child, if I had not myself provoked it by my joking boasting.” Freud 1953–74, 12:42–43. Freud never asks him about his ideas about God, only about his “widdler.”

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Freud, Bose, and the “Maternal Deity”

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The Oedipus Mother

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

The Oedipus Mother Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords Chapter 6 complements chapter 5 as a discussion of what Bose means by the Oedipus mother. Bose’s joint-parental image positions the mother as pre-Oedipal at her source in the second and third phases of Bose’s six-phase theory of child development. Bose’s concept of the pre-Oedipal Oedipus mother as a jointparental imago bears similarities to Freud’s concept of the phallic mother, and has remarkable affinities with the maternel singulier deployed by Ilse Barande in discussing Leonardo da Vinci’s single mother, and Henri and Madeleine Vermorel’s discussion of the maternal hold of totalitarian regimes. Bose uses the phrase “joint-paternal imago” in two articles, including “The Mechanism of Defiance,” to portray the mother in a masculine super-ego role. Keywords:   Oedipus mother, maternal deity, pre-Oedipal, Oedipus point, phallic mother, le maternel singuliere, “The Mechanism of Defiance, ” the unwilling mother

THIS CHAPTER TAKES up Bose’s “Oedipus mother” and the pre-Oedipal significance I have attributed to her. In deepening our acquaintance with his 1938 article “The Mechanism of Defiance,” it will also seek to reconstruct the likely place of that article’s case study as one of Bose’s three that provide evidence for the “Oedipus mother” as a joint-parental imago. Bose recounts the other two case studies in his articles “The Genesis of Homosexuality” (1950) and “A New Theory of the Mental Life” (1933), which present the same case (although Bose doesn’t mention it). I will sometimes call these latter two case studies the “Case A pair,”1 which deal with Bose’s “Patient A.” That leaves the

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The Oedipus Mother second case study, appearing in “Mechanism of Defiance,” to be called “Case B,” which involves “Patient B.” The likely first to be written up of the Case A pair is in Bose’s 1950 article “The Genesis of Homosexuality,” which was probably written prior to 1929.2 To make Case A less “complicated,” in his “New Theory” article, Bose tabulated conscious and unconscious elements in parallel columns. Opposite the entry “Open deathwish against grandfather, cousin sister, aunt, and mother” in the “Conscious” column, there is a new formulation “Death wish against combined parental image” that makes its debut in the “Unconscious” column. This “Unconscious” column formulation must spring from the same thinking that went into Bose’s April 1929 letter to Freud, which used the same term “combined parental image” to describe the “Oedipus mother.” Bose’s usage in “New Theory” offers no accompanying interpretation; for that, one must turn to his presumably (p. 160) earlier account. In it, the grandfather is interpreted as a “father imago” (noting that “no active death wish was found against the uncle and the father with whom the patient did not much come in contact in early life”) and the cousin-sister as a “mother imago,” who in a dream looks at the patient passionately. Not much is gained by comparing the Case A pair with case B. One can generalize that in each there is something awry between a male homosexual patient and his mother that makes her the dominant parental constituent of the joint-parental imago. And two themes are noteworthy in both cases: ghosts and defiance. Ghosts have a bigger part in the Case A pair, and defiance in Case B. (I will come back to Case A only toward the end of this chapter.) Before I get to Case B, however, I make two comparisons. The first is between Freud’s and Bose’s understandings of what for both is a key term: identification. The second is between the ways they understand phases of early childhood development.

Two Theories of Identification In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud says: Identification is known to psycho-analysis as the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person. It plays a part in the early history of the Oedipus complex. A little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he would like to grow like him and be like him, and take his place everywhere. We may say simply that he takes his father as the ideal. This behavior has nothing to do with a passive or feminine attitude toward his father (and toward males in general); it is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the way.3

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The Oedipus Mother Citing this passage, Jim Swan says that “in his statements about identification during the 1920’s and 1930’s,” Freud contrasts it with “the oral, cannibalistic incorporation of the other person.”4 To introject the mother as an object to have and to identify with or be her thus differs, but may (p.161) occur together, as happens “particularly often in women and is characteristic of femininity.”5 Swan adds, “Maturity (that is, masculine maturity) means being well defended against one’s past, which amounts to the same thing as having a strong capacity for resisting identification.”6 Swan makes his next point with some incredulity: The earliest identification, according to Freud, is with the father, not the mother. The mother exists instead as the pure, nurturing object of a little boy’s sexual desire, a desire which in earliest childhood is dependent, but still means that the boy perceives the mother as an object he wants to have, rather than one he wants to be, as an identification. In Freud’s view, for a boy to identify with his mother is pathogenic, leading possibly to homosexuality . . . : the boy identifying with his mother and, like her, desiring to be the passive object of his father’s love.7 Says Swan, “Freud is apparently either uninterested or maybe disturbed by the clear logic of his own words: since an infant’s earliest relationship is undoubtedly with his mother, then an infant boy identifies not only with his father but with his mother, too, and in fact with his mother first. This is a possibility that Freud does not entertain until 1931 (in the essay ‘Feminine Sexuality’), but only as it might apply to girls, not boys.”8 André Green’s discussion of identification in the dead mother complex shares Freud’s premises: This mirror-identification is almost obligatory, after reactions of complementarity (artificial gaiety, agitation, etc.) have failed. This reactive symmetry is the only means by which to establish a reunion with the mother—perhaps by way of sympathy. In fact there is no real reparation, but a mimicry, with the aim of continuing to possess the object (who one can no longer have) by becoming, not like it but, the object itself. This identification, which is the condition of the renouncement to the object and at the same time its conservation in a cannibalistic manner, is unconscious from the start. . . . The (p.162) subject . . . will remain totally unconscious of his identification with the dead mother.9 Green says, “The subject’s trajectory evokes a hunt in quest of an unintrojectable object, without the possibility of renouncing it or of losing it, and indeed, the possibility of accepting its introjection into the ego. . . . In all, the subject’s objects remain constantly at the limits of the ego, not wholly within, and not quite without.”10

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The Oedipus Mother With terms like “action identity” and “ego-identity” discussed in chapter 4, we see that clearly one of Bose’s basic concepts is that of “identification”—with the mother, first. With a different timetable, the child has productive identifications with both parents.

Bose and Freud on Phases of Early Childhood Development When Freud received Bose’s April 1929 letter, he could have recalled what Bose had written in “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipal Wish” that would have been intended to back up the idea of the “Oedipus mother” being a jointparental imago. Bose had posited a phased theory of child development up to what he called the “Oedipus point” in which everything up to and, I think, including that “point” would be (without his using the term) pre-Oedipal. That article seems to describe a simultaneity from the standpoint of the adult who has experienced those phases, including the “Oedipus point.” Bose repeatedly comes back to the “Oedipus point” while circling through the phases that precede it. Because of this structure, the article is hard to summarize. I believe, however, that it is a useful statement, and that it will be valuable to attempt to extract what Bose says sequentially. I thus distill these phases from his article, giving them a diachronic order, which will be discernible in footnotes: “Most of my information,” says Bose, “has been derived from analyses of adult subjects both male and female. . . . [T]he findings were fully justified in a few cases of children that I had the opportunity of analysing.”11 Bose never mentions the findings from children. He concentrates mostly on the male, as I shall do in summarizing. (p.163) I also draw on Bose’s colleague Rangin Haldar’s paper on the phases’ applicability to Indian iconographies and myths. I follow Haldar’s breakdown into six phases, since it comes from within Bose’s circle, although it is hard to relate it at phase four (as will be noted) to what Bose says. Haldar correlates iconographies only with phases one, three, and six. Haldar’s findings are informative as to the iconographically based mythological studies advanced within Bose’s circle, so I present Haldar’s main conclusions as well. 1. Bose says, “When the child’s ego just begins to be differentiated from its environment, passive experiences play the predominant role.”12 Haldar adds, “the male child plays the passive role toward the mother in being tended by her, e.g., the child submits to the mother’s kisses and caresses.”13 Haldar says: “This passive wish is responsible for the images of Sadyojāta so common in North Bengal and Bihar,” which refer to a Brahmapurāṇa story in which Pārvatī comes “with a garland in her hands to the assembly of the gods where she was to choose her husband.” To test her, Śiva assumes the form of a child “sleeping on the lap of the bride. . . . Coming to know through meditation” that it was Śiva, she accepted the child and took him to her breast. A sculpted image shows “a lady lying down on a couch, . . . a lotus in her right hand. . . . A child, whose feet rest on the lotus, is shown lying down by the left side of the lady. . . . Above the couch, on the wall, are . . . the gods Kārttikeya and Gaṇeśa, and a Liṅga.”14 Page 4 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother Pārvatī is thus shown daydreaming of the two sons she and Śiva will have, plus his phallus, even while he comes to her disguised as a nursling. The scene is reminiscent of ones in which Kṛṣṇa is a baby, including one where he appears as a nursling to his lover Rādhā,15 and the one cited in chapter 2, where he appears as a baby on a banyan leaf on the cosmic ocean of milk. 2. The second phase involves “action-identity”16 or “identity of reaction.”17 According to Haldar, “The child imitates his mother’s (p.164) kissing and kisses her in return.”18 Bose says that a “primary phase of sexual attraction towards the mother” is first formed by “the mechanism of ‘identity of reaction’ ” with her. This is the one instance where Bose clearly implies a pre-Oedipal phase: “It does not seem to be an important component of the oedipus complex. It is quite possible that in certain types of cases this primary sexual phase may be predominant, but when this happens the typical oedipus hatred is likely to be wanting because the father does not seem to come into the picture at all.”19 It is “curious” that this phase “is seldom unearthed during analysis; . . . subsequent phases regularly come up.”20 3. The third phase is one of ego-identity. Haldar explains, “The child feels like the mother: it wants to tend young ones and so it plays with dolls. The result of this is complete identity with the mother.”21 Bose says that when identity of ego with the mother replaces identity of action (or reaction) with her: the child looks upon its father as a husband. . . . A true feminine sexual attitude develops towards the father and this may even culminate in a desire to have a child by him. At this stage, . . . the genitalia of the child are already rich in sensations and this, coupled with the knowledge of the difference in sexual organisation in the male and the female, makes the male child wish for the removal of the phallus. . . . Castration wish is thus a natural outcome of the desire to be a woman.22 In connection with “the castration complex” being a “castration wish or desire” before it becomes a “threat,” Haldar explains that “this desire is traceable to the identification with the mother and is responsible for the (p.165) sculptural work of head-offering to the mother goddess at Mahabalipuram and other south Indian temples.”23 Bose says, “The desire to be a woman or its modification the castration wish is regularly discernible in all analyses.”24 He adds, “In the male beside castration there is another possibility of playing the female role. The anus which is also an important erogenous zone in the child may take the place of the female genitals so that in the feminine sexual phase the child develops passive homosexuality directed toward the father. Infantile theories of anal child-birth help to strengthen this attitude.”25 Bose also adduces for phase three a game played by girls and boys “called ‘bow bow khela’ or ‘playing the wife.’ ”26 He explains, “The feminine attitude of the child toward its father is poignant with the possibilities of maladjustment,” including “the development of feminine Page 5 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother traits and homosexuality; . . . abnormal shyness; . . . castration ideas, menstruation dreams and impotency; . . . the small penis complex; . . . [and, in females,] hysterical manifestations” traceable to a “fixation of the libido on the father,” making him the only male she is capable of loving.27 4. The fourth phase is, according to Haldar, “expansion of the child’s ego. Identification with the mother makes the child imitate her in her relations to other persons and things. Here we find the expansion of the child’s interest. The child sees the world through its mother’s eyes.”28 5. Next is the phase of “identity of action.” Haldar explains, “The child’s relationship to the father is determined by the identification with the mother, i.e., the child looks at the father from the standpoint of its mother. The sexual colouring of the relationship at this stage makes the child take up a passive role with reference to the father. This passivity is the root cause of passive homosexuality. Femininity derived from mother-identification and passive homosexuality which is (p.166) primarily directed toward the father are allied cravings.”29 According to Bose, It is to be remembered that identity of action is a preliminary step in the identification of ego which leads to a sympathetic understanding of the [father as the] offending agent. The defence which is set up by the mechanism of action-identity is therefore at the same time a step towards a cure of the repression. In the action-identity phase the child tries to convert the father into a female himself [by] playing the aggressive male role. In the child’s imagination the father [is] treated as a woman and is made to give birth to a child or he is compelled to play the passive homosexual role. The sadistic component of the libido now finds a vent for discharge and a hostile attitude develops toward the father. The threat of castration is now directed against the father as retaliation. The Oedipus hostility towards the father is directly traceable to this phase of the child’s development. It is no mere rivalry for the mother but it has a distinct sexual colouring.30 6. Phase six is “the Oedipus point.” “Identity of action with the father may be replaced by identity of ego with him.” The child, having taken him as his love object during the passive phase, now develops complete identification with him, and with that, says Bose, “the Oedipus hostility toward the father develops.” Bose suggests an overlap between phases five and six: whereas “the Oedipus hostility is traceable” back to phase five, it “develops” in phase six.31 Haldar thinks the myth of Durgā crushing the Buffalo Demon reflects this phase, in which “the child imagines that the mother destroys the hostile father and the death-wish for the father is fulfilled.”32 Bose says that when identity of ego with the father replaces identity of action with him, “the father’s interests become the child’s interests and the child imagines himself to be a grown-up man like his Page 6 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother father. The mother becomes a new sexual object and is looked upon from the standpoint of the (p.167) father. . . . The child wants to impregnate the mother and to give her a child of his own.”33 Bose adds: “When the ego-identity with the father . . . is established oedipus love towards the mother develops and the father’s feminine role is foisted off on the mother. The oedipus mother is therefore a combined image. She represents the father as well as the mother. . . . The true oedipus point develops with the onset of the ego-identity with the father and the mother.”34 Now the castration dread may take hold, which “is a later product and is a defence against the corresponding wish” to be female. Bose explains, “In my European cases the castration complex has regularly come up during analysis but here also it has almost invariably been traced to the desire to be a woman.”35 Accordingly, Anomalies of development in this phase result in the choice of elderly females as love objects by the male”; . . . [neutralizing the] respectability of the mother image . . . by the substitution [of the mother’s] sister or women of lower social status and even prostitutes; . . . impaired potency and obsessional fear of not being able to satisfy the woman in the sexual act. The small penis complex receives a further strengthening from this source, the child’s own penis being considered too small for the mother.36 The first five of Bose’s phases all concern identifications with the mother, whereas, according to Freud, identification with the mother is to be resisted throughout in order to reach Oedipal maturity. Haldar adduces two more mythic iconographies in light of the possibilities for resolution in phase six. The first is with images of Śiva fused with Pārvatī as Ardhanarīśvara, “the Lord who is half woman.” Haldar cites the myth of the Ṛṣi Bhṛṅgin, a kind of homosexual or hypermale, misogynist37 sage who disdains the goddess.38 Alone among gods and sages, (p.168) Bhṛṅgin won’t circumambulate Pārvatī, only Śiva. Pārvatī, irritated, “desired in her mind that all his flesh and blood [his feminine parts] should disappear,” and instantly he became a skeleton [bone being masculine] covered only with skin, unable to stand. To restore his equilibrium, Śiva gave him a third leg, with which he danced joyfully praising Śiva’s grace. Foiled, Pārvatī did penance; Śiva rewarded her and made her half his body. “Thus was the Ardhanarīśvara form assumed by Śiva” to make it difficult for Bhṛṅgin to circumambulate him alone. But Bhṛṅgin bored through the icon as a bee or beetle (bhṛṅga),39 to the “admiration even of Pārvatī, who became reconciled to his vow and bestowed her grace” on him. Haldar comments: “The reference to the avoidance of the mother, and the third leg, dance, and the making of the hole in the composite body of Siva unmistakably illustrates the active homosexual attitude towards the father image.” He adds, “When the father image is fused with that of the mother in the active homosexual stage, the father image is castrated in the imagination of the

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The Oedipus Mother son. . . . The castration complex, therefore, represents a tussle between the desire to castrate the father and to be castrated by the father.”40 The second iconography of resolution is again one of fusion, in this case of the liṅgam and yoni (female sexual organ). “The ambivalent attitude—the double feeling of tenderness and hostility—towards the father leads the son to worship the castrated member of the father image and here we find the unconscious reason for phallic worship.”41 Starting from the early (probably second or third century CE) Gudimallam (Kuṭimallam) image of a solitary erect penis, Haldar observes that the female generative organ was added . . . and the Liṅga with Gaurīpatta or Yoni was formed. . . . The most important characteristic of the Liṅga is that it is projected outward from the vulva. . . . It is in fact Oedipus coitus, the male member being projected from the womb of the mother. With the worship of the father’s membrum virile the son identified himself with it and the wish for Oedipus incest is fulfilled.42 (p.169) But why is it in that form, projected outward and upward from outer surface of the yoni?43 Haldar seeks to explain something anomalous that few have noted. We should consider the implied surrounding space. The liṅgam-with-yoni is typically constructed in the inner sanctum of a temple called a garbhagṛha, or “womb-house.” It projects upward through the yoni to penetrate the womb of space.44 We may now compare this reconstruction of six Bosean phases with a reconstructed “sketch” or “abstract summary” of three Freudian stages worked out by Swan, who means to describe “the general shape of the conflicts which Freud uncovered in his self-analysis.” 1. In the most primitive stage, the infant boy [“for simplicity’s sake”] experiences intolerable oral ambivalence toward his mother, which, therefore, gets repressed. 2. With the onset of phallic sexuality, the boy’s repressed oral ambivalence returns in full force and becomes confused with his phallic aggressiveness. The second stage, recalling the first, becomes intolerable, and the boy, internalizing his father’s authority and control, submits himself to his father to be loved, guided, and protected—the internalized control protecting him above all from the terrors of mixed aggression and dependence toward his mother. But again, repression inevitably fails, and the oral ambivalence keeps erupting between father and son, threatening to make theirs a homosexual relationship. 3. The boy learns to repress his dependence once again—feared this time as being homosexual—in aggressively asserted independence and obsessive competition.” Page 8 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother Swan offers this sketch “as a suggestion toward explaining why Freud was to wait until nearly the end of his career before recognizing the full significance of the infant’s primary dependence on the mother.” The sketch progresses through oral to phallic phases, but Swan says the anal “is implied to some degree in the idea of internalized controls.” He remarks that “some of what is attributed to the father might very well turn up in the mother, depending on the quality of their relationship together and, (p.170) individually.”45 That does not imply a jointparental imago centered on the mother like Bose’s Oedipus mother. Pre-Oedipal and Oedipal Triangulations Let us turn to considering the “Oedipus mother’s” joint-parental imago as preOedipal. Bose does not assign ages to his phases or correlate the pre-Oedipal, as his contemporary Melanie Klein did, with oral and anal phases that are pregenital and thus pre-Oedipal. Klein also found that the identification with the mother was primary, and wrote about the combined parental object bordering on the Oedipal for the first time in 1929.46 Bose’s points about anal proclivities as an alternative to the enhancement of genital sensations in phase three sufficiently suggests a polymorphous range. But clearly the first two phases are pre-Oedipal in terms of simply being very early in the infant’s life and focused on the mother. Minimally, the “Oedipal point,” reached in phase six, would make phases one to five pre-Oedipal. But I argue that the whole, including phase six up to and including the “Oedipal point” is intended as pre-Oedipal in terms of its simultaneity in later experience. Some support for my argument comes from the Vermorels, who, as we have seen with their term “the maternal singular,” speak of a joint-parental imago that takes one right up to the cusp, as it were, of the Oedipal. In terms of what they call “the two times,” “the time of the maternal singular is that of an identification with a bisexual object (the father in desire for the mother, sometimes missing); this identification has a primary homosexual face and an originary narcissistic face. This time is much the same for the two sexes. In contrast, the path to the Oedipus differs for males and females.”47 The “triangular Oedipal organization” thus recovers both the “maternal singular” and the “primordial double” of the homosexual face of “the originary narcissism.”48 The “maternal singular” as “first erotic object” and, in Ilse Barande’s terms, “first seductress,” should be (p.171) distinguished from “genital femininity.”49 It is the “archaic matrix of the Oedipus complex.”50 André Green’s dead mother complex likewise triangulates with the Oedipus complex: The Oedipus complex should be maintained as the essential symbolic matrix to which it is always important to refer, even in cases of so-called pre-genital or pre-oedipal regression, which implies the reference to an Page 9 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother axiomatic triangulation. . . . The fate of the human psyche is to have always two objects and never one alone, however far one goes back to try to understand the earliest psychical structure. . . . The father is there, both in the mother and the child, from the beginning. More exactly, between the mother and the child. From the mother’s side this is expressed in the desire for the father, of which the child is the realisation. On the side of the child, everything which introduces the anticipation of a third person, each time that the mother is not wholly present and her devotion to the child is neither total nor absolute . . . will be attributable to the father.51 For Bose, then, to say that “the oedipus mother is a combined parental image” in that “she represents the father as well as the mother” is to draw similarly on all the phases up to the point that defines the Oedipal triangle. As he describes it, this happens after “ego-identity with the father . . . is established” and “oedipus love towards the mother develops and the father’s feminine role is foisted off on the mother.” That is, she takes on characteristics of the father from phase five. But there is also the deeper pull of the castration wish from phase three, which waits until phase six to be transformed into castration dread. And phases one and two are always beneath the surface. Thus, from phases three to six, Bose disagrees with Freud. Above all, Freud would disagree over the splitting of the castration complex into two phases—that is, an early one of wishing for castration and a later one of dreading it.52 (p.172) Bose also turns toward possibilities for resolution. “With the advent of ego identity in the father–mother relationship sympathy with the woman from the standpoint of the man develops and the oedipus complex is adjusted.”53 At the Oedipus point, the child appreciates the father’s attitude towards his son [toward himself] and plays the protector’s role towards the younger brothers and other children and also towards the mother. The child is thus made to appreciate the triple role of the child, the mother, and the father. If the development proceeds as I have described above no hatred is developed towards the father and there is perfect sympathy with all the three persons of the childmother-father grouping. The sexual trends towards the parents are soon sublimated and turned to affection. There is no parental fixation of the libido and possibilities of normal sexual development remain unimpaired.54 Here we see Bose accentuating the triple characterization of the Oedipus complex that follows from the triangular one of the Oedipus mother. The formulation is similar to that of the Vermorels and Green. Bose offers advice on how “the realisation of this ideal state” may be met. “The parents’ behavior should . . . make it possible for the child to satisfy, at least in imagination, his opposite active and passive tendencies directed towards them. Page 10 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother A certain amount of give and take policy on the part of parents is a prerequisite condition. But unfortunately the child is very often submitted to one-sided influences only with the result that repression sets in at one place or another of sexual development and the oedipus complex with its manysided inhibitions develops.”55 (p.173) The Mechanism of Defiance In “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish,” which Freud read, Bose leaves his dissatisfactions with Freud’s Oedipal construct with a parting shot. Having stated how the Oedipus complex may be adjusted by sympathy toward the mother, he continues: The oedipus wish thus does not succumb to the threat of castration but to the ability to put the ego in the position of the mother in the father-mother relationship and to the ability to defy the father and to castrate him i.e. to make him into a woman. In the oedipus story the hero finds a solution of his unfortunate situation by giving up his love object and blinding himself— i.e. by symbolic castration. He gives up the fight which persists in spite of his killing his father and transforms himself into a woman before him. The solution is not an ideal one and will not be workable in the present day society.56 Bose’s sarcasm leaves him with gaps in the unfamiliar story.57 How does blinding himself turn Oedipus into a woman, and how does he transform himself into one before his father, whom he has killed? Bose will attempt to improve upon this parting shot, again armed with Oedipus, in “The Mechanism of Defiance.” We thus come back to that essay with an attendant problem met toward the end of chapter 3, where I looked at its coda for evidence for Bose’s deferred rancor against Freud. I will now review that evidence in the context of the whole article, where it is a matter not only of the coda but also of a preamble and the article’s main content. The preamble introduces the essay. First, Bose says he will conduct almost his entire argument about defiance using the terms for Freud’s second topography of ego, id, and super-ego, rather than taking up “the defiance mechanism in terms of my own interpretation,”58 which he postpones to the coda. Bose’s article follows from this opening statement: “It is generally assumed that the ego is entirely powerless against the dictates of the super-ego but as will be evidenced in the present paper the ego is often (p.174) able to defy the superego although it may suffer in consequence.”59 Bose restates this, modifying a famous image well-known in its Platonic and Upaniṣadic versions and for recurrences in the Mahābhārata, including the Bhagavad Gītā: the analogy of the Page 11 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother chariot.60 The id is “the lady of the car,” the super-ego is the car’s master, and the ego is the command-taking driver, called “essentially passive” by Freud—to which, says Bose, “I shall have occasion to point out in this article that the Freudian ego is not so passive as it is supposed to be.”61 The idea of an “essentially passive” ego strikes me as anomalous for Freud, and is unattributed. In The Ego and the Id, Freud speaks explicitly in such terms only in citing Georg Groddeck, “who is never tired of insisting that what we call the ego behaves essentially passively in life, and that, as he expresses it, we are ‘lived’ by unknown and uncontrollable forces.”62 In any case, Bose seems to have forged an initial parallel between himself and his patient. That is, if he has extended the chariot image to represent psychoanalysis as it ranges over the fields of the unconscious, he has used it to make a fitting allusion to Freud, who had positioned himself as the voice of orthodoxy for the International Psychoanalytic Association ever since he had obtained Jung’s resignation as its president in 1914.63 Freud would have nominally been that chariot’s master in 1938, and Bose as a defiant driver would then double his patient’s representation of the ego “evidenced in the present paper” that “is often able to defy the super-ego although it may suffer in consequence.”64 Bose’s coda will then be his admission that he has sought to undermine the entire notion of mapping Freud’s second topography on to his patient’s case history. He showcases a brief, economically phrased, and thoroughly polemical remapping of the case’s conclusions in the preferred terms of what Bose elsewhere called the “theoretical ego.”65 Bose begins this ending with a reminder of his paper on “Ambivalence,” published in (p.175) 1938, the same year as his oral delivery of “The Mechanism of Defiance.” There he “showed” that: under the stress of a pair of wishes of the opposite type there takes place an unconscious identification of the subject with the object in real life. This leads to a bond of union between the subject and the object. Under normal circumstances the person concerned can view the situation either from the standpoint of the subject or that of the object. In the latter case the object serves as a point of attachment of what I have called the secondary ego. The secondary ego is motivated by wishes which are opposite in nature to those consciously felt by the primary ego. Under unfavourable circumstances the primary ego fails to understand the nature of the object and the development of the secondary ego is hindered. This results in various types of strain manifesting itself in unpleasant emotions such as fear, hatred, etc. If we accept the theory of opposite wish as suggested by me . . . it will not be necessary to call into requisition entities such as the super-ego and the id to explain mental symptoms.66

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The Oedipus Mother Still within the closing paragraph, Bose turns to the specifics of his case: To revert to our example the patient failed to realize the character of the unwilling mother. His attempts at revenge were really efforts at actionidentity. Action identity leads to ego-identity which means perfect identification with the unwilling mother-image in our example. The first stage in the adjustment of the conflict is by defiance and revenge on the part of what I have described as the Freudian ego against the super-ego.67 We will see what Bose does with “the unwilling mother,” whom he describes moreover as “the unwilling and threatening mother.” If we recall what we learned from H. D. about Freud’s reluctance to take the mother’s role in transference,68 we will be left to wonder what Freud, if he had been able to read this article, might have made of her. Indeed, we (p.176) need to raise the question again of what he might have thought about Bose’s maternal transference on him, and with that, what lay behind his answer to H. D.’s question whether “others had what he called this mother-transference on him,” which he answered, as H. D. put it, “ironically and I thought a little wistfully, ‘Oh, very many.’ ” We need to reconsider that moment because if one thing holds together the Vermorels’ interpretation of Freud’s correspondence with Romain Rolland, it is that Rolland represented a maternal transference to Freud. The maternal was an element in Rolland’s oceanic feeling, which “would free up a path toward ‘Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.’ ”69 Most strikingly, Freud’s image of his friend, despite Rolland’s virtually ceasing to write letters to him, would “support Freud’s turn to archaic maternal identifications marked by the traumatism of infancy,”70 including what he could not recall about his own mother’s handling of the death of his younger brother Julius71—during which, as the Vermorels reconstruct it, Amalia for a time would have been experienced precisely as an “unwilling and threatening mother” (in Green’s terms, a “dead mother”).72 It is doubtful that the irony of his own maternal transference on Rolland would have been entirely lost on Freud. The wistfulness H. D. attributes to him could thus have held some empathy for Bose, and perhaps some regret for his own part in allowing their correspondence to run aground. Freud had developed his maternal transference on Rolland concurrently with his correspondence with Bose, with whom, at the time of his words with H. D., he was also losing touch. But by the time Bose wrote “The Mechanism of Defiance,” Freud and Bose, unlike Freud and Rolland, had had a real ending behind them. Accordingly, rearmed with Oedipus but thinking pre-Oedipally, Bose revised his parting shot in “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish” into a final blast at Freud that captures the circumstances of his three-year estrangement from him: (p.177)

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The Oedipus Mother Had the Freudian ego submitted to the demands of the super-ego, freedom from painful symptoms could have been obtained but at a tremendous sacrifice. In the Oedipus story Oedipus had to blind himself and retire from the world. It is conceivable that my patient could also have obtained peace of mind by following a similar course of action. That sort of cure is not worth attaining. The cure that results from overcoming the super-ego by defiance and revenge and subsequently realizing its nature is certainly likely to be more useful and permanent.73 Bose now posits that if “action-identity” had led to “ego-identity which means perfect identification with the unwilling mother-image,” an optimistic or positive solution was possible: My idea is that under normal conditions of development Oedipus wishes are not adjusted by yielding to the castration threat of the super-ego as has been supposed by Freud but by overcoming the obstruction imposed by the hostile father and mother images and the subject’s final identification with them. The theory of opposite wish gives us a simple explanation in understanding these processes and the interrelations of the Freudian ego, the id, and the super-ego.74 Of course, Bose’s patient was not living “under normal conditions.” Bose called them “unfavourable.” By the end, Bose has lost sight of—or at least had removed the reader’s sight from—his patient’s “cure” and focused his coda on himself. Perhaps the patient was still being defiant while Bose’s own condition would have been the more normal one in which he could still harbor an unconscious wish for perfect identification with his secondary ego modeled after Freud once he was over his defiance. It is hard to imagine what Bose’s patient’s case would look like had Bose presented it in his own preferred terms, without reference to the super-ego. For the present, we may suspect that in seeing his own situation with Freud in parallel with his patient, Freud as the absent super-ego is being castrated in the name of the “unwilling and threatening mother.” (p.178) Let us now look for this “unwilling mother” in Patient B’s case, in which Bose writes some of his better hard-driving psychoanalytic prose. It presents Bose’s thickest evidence for the Oedipus mother. The thickness comes along with a pattern that reinforces the patient’s main themes like waves during a storm. The waves presumably have depth, but they are without momentum, dying as if they were moving toward a calm shore, but none is in sight. It is Bose’s lengthiest case study known to me, taking up most of “The Mechanism of Defiance.” I will pick up on it where he begins to mix narrative description with interpretation, having already described the patient’s symptoms.

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The Oedipus Mother Patient B and His Unwilling Mother Sex with his wife, for Patient B, is always followed by feelings of remorse. Activities “with numerous other women” amount to just dallying, with the exception of one married woman who “was sexually very active and practically forced the patient to have coitus with her.” He carried on with her “for a number of months” with “frequent coituses . . . without having the slightest remorse or the feeling that he was doing anything wrong.”75 Otherwise, “all sex activities, even the milder ones, are followed by remorse, fear of hell and punishment which however have not the least effect in preventing the patient from repeating them again and again. It seems as if a compulsion drove him to this. He cannot look at any woman or a girl or even a female infant without ideas of sex.” Often he lectures girls “not to stray from the path of virtue” after petting, or as a come-on to it.76 In his own language he finds himself in “sexual bondage” with every woman and is continually under a tension lest any caprice on the part of any woman should sever the bond. . . . He feels this “dependence” as a source of humiliation. . . . Consciously he does not feel any sexual urge. His ego-ideal makes him think that such activity is gross and reprehensible. The patient never realizes that under some pretense or other he seeks sex deliberately. With him “it simply happens.”77 (p.179) He would not acknowledge the contradiction in behaviors between his ideal of “no sex” and his deliberateness in pursing it. Even after further analysis made the deliberateness evident, he denied contradiction because both were “genuine attitudes” associated with “real feelings.” Bose says contradiction can be detected only in the realm of actions, not that of feelings, and that the patient had an “overvaluation of mental processes as compared with physical acts”78— about which he says more later. Bose turns to an incident of the patient’s youth. Once when the patient was twelve, he took a phial of medicine meant for his father “or one of the elder brothers.” He soon felt giddiness; then, a raving attack of fright. All the members of the household flocked to his bedside in alarm and they tried to soothe him, but all to no purpose. He began to see the faces of those around him distorted into horrible figures. The faces of his mother, maternal aunt and his elder sisters looked particularly frightful. Curiously the male faces did not appear horrible. The attack lasted for a few hours, and then gradually subsided. After this attack, for years the patient could not look at his mother’s face without feeling fright. He could however easily face the male relations. Previous to this attack the patient had been indulging in masturbatory activities and homosexual practices mostly of the passive type. In the patient’s conscious mind there was no connection between his Page 15 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother sex activities and the attack of fright, but the patient has always associated the hallucinatory vision with the horrors of hell.79 That vision confirmed the reality of hell: “Whenever anybody expressed his doubt about the reality of hell to the patient he would reply that hell does exist as he had already had a vision of it.”80 He would feel “intense fear” and wonder whether he was a “hypocrite” in his religious views. He was in denial, “pretending that his deficient intelligence would not allow him to grasp the subtleties of analysis.”81 Patient B’s mother would be a ghost or hellhag. But we may note that Bose has not yet connected any (p.180) dots as to why he leads off this paragraph as one that is dispositive of the patient’s super-ego. But Bose soon steps in that direction. “The patient’s ideas about sin and punishment are very queer. He does not think that anybody need suffer torture in hell because of crimes like theft, murder, etc. It is only sex that is punished in hell.”82 Moreover, Another peculiarity about the idea of punishment harboured by the patient is that sex activity is punished by the creation of desires for more sex so that the burden of sin goes on accumulating and results in eternal damnation. The absurdity of the curious proposition that a new sin which by itself is the result of a previous sin, in its turn leads to further sin never struck the patient. According to the patient’s theology sin is punished by more sin which thus increases in geometric progression till eternal suffering comes in hell. The patient tries to justify his peculiar theology by stray quotations from religious books.83 Bose speaks as a rationalist here. The “peculiar theology” he is chiding is the patient’s theology of karma—and Bose’s route to his patient’s super-ego: “Since our moral and religious ideas have been found to be associated with the functioning of the super-ego that takes up the role of the punishing conscience, it is to be noted that in the case of this patient sexual activities in early life must have been the main occasion for the development of such a stern super-ego.” The patient recalls that once at age seven or eight he “tried to witness secretly parental intercourse by peeping from [a] window. Fear prevented him from carrying out his intentions fully” and he left quickly.84 Was this a recollection of a dream? The window could remind us of Freud’s Wolf Man’s case, where a window serves as a what Bertram Lewin calls a “dream screen,” one that may safeguard sleep by minimizing the disturbance brought about by viewing the primal scene.85 Age seven or eight is the same as the one Freud wrongly gives for his “my beloved mother” dream, which has similar elements.86 Bose does not dig (p.181) more deeply here, but pinpoints the main source of the fear in what he says next: The patient’s early vision of hell during the attack of fright . . . shows that it was the mother more than the father that the patient was afraid of. The mother image was thus the more important constituent of the superPage 16 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother ego. . . ; it may be mentioned that the patient throughout his life had been more eager to win the love of his father than that of his mother. Analysis revealed a very early introjection of the mother. Passive traits of the feminine type have been the dominant characteristics of the patient’s life. The patient in early childhood found pleasure in the body odor of the father, but not in that of his mother; he often attempted under all sorts of pretexts to see his father’s penis. During analysis desire to see the analyst’s penis frequently came into his head. The lack of male aggressiveness, the feminine attitude during intercourse, the desire for the father’s penis which frequently comes up in abusive thoughts of eating a big penis amply prove that the patient had in his unconscious mind replaced the mother and wanted love from the father. The mother thus stood as rival for love.87 The “passive traits” in the desire for the father would be traceable to Bose’s phase five. But Bose’s finding of “a very early introjection of the mother” could go back to phase one.88 Yet while the mother has loomed in importance, Bose has said nothing specific about her part in either of the events recalled from the patient’s youth. As far as we know she was in bed with her husband, unaware of their seven- or eight-year-old son’s dreaming or enacted curiosity about his parents in bed, and was prominent among those in the household who sought to soothe him at age twelve during his attack of fright. Bose, somewhat like Freud in his early case studies, though perhaps for different reasons having to do with Indian etiquette, leaves actions and attitudes of the mother out of focus as much, it seems, as possible. But this erasure cannot be total if his case is going to make sense. That may be Bose’s reason for introducing a new term, “the unwilling mother,” for (p.182) her at this juncture. She is soon also be repeatedly called “the unwilling and threatening mother.” Her impact becomes increasingly noticed after the following disclosure: “There was another deep-seated reason for the patient’s unconscious hostility against his mother. It was brought out in analysis that the patient’s early male oedipus cravings had to be denied satisfaction owing to the unwillingness of the mother.”89 How this unwillingness was manifested by his mother or experienced by the patient, Bose never says. Presumably, she was uptight and unwilling to contribute to the “give and take” that Bose advised parents to implement. Bose interprets her unwillingness as the prototype for an “unwillingness on the part of the female partner” that could accompany Patient B’s condition that “no sexual intercourse has ever been possible with any woman who has not shown her willingness openly”:90

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The Oedipus Mother Analysis further revealed that the patient’s ideal of no sex had one of its strongest roots in desire for revenge against the unwilling mother image. All females, even female infants, were looked upon as so many mother images. Once a woman got excited the patient could take revenge on his unwilling mother image by refusing to have intercourse with the woman. An unconscious hostility existed between the patient and his mother. The hostile mother image formed the most important constituent of the punishing conscience of the patient.91 It forbade not only sexual pleasure but all other pleasure, since pleasures would cascade out of control in what Bose chided as the patient’s “theology” of (in my terms) karma. It is now that Bose begins to address the patient’s ideas about God and his experience of female deity. Bose keeps the “realization of God” distinct from the patient’s maternal hellhag vision, but paints them with the same brush. As one might expect from Bose’s readings of Freud’s projection theory, the first discussion of God leads back rather perfunctorily, almost whimsically, to the patient’s father—after a “however” which registers that up to that marker Bose has continued to imply the mother: (p.183) The super-ego tried to keep the patient in the right path both by threats of hell and by offer of the reward of attaining supreme bliss by the realization of God. According to the patient no efforts or religious practices were necessary for this. If he could keep away from sex, the realization would come automatically. There is no doubt however that the father image also contributed to the super-ego formation to a minor extent. The father imposed restrictions on play and on certain types of food.92 Hilsa fish, for instance, “were forbidden on the grounds of indigestibility”—not mangoes, which the father encouraged and which the patient continued to relish as his sole nonguilty pleasure.93 Hilsa fish may have reminded Bose of his chapter on smells in The Concept of Repression, which tells us, “Salted hilsa fish which is considered to be a delicacy by the Bengalis has an odour resembling that of the decomposing body.”94 One wonders if this evoked the patient’s aversion to his mother. In any case, the father does not sound prohibitively “Oedipal,” like Moses laying down dietary rules in Leviticus. We thus begin, as contributory to a discussion of Patient B’s religious life, to follow a lengthy and rather torturous introduction to his experience of deities. It will take us from his mother’s urging him to seek a sexless “eternal bliss” from “God,” to “goddesses.” Discussion begins on the subject of infantile helplessness:

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The Oedipus Mother Another characteristic of the patient that deserves attention is the feeling of utter helplessness regarding the idea of punishment in hell. According to him nothing could be done to avert this punishment. . . . The normal infantile feeling of helplessness persisted even in adult life in certain types of behaviour. The patient’s oedipus tendencies received a rude shock from the unwilling and threatening mother. The stern mother image prevented the enjoyment of pleasure in other directions as well. The net result was that the patient could not satisfy even the ordinary needs of life with a clean conscience.95 (p.184) From helplessness, Bose returns to the patient’s “overvaluation of mental processes”: as the pleasure element had been altogether banned out by the super-ego the patient could not make any effort towards enjoyment. The childish attitude of looking to others for the satisfaction of his needs thus persisted. The patient began to think in terms of others particularly of the unwilling mother. . . . Since active actions were all more or less under the ban, the centre of attention shifted from the external reality to mental processes. . . . There was an over-valuation of feelings and emotions and a neglect of reality. As the attention was mainly turned towards the inner mental life contradiction could be harboured without the necessity of coming to a settlement. When the patient grew up and had to meet instinctive demands by his own efforts he took up a peculiar passive attitude in which the necessary act was, so to say, allowed to happen so that the patient satisfied the natural craving surreptitiously and never realized the deliberateness of his acts. By this mechanism the super-ego was outwitted to some extent. The unwilling and threatening mother image of the early childhood being incorporated with the super-ego continued to be regarded as all-powerful and incapable of being defied or resisted.96 One notes the loose time frame that Bose gives, from the persistence of a “childish attitude” to “late periods” and “when the patient grew up.” Somewhere along the way, though, Bose answers what it has meant for the patient to outwit an undefiable and irresistible super-ego “to some extent.” The patient’s “feeling of utter helplessness regarding punishment in hell . . . had its origin in this stern mother image of early childhood,” but the patient also had strategies to defy that imago and the ego-ideal it fostered: The reasoning that almost all persons of his own religious and social group lead a sexual life in matrimony without any fear of punishment in hell and that the patient would be in good company in hell could not argue away his ascetic ideal. Strangely enough if the patient could feel that his sexual

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The Oedipus Mother partner was willing to enjoy (p.185) sex and run the risk of hell all scruples about sexual enjoyment disappeared.97 Having shown this minimal strategy, Bose then clarifies his usage of the term “mechanism of defiance” and says the defiance was both “conscious” and “unconscious”: The analysis made it clear that the patient exhibited defiance both consciously and unconsciously. The conscious defiance was very often torn from its context and came up as an obsessive idea. This obsessive idea of defiance sometimes manifested itself as a colourless thought and sometimes again it was invested with cathexis. In all situations of conscious defiance the idea of deliberateness was totally wanting so that the patient never felt this outburst as defiance.98 So far, Bose exemplifies only “conscious defiance.” But it is in recounting instances of what must be unconscious defiance that Bose finally gets to the patient’s experience of God and goddesses: Every day during analysis the patient would begin his free association by uttering certain stereotyped abusive words which can be literally translated as “mother-vagina-plantain-big erect penis,” often the expression “shall eat” was added to the list. These abusive thoughts were sometimes colourless in tone and expressed in a sort of mechanical manner while at other times they were accompanied with feelings of anger and grinding of teeth. The image of the object against whom the abuses were directed was not present in consciousness on most of the occasions. The thoughts of God, of his religious preceptor and of the analyst and sometimes of the father also would evoke insulting language followed by repentance. The idea of female deities invariably brought up the obsessive thought of putting the penis against their bodies. This was followed by extreme fear and repentance. At times the religious preceptor and his mother were imagined as engaged in coitus. The idea of breaking (p.186) away from all social and religious conventions sometimes came into his mind. Every pious thought provoked an impious one. The question “why not” often troubled him in connection with sexual prohibitions. Every occasion of fear gave rise to defiant ideas which again were followed by more intense fear. Thoughts of uncontrollable violence often worried him.99 Over all, the patient’s unconscious experience of male and female deities makes them somewhat interchangeable, possibly because God has been realigned more with the religious preceptor (guru) and the therapist and less with the father. But there are still distinctions. Goddesses are singled out in the way they are “invariably” associated with “the obsessive thought of putting the penis against Page 20 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother their bodies,” and with the “extreme fear” (as with the mother) that accompanies repentance to them. If pressing the penis against the bodies of goddess images connotes sexual intercourse, it would complement the only “coitus” mentioned between the mother and the guru. It is to be noted that the patient directs his abuse at an “image” of the “object” that “was not present in consciousness on most of the occasions.” These representations of the maternal deity suggest an unconscious iconic practice, just as the repeated phrases of abuse suggest mantra- or muttering, as in japa recitation. The patient’s unconscious visions exemplify “it-thinking” without an “I.” The fantasy of genital contact with goddess images would thus also have a primarily visionary or iconic basis along with its tactile motivation. Finally, a few words on how all this plays out once Bose reviews the whole in terms of the ego, id, and super-ego. He comments that the super-ego as “the unwilling and threatening mother” would offer “sugar-coated rationalizations” of its demands “by professions of justice, welfare, civilizing mission, divine ordinance and similar pretensions.” But the ego seems to have the maternal component of the super-ego in a bind: “The super-ego could not afford to face the defiance of the ego as it would mean an admission of weakness on its part and a consequent loss of hold on the ego. So when the ego did show any defiant behaviour the super-ego tried to impress on the ego that it was not a deliberate act but a lapse. The repetition of lapses was sought to be excused on the ground that it had become a habit.” Sometimes a sexual act was called uncontrollable with no evidence that there had been “any effort at control. The impression gained from (p.187) analysis was that it was a life and death question for the super-ego lest the ego should come to know of its deliberate defiance.”100 Bose adds, “The defiance against positive commands of the super-ego was manifested in actions and thoughts of the opposite type. The super-ego demanded reverence to gods and goddesses, the religious preceptor, mother, elder brother, and holy men. But thoughts about those persons were always associated with obsessive irreverent ideas mostly of a sexual nature.”101 With every good thought came a bad one. The super-ego may have been in a bind in terms of facing the ego’s defiance, but it seems to have maintained her hold by an “unwillingness” to bend on matters of piety.

Patients A and B Let us now look at Bose’s other account touching on a joint-parental image located in an “Oedipus mother.” Patient A’s treatment lasted from May through November of one year, and was, says Bose, “completely successful” after several “adjustments.”102 It was the patient’s second marriage, and a few of the adjustments concerned the wife. For instance, a dream of “an attempt at intercourse with a maidservant in which the woman played the active role” was interpreted as “an effort on the part of the patient to return to heterosexual life”; eventually the patient made a “successful identification with the wife.” The Case A pair treats a patient who works through his joint-parental problems having a Page 21 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother mother and two brothers who were “insane (paranoiacs)”;103 acceptance not only of his active but also passive homosexual “attitudes” as “something socially wrong but not actually sinful”; dreams of “a passive homosexual situation and a death wish against the father”; and “Oedipus dreams,” in one of which not only the cousin-sister, aunt and mother but also the patient’s current second wife, his deceased first wife, and an elderly prostitute appear as ghosts, fear of whom “represented the fear of incest,” while “[t]he father in these dreams was generally represented by male ghosts whom the patient defied.”104 Although it leaves out all reference to the wife, Bose’s closing paragraph (p.188) sums up the therapy as about the back-and-forth between opposing conscious and unconscious wishes: It will be noticed that the active homosexual complex was the most superficial one and was the first to be appreciated by the patient. The passive homosexuality was the next one to rise; it allied itself with the feminine trait. The see-saw mechanism was in evidence and served to bring about an adjustment in the conscious mind of the opposite homosexual tendencies. Directly after the alliance of passive homosexuality with the feminine attitude a heterosexual craving for [an] inferior woman came up in the patient’s mind in dreams and memory pictures. This is seen to be a sort of defense against the oedipus feeling. The capacity of identification with a woman developed in the next stage and with this a return to potency. But simultaneously with this the fear of losing money became prominent. Evidence of hostile wish against the father imago next came up in consciousness and dreams and free associations indicated an unconscious passive sexual attitude towards the father. Typical oedipus dreams and the operations of the punishing conscience became prominent in the next phase. Immediately preceding the emergence of the oedipus in consciousness the patient had a dream in which the father imago was made to play the passive role and was placed in the situation of giving birth to a child. Next day there was the conscious appreciation of the oedipus wish which had hitherto been a matter of inference by the patient. Then came the identification with the mother in the situation of getting a child from the son imago. This was clearly noticeable in a dream and was followed by other dreams and obsessive ideas in which the patient showed active attitude towards both the mother and the father imago. Then came a dream in which the patient played the feminine role and had a child by the father. This child actually called him mother in the dream. The see-saw mechanism with reference to the oedipus situation in which the patient alternately played the roles of the son, the mother and the father in all possible reciprocal active and passive relationships led to the adjustment of the capacity of normal friendship and to the disappearance of the feeling of nervousness in the presence of superiors. The inferiority idea and the

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The Oedipus Mother worry about money matters and the fear of being cheated were the last to go.105 (p.189) Although both case studies present the phrase “joint-parental imago,” comparing them is perhaps not the best way to appreciate what Bose was driving at with Freud. The two patients’ mothers are central, but they are shadowy figures. Patient A’s mother nearly drops out of the picture along with his two brothers as “insane (paranoiacs)”; Patient B’s mother, whom he found “unwilling and threatening,” is left out of focus. But let us recall Bose’s carefully worded statement. He was not saying that the maternal deity derives from such mothers or from their type simply as a projection. Rather, when he says he has reasons to believe that “the motivation for the maternal deity is traceable to this source,” Bose would seem to be talking about a pre-Oedipal phase of childhood that lends itself to the generation of mother-goddess imagery and narrative, not excluding tales and images of unwillingness and threat, but taking in also the range of images that Bose and Haldar associate with the six phases of early childhood, including the desire to be a woman and the dread of castration. He no doubt has the mothers in these two cases in mind, but seen against a larger unspoken canvas. Still, there are strange features to Case B. Bose proceeds nonteleologically, never outlining and barely imagining a cure, his loose time frame, and the way he brings the whole discussion back to himself and his method. The nonteleological angle of Case B is at sharp variance with the emphasis on a cure in Case A, and more generally with Bose’s reputation for remedial therapies. Bose does not diagnose the mental illness in either case, and there is no reason to think they are the same, just because both fit the Oedipus mother profile. Patient B might be thought incurable. Perhaps Patient B is a “borderline” case that could fit André Green’s dead mother complex, but we are never told enough about the mother–son dynamic and what it was that made the mother “unwilling.” There are points where it seems like he and his mother might be locked in one of those situations described by Harold F. Searles in an article titled “The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy,” in which, for instance, as is most typical of mother–son relationships where the son is schizophrenic, “More often than not, the effort to drive the other person crazy, or to perpetuate his craziness, can be found to rest upon both participants’ unconscious striving for the gratifications which the ‘crazy’ symbiotic mode of relatedness, despite its anxiety- and frustration-engendering aspects, offers.”106 But Patient B is also reminiscent of Freud’s case study of Rat Man, as (p.190) one of obsessional neurosis in which “the neurosis, and even its motive, are mentioned by the patient in a tone of complete indifference, he being quite unaware of their significance”; whose “impulses, mental or physical, always represent either an erotic act or the direct prohibition of one”; for whom “a regression from action to thought” in which “the act of thinking itself becomes sexualized so that it Page 23 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother represents a part of the patient’s sexual, activity,” is “highly characteristic”; and who is highly superstitious and has an acute sense of smell.107 Along with Bose’s lack of a concern for the remedial, one even gets a sense that the parallelisms Bose allows between himself and Patient B could go further to a partial identity, and that the whole case study could be an author’s fiction. Think of the ironical and needling implications of the parallel between Freud and the “unwilling mother” who fills her son’s head with promises “of attaining supreme bliss by the realization of God.”108 But if Freud and the patient’s unwilling mother share a super-ego profile, who would be the id who accompanies the “master” as the seemingly superfluous “lady of the car”? I have not pursued this idea beyond these wonderments, since Patient B’s family is rather unlike what little we know of Bose’s.109 If some of Case B were drawn from Bose’s life, patients, family, or friends, we certainly do not know enough to hypothesize.

Points in Favor I believe the give-and-take about the Oedipus mother and opposite wishes shows both Freud and Bose with points in their favor and more points to make. On Freud’s behalf, I think Bose’s Case History of Patient A redeems Freud’s rejections of Bose’s theory of opposite wishes. It is hard to resist the impression that the passage just quoted would have offered him distressing confirmation that Bose’s theory appears formal (p.191) and lacks a dynamic factor. That is all the more clear when he read, in Bose’s April 1929 reply, “This theory will also explain the relationship between the different wishes that emerge from the unconscious in a definite sequence during analysis.”110 Rather than being dynamic, Bose’s approach could induce its own results. Manjapru Kris honors this as a practice of “forced fantasy,” a term that began with Ferenczi, but which Bose claimed to have developed before Ferenczi “in prescribing daydreaming as a therapeutic practice.”111 I would rather mention it along with the well-known quip about Freud and Jung. If their patients had, respectively, Freudian and Jungian dreams, Bose’s Patient A had Bosean dreams in sequence!112 As Bose ticks off the predictable outcomes, he leaves unmentioned the patient’s struggle and contributions to his own analysis, and has nothing to say about leftover problems, such as “money matters and the fear of being cheated.” One could look at Freud’s case history of the Wolf Man to appreciate the difference. Freud frequently mentions his patient’s indispensable contributions to the solution of otherwise intractable riddles posed by his own analysis, gives the impression of nothing being predictable and of leaving no stone unturned (including money matters and the fear of being cheated113), and records a temporary cure that he would write about again over twenty years later in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable.”114 Yet Bose’s 1938 case history of Patient B does have something more of the feel of interminability in Freud’s probing example. Perhaps Freud’s hard words were not wasted on Bose.

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The Oedipus Mother When it comes to the difference between Bose’s findings on the castration complex in Indian versus European patients, for once Bose deserves the last word. Bose supplies one account of his findings in “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish,” which I cited in part (p.192) earlier, and a more basic account in “The Genesis of Homosexuality,” which follows: During my analysis of Indian patients I have never come across a case of castration complex in the form in which it has been described by European observers but the castration idea in its typical form could however be discerned in my European patients. This fact would seem to indicate that the castration idea develops as a result of environmental conditions acting on some more primitive trend in the subject. I have reasons to believe that the modified castration idea as seen in Indian patients is a more direct expression of this primitive trend and gives a better understanding of its genesis than the form in which it is seen in European patients. The difference in the social environment of the Indian and European is responsible for the difference in the modes of expression in two cases. It has been usually proposed that the threat of castration in early childhood days, owing to some misdemeanor on the part of the child, is a factor which is directly responsible for the origin of this complex, but the histories of Indian patients would seem to disprove the idea. In the average Indian family the boy or the girl usually goes about naked, unless the weather conditions forbid it, up to a comparatively late period in life. It is quite common to see children 9 or 10 years old going about absolutely naked and in the case of girls the nudity period extends to about 7 years. Under the usual family and social conditions children acquire a fair knowledge of sex before the nudity period ends. The threat of castration is extremely common and is almost a daily admonition. In the case of girls the threat usually takes the form of chastisement by snakes. The children have ample opportunity of comparing their genitalia from the moment they are intelligent enough to do so. The difference between the sexes never comes as a surprise to the girl under usual conditions of Indian life. The boy, although he may be caught during some mischievous sexual activity and threatened with castration, never develops the castration complex in its original form. The castration idea however very often comes in dreams in indirect forms such as decapitations of the subject himself or of his child or a cut of the finger or a sore in some part of the body. Analysis of these dreams would always lead us to the conclusion that behind this symbolic expression the idea of being a woman was present. So that in the case of males it (p.193) seems that the desire to be a woman is the primitive form on which the castration idea depends.115 It is now time to reinforce a point made by Basu and introduced in chapter 4, that, in Bose’s view, Indian culture, education, religion, and so on could not be primarily constitutive of what is universal in the psyche, which for Bose is the Page 25 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother play of opposite wishes.116 They could only, as here, provide a glimpse of an older, more “primitive trend,” and not necessarily an original or universal pattern—such as Freud claimed phylogenetically for the Oedipus complex in Totem and Taboo. Bose’s argument for the greater primitivity of his Indian data is cogent and merits consideration. He continues: In European patients it is more difficult to push the analysis up to this stage, so that it appears as if the castration idea is a primary one but with sufficient care and effort I have been able to trace the origin of the castration idea even in Europeans to the operation of the female cravings. . . . In analysing my cases I have been able to trace this desire to be a woman on the part of the male to the identification with his own mother. This would lead us to the early stage of sexual development when the boy by identifying himself with his own mother played a passive role with reference to the father.117 Bose would thus dispense with Freud’s attribution of the Oedipus complex in both boys and girls to later “clothed” developments hinging on a belated discovery of sexual difference and the fear of castration. Bose then closes the argument with a paragraph headed “Castration and Oedipus”: There is a sort of antagonism between the castration idea which has its origin from the passive feminine trend and the oedipus idea which is derived from the identification with the father. . . . The castration complex is thus often requisitioned by the patient to keep the oedipus in check.118 (p.194) That is, an earlier desire to be castrated could undercut, so to speak, the Oedipal castration dread. Freud would no doubt have had difficulty with Bose’s uncoupling of a castration wish from the rest of the Oedipus complex. Indeed, much would have been at stake for Freud to admit to taking Bose seriously, since Bose links only the castration dread with the Oedipus point, and unlinks the castration wish from it. He leaves castration dread a wolf in European clothing. Notes:

(1.) See Bose 1950, 76–82; 1933, 95–97. (2.) IPS [1964] 1999, 15. (3.) Freud 1953–74, 18:105. (4.) Freud 1953–74, 22:63; Swan 1974, 8. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud had spoken of “hysterical identification” among women in this sense (1953–74, 4:149–51). Page 26 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother (5.) Freud 1953–74, 12:29 (quote not cited by Swan); Swan 1974, 9. (6.) Swan 1974, 9–10. (7.) Swan 1974, 6. (8.) Swan 1974, 6–7, Freud’s italics. (9.) Green 1983, 151. (10.) Green 1983, 153–54. (11.) Bose [1928] 1949, 233. (12.) Bose [1928] 1949, 230. (13.) Haldar 1938, 49. (14.) Haldar 1938, 49–50. (15.) See Dimmitt and van Buitenen 1978, 118–22. (16.) Haldar 1938, 50. (17.) Bose [1928] 1949, 120 (Bose uses both terms). (18.) Haldar 1938, 50. (19.) Bose [1928] 1949, 230. (20.) Bose [1928] 1949, 233. (21.) Haldar 1938, 50. (22.) Bose [1929] 1948, 231, Contrast Freud 1953–74, 19:31, on “an individual’s first and most important identification . . . with his father” and note 1 to that statement: “Perhaps it would be safer to say ‘with the parents’; for before the child has arrived at definite knowledge of the difference between the sexes, the lack of a penis, it does not distinguish in value between its father and its mother.” (23.) Haldar 1938, 51. (24.) Bose [1928] 1949, 231. (25.) Bose [1928] 1949, 231–32. (26.) Bose [1928] 1949, 230–31. (27.) Bose [1928] 1949, 233–34. Page 27 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother (28.) Phase four as in Haldar 1938, 50. Not included in Bose [1928] 1949, it doesn’t seem distinct from phase five. (29.) Haldar 1938, 50. (30.) Bose [1928] 1949, 234. (31.) Bose [1928] 1949, 232. (32.) Haldar 1938, 50. For further psychoanalytic interpretation of this myth, see Berkson 1995. (33.) Bose [1928] 1949, 232. (34.) Bose [1928] 1949, 234, my italics. (35.) Bose [1928] 1949, 231. (36.) Bose [1928] 1949, 235. (37.) See Handelman and Shulman 1997, 87–88, 115, 126, 130, 154–55 portray Bhṛṅgin as a hypermale mysoginist. (38.) See Handelman and Shulman 1997, 17–21, 87–89, 113–16, on Bhṛṅgin’s story and Śiva and Pārvatī’s dicing, which he habitually witnesses; 153–55, comparing Bhṛṅgin with Aravān-Kūttaṇṭāvar, on whom see FM, ch. 5. Details about feminine and masculine body parts are also from this book. (39.) Handelman and Shulman 1997, 114. (40.) Haldar 1938, 52–53. (41.) Haldar 1938, 53. (42.) Haldar 1938, 53–54. (43.) Markings on it for drainage show it is the yoni’s outer surface. (44.) See Biardeau 2004, 38n11 and 45–46, “just as the liṅga inhabits a garbhagrha” (46). (45.) Swan 1974, 58–59. (46.) See Klein 1929, 437–38, according to whom a boy’s anal-sadistic super-ego, in “the earliest anxiety situation of all,” mounts “an attack on the mother’s body, which is timed psychologically at the zenith of the sadistic phase,” that “involves also the struggle with the father’s penis in the mother,” revealing the primal scene.

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The Oedipus Mother (47.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 578, italics in French original. (48.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 505. (49.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 498–502; on Barande, see chapter 2, this volume. (50.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 554. (51.) Green 1983a, 146–47. (52.) Freud also discussed two cases of a “desire for castration”: one a patient of his own, and the other the case of Paul Schreber; but in neither case is it said to be earlier than castration dread. A neurosis, he says, “can only arise from a conflict between two trends,” which in his own patient would seem to be simultaneous, and which in Schreber’s case the dread was consciously, if not unconsciously, prior. Freud’s patient had “an obsessional neurosis in whose symptoms the unresolved conflict between a masculine and a feminine attitude (fear of castration and desire for castration) found expression.” And “Schreber found the way to recovery when he decided to give up his resistance to castration and to accommodate himself to the feminine role cast for him by God” (Freud 1953–74, 19:91–92). This article, “A Neurosis of Demonological Possession” (Freud 1963), advances the discussion of castration in Schreber’s case, which in Freud’s prior study he handled as a “wishful fantasy” of “emasculation” (Freud 1953–74, 12:48–49). (53.) Bose [1928] 1949, 235. (54.) Bose [1928] 1949, 232; italics in original. (55.) Bose [1928] 1949, 232. (56.) Bose [1928] 1949, 235. (57.) Freud had corrected a “mistake” in Bose’s popular essay on Oedipus in his March 1929 letter. (58.) Bose [1938] 1951, 58. (59.) Bose [1938] 1951, 59. Like Freud in The Ego and the Id, Bose uses “egoideal” interchangeably with super-ego. (60.) See Hiltebeitel 1984. Nineteenth-century Indian translators used “car” for ratha rather than “chariot.” (61.) Bose [1938] 1951, 60. (62.) Freud 1960, 65. Page 29 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother (63.) See Kerr 1993, 469–77. (64.) Bose [1938] 1951, 59. (65.) See chapter 4, this volume, notes 27 and 67. (66.) Bose [1938] 1951, 73–74. (67.) Bose [1938] 1951, 74. (68.) See chapter 3, this volume, note n81ff. (69.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 352. (70.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 461. (71.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 352. (72.) The Vermorels (1993, 595) say “Freud approached the archaic mother— made dangerous by the narcissistic wounds of his early childhood—from the oblique, whether it be in works of applied psychoanalysis where myths and literature served as shield and mirror, or in theoretical elaborations separated in his work, sometimes split from content of works from the same period.” (73.) Bose [1938] 1951, 74. (74.) Bose [1938] 1951, 74. (75.) Bose [1938] 1951, 62–63, 68. (76.) Bose [1938] 1951, 62. (77.) Bose [1938] 1951, 62. (78.) Bose [1938] 1951, 63–64. (79.) Bose [1938] 1951, 64–65. (80.) Bose [1938] 1951, 65. (81.) Bose [1938] 1951, 63. (82.) Bose [1938] 1951, 65. (83.) Bose [1938] 1951, 65. (84.) Bose [1938] 1951, 65. (85.) See Lewin 1949; Lewin 1950, 119–21; Lewin 1953, 186. The dream screen is discussed in chapter 8, this volume. Page 30 of 32

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The Oedipus Mother (86.) See FM, ch. 2. (87.) Bose [1938] 1951, 65–66. (88.) Bose says, “the process of introjection which normally brings about a unification of the superego with the ego and makes the ego-ideal syntonic was imperfect” ([1938] 1951, 72). (89.) Bose [1938] 1951, 66. (90.) Bose [1938] 1951, 66. (91.) Bose [1938] 1951, 66. (92.) Bose [1938] 1951, 67, my italics. (93.) Bose [1938] 1951, 67; mangoes typically represent female sexuality; see Obeyesekere 1984, 227–38; Hiltebeitel 1988, 201n25. (94.) Bose 1921, 167. (95.) Bose [1938] 1951, 67. (96.) Bose [1938] 1951, 67–68. (97.) Bose [1938] 1951, 68. (98.) Bose [1938] 1951, 68–69. (99.) Bose [1938] 1951, 69. (100.) Bose [1938] 1951, 71. (101.) Bose [1938] 1951, 71–72. (102.) Bose 1950, 81. (103.) Bose 1950, 76. (104.) Bose 1950, 81. (105.) Bose 1950, 81–82. (106.) Searles 1959, 11–12 (the eighth, main pattern he discusses). (107.) Quoting from Jones 1953–57, 2:264–66. (108.) Bose [1938] 1951, 67, as cited above.

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The Oedipus Mother (109.) Nandy found that Bose’s mother Laximoni “breastfed him until the age of five” as was “quite common, especially among the youngest of a number of children”; she seldom left the house “except for important religious duties such as bathing in the Ganges,” was “a poetess who had a lively intellectual curiosity,” and “was superbly well read in the puranas” (see Hartnack 2001, 94–95). (110.) IPS [1964] 1999, 18. (111.) Kris 2014, 224–25. (112.) See Obeyesekere 2012, 296: “Inevitably, I will dream those issues raised by the particular therapeutic school, facilitating therapeutic intervention . . . ”; and again, 397: “patients belonging to a particular therapeutic school will dream the dreams incumbent on that school” (in both cases speaking of Freud and Jung). (113.) See Freud 1953–74, 17:72–88, on money and faeces linked with the boy’s identification with his “castrated” mother, and castration dread. (114.) Freud 1953–74, 23:217–18. Cf. Freud 1953–74, 17:122. (115.) Bose 1950, 73–74. (116.) See Basu 1999 at chapter 4, this volume, notes 9–14. (117.) Bose 1950, 74–75. (118.) Bose 1950, 75.

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva?

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords Why did Bose send a statuette of Viṣṇu from distant Kerala to Freud for his 75th birthday rather than a Bengali goddess? The first half of chapter 7 looks at clues about the choice of the statuette of “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva.” The second half then examines various icons of Viṣṇu (or his avatars) on the hypothesis that the snake as seat and hooded backdrop represents the unconscious, which would befit Ananta contemplating his navel. A comparison with a sanctum image of Viṣṇu in a more familiar pose of lying on Ananta’s coils on the cosmic waters suggests that the two images were interreferential. In that case, the banyan leaf is interchangeable with the serpent couch and hood, and Viṣṇu is interchangeable with the pre-Oedipal baby Kṛṣṇa. The snake also appears as seat and hooded protector for Viṣṇu in his Man-Lion form, where the iconography suggests unconscious Oedipal themes. Keywords:   Anantadeva, Paravāsudeva, serpent seat, serpent couch, Hindu cosmogony, world dissolution, banyan leaf, Man-Lion avatar

NO ONE HAS seriously asked why a “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” in an iconography from far-away Kerala was deemed a “suitable gift” for Freud’s seventy-fifth birthday. In attempting to answer this question, I will only be able to form an educated guess after looking at the correspondence and the icon, which shows the snake Ananta providing Viṣṇu’s seat with his coiled body and a canopy over his head with his hood (see figure 7.1).

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? I interpret this snake as I do snakes in the Mahābhārata: as hermeneutical symbols of the unconscious, with which this snake has a singular affinity. Although there is no goddess in the image, we will begin to see in chapter 8 that goddesses are as important to the answer as snakes. My answer to “Why a ‘Viṣṇu Ananta Deva’?” complements a remark by Hartnack, in which she imagines Freud “joking with Jones, or somebody else, in private that he should now work those awful Indian goddesses into his concepts.”1 I imagine not Freud but Bose joking with

Figure 7.1 “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva.” Front and side views of the Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk, Bose’s gift to Freud on his 75th birthday. Source: Freud Museum, London, reprinted with permission.

his colleagues over their choice of this gift. My answer to the question comes in chapter 9. Let us first look at the documentation for the gift. I turn to a transcript of the proceedings of the meeting of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society held in the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University College of Science, on May 6, 1931, at 6 p.m. “to celebrate the 75th birthday of Prof. Sigmund Freud of Vienna.”2 A list of eleven “Present Members” is headed (p.196) by “Dr. G. Bose —President” and includes Mr. H. Maiti, Dr. Sarasilal Sarkar, Dr. S. Mitra,3 Lt. Col. Own Berkeley Hill, Prof. Rangin Haldar,4 and Mr. M. N. Banerji—Secretary, all of whom spoke at the session. There are also ten “Associates” named, plus five visitors and “others.” The meeting resolved: 1. That a cable conveying the congratulations of the society be sent to Prof. Freud immediately. The cable was sent that same evening. 2. That a suitable Indian present be purchased out of the funds raised by the society and sent to Prof. Freud, and that the rest of the contributions be sent to the press of the International Psychoanalytical Association to which the society is affiliated. (p.197) A subcommittee of Bose, Banerji, Mitra, and Haldar was appointed to decide upon and purchase a suitable present for Prof. Freud. The subcommittee secured a single piece ivory statue of Vishnu Ananta Deva from Travancore, South India. The statuette was prepared on the model of an ancient stone statue under the guidance of Prof. Suniti Page 2 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? Chatterji of Calcutta, a great authority on Philosophy and Iconography. The ornaments and decorations on the statuette were designed by the renowned artist Mr Jatindra Kumar Sen of Calcutta and executed by the foremost ivory worker of Murshidabad, Bengal, under the personal supervision of the famous Indian art connoisseur and collector Mr. Bahadur Sing Singhi at Calcutta. The pedestal was also designed by Mr. Jatindra Kumar Sen and carved under the direction of Mr. Bahadur Sing Singhi by an Indian carpenter. The inscription on the silver plate on the pedestal was done by Mr. Tarak Nath Roy of Calcutta. None of those just named were present at the meeting. We must now take note of some uncertainties left in this account. First, the geographical. When I emailed this paragraph to Vasudha Narayanan, whom I consulted on these closing chapters, and whose knowledge of Vaiṣṇava iconography supplied me with valuable clues, she responded: I am a tad confused. On the one hand, the passage says, “The subcommittee secured a single piece ivory statue of Vishnu Ananta Deva from Travancore, South India.” But it moves on to say it was designed and carved in Bengal. So—what came from Travancore, and what came from Bengal? . . . It makes perfect sense that the ivory statue came from Travancore. Almost ALL ivory statuettes came from there till the mid-20th century—people went there to purchase them to give stuff for their daughter’s wedding. I have some that are on similar pedestals—ivory statuettes given to my mother for her wedding, and those given to my husband’s uncle for his wedding. Travancore, of course, is the place of Ananta Padmanabhaswamy temple—reclining Vishnu—so all that makes sense. So—was this one from Travancore or Bengal?5 (p.198) I believe that the icon was not only commissioned in but also carved in Travancore, while the rest of its fitting out—the “ornaments and decorations” (perhaps including detachable accoutrements), base, and accompanying message—are from Bengal. I replied to Narayanan: “Your comments about ivory statues coming from Travancore broke a log jam for me. I was puzzled too about what was done in Calcutta and what in Travancore.” Narayanan followed up that initial email soon after with more “material evidence”: a photo she took in 2010 of a placard at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, which mentioned, in front of an exhibit of an ivory palanquin from Travancore, “The ivory carvers of Travancore were renowned for their work, which the maharajas of Travancore promoted in international exhibitions.” As to temporal uncertainties, the next words in the proceedings transcript are: “The ivory statuette was sent to Prof Freud.” But when? Page 3 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? Regarding the society’s gathering, we learn of the topics, presumably in order, of seven speakers at the event. “Dr. Sarasilal Sarkar read his letters from Prof Freud stating that the great old man at the age of 75 took considerable interest in the contributions from workers from distant India.” S. Mitra offered “a sketch of the life of Freud for the information of the visitors present,” Rangin Haldar “paid a glorious tribute to Freud and described his contributions in the domain of art.” H. Maiti discussed “certain bearings of Freud’s work on academic psychology,” and Berkeley Hill reminisced on meeting Freud at the International Psychoanalytical Congress in Berlin (in 1922). As penultimate speaker, “President Dr. G. Bose traced the evolution of Freudian thought from the beginning up to the present time.” The society’s secretary, Mr. M. N. Banerji, then “recited a Sanskrit poem, composed by Pandit Kalipada Tarkaoharja, Professor of Nyaya Philosophy in the Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta, conveying the Society’s greetings to the venerable Professor. Mr. Bannerji also explained the stanzas and read their English translation prepared by him.” It was then “resolved that a copy of the poem and its translation be sent to Prof Freud,” after which “Mr Banerji briefly described the progress of [the] psychoanalytic movement, noting also the activities of different members of the society for the information of the public.” Bose, however, still had one more treat in store: “Lastly, the President caused a pencil sketch of Prof Freud to be projected on the wall as a remarkable handiwork of the celebrated artist Mr. Jatindra Kumar Sen[,] who produced it as a guesswork in 1922 having never seen a photograph of the great scientist. Prof Freud’s letter containing his remarks (p.199) on the sketch was also projected on the screen. This evoked considerable interest.”6 That concludes the transcribed proceedings. One can sense that this was a wellorchestrated event, and that Bose’s attention to detail lay behind its orchestration. It is time to put into evidence Bose’s budgetary and organizational skills,7 and his capacity for seeing “obsessively” to details.8 One gets the sense that all the time and planning that went into the selection, preparation, and financing of the statuette must either have been done well in advance so the proceedings could show that the statuette and the poem were ready to be sent along with, or soon after, the cable that was “sent immediately”; or, more likely, given the some things said and unsaid in Bose’s next letter to Freud, the proceedings transcript condensed a planned process that was not yet quite so near completion. It would be fascinating to have a copy of Bose’s prepared remarks to see what he highlighted in tracing “the evolution of Freudian thought.” But plainly, May 6, 1931, marked a high point in Bose’s allegiance to Freud’s work and fame, and it came well before such disagreements as he had already expressed could build up to his article on “Defiance.” One can also see Bose the magician at play in the decision to wind up the meeting by projecting on the wall J. K. Sen’s 1922 Page 4 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? “guesswork” sketch, and to follow that with “Freud’s letter containing his remarks on the sketch.” These words would have shown, in Freud’s handwriting, “The imaginative portrait you sent me is very nice indeed, too nice for the subject. You will soon have occasion to confront it with the photo and see that the artist did not take into account certain racial characters.” The proceedings transcript’s closure with the remark, “This evoked considerable interest” is too well placed and perhaps too coy not to have been approved by the president. Bose stage-managed the illusion of Freud’s dissolving into a “guesswork” Indian “Phantasie,” only to reemerge in his own scripted and nonpictorial discourse on race. One wonders if Bose mentioned the “Merry Christmas” fiasco of 1922. (p.200) Above all else, however, we cannot pass over the remarkable poem that was featured in the program between Bose’s prepared remarks and his magic lantern show. As noted, it was read in Sanskrit, then read and explained in English, both by M. N. Bannerji. Whenever they were mailed, the poem and the statuette were sent together. As Bose says in his undated cover letter, I have great pleasure in sending you on behalf of the Indian PsychoAnalytical Society by insured post to-day one ivory statuette with stand and a roll containing two copies of [a] Sanskrit address to you printed on silk and three copies of the same printed on paper with the translation in type and also three copies of the proceedings of the meeting of the society held on the 6th May last to celebrate your 75th birthday anniversary. The Indian Society will be very grateful if you will kindly accept these small presents. It took some time for us to have the statuette specially made for you, hence the delay.9 This is the first we hear of a delay, but since the letter is undated, we cannot say how long it was. Freud told Bose on December 13, 1931, “I am in possession of all your sendings,” expressed his “hearty thanks to all your members and accept it especially for yourself,” and told Bose he will give the statuette “the place of honour on my desk” to remind him “as long as I can enjoy life” of “the progress of psychoanalysis, the proud conquest it has made in foreign countries and the kind feelings for me it has aroused in some of my contemporaries at least.” Freud mentions the presents collectively, and the “kind feelings” could refer to the poem. But the “charming” statuette is singled out, leaving us to wonder at Freud’s reaction to the poem. Jeffrey Kripal tells me that T. G. Vaidyanathan, his co-editor of Vishnu on Freud’s Desk, intended to reproduce both the poem’s English translation and its Sanskrit original, but the latter was omitted, probably to save space.10 Kripal looked for a copy on my behalf that he thought he might have, but was unable to find it. The Freud Archives in London does not have it, either. I hope it survives and I hoped to look at it, but here is Pandit Kalipada Tarkaoharja’s poem in Banerji’s prose translation:

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? (p.201) Om—Obeisance to the Absolute Self Victory be to this Freud, the great experienced specialist (who is) the new effulgent light of the learned in the ways of the internal organ (mind)—the worthy man who has gradually gained his seventy-fifth year with good deeds (works). You have discovered the mystries [sic] of the mind conferring great benefits on the world. Proceeding on a novel route for the study of the behaviour of the mind, you have developed a new method of approach. You highly intelligent, have mastered the science of the mystries [sic] of the moving forces in the mind which are inscrutable to the non-self (and) have beautifully thought out a new fixed method of the treatment of mental diseases. Some mental states exist which are unknown to the self of the being. They have been easily brought to the fore with the help of proofs. You have by your knowledge illuminated the highly complex obscure abysses of the mind, which are impenetrable by a needle. Who can attain equality with you? Devine [sic] favours have gone to their maximum limits in you. External diseases (of the body) are easy to treat but the cure of mental disorders is difficult; therefore you, having chalked out a new path, should live eternal years. The society of the learned located in India, charmed by your extraordinary fame, praises your glory. May you, enjoying pleasures with son, wife and friends, extend your research. The closing sentence, omitting daughters, might have raised Anna Freud’s eyebrows. Let me state two working assumptions about the poem that are based on what we are learning in this book about Bose. I suspect that Bose supplied the poet with information about Freud and about the statuette. As stated, the poet, “Pandit Kalipada Tarkaoharja, Professor of Nyaya Philosophy in the Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta,” is no doubt Professor Kalipada Tarkacharya, his name unusually spelled, who wrote books on Nyāya, the most formal and logical of the six schools of Indian philosophy.11 It is doubtful that a Nyāya specialist would have his own deep or spontaneous interest in Freud. I also suggest that, with his esteem for (p.202) Sanskrit,12 Bose would have considered indispensable some such complement to the statuette. Since he had hesitancies with the language,13 he would have been grateful to have Banerji as someone with a surer footing in Sanskrit than Bose to do the translation and commentary. If keeping Bose at the center of the total planning of the gift is apt, we can Page 6 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? proceed to some clues that this stotra offers as to why Bose and his colleagues would have deemed a Viṣṇu Ananta Deva icon a suitable gift for Freud. I start from a reference in the poem to “abysses,” one mentioned earlier in connection with a similar sentence in a letter to Freud from Romain Rolland.14 The poem says, “You have by your knowledge illuminated the highly complex obscure abysses of the mind.” I believe this line evokes the statuette as Bose and company understood it, and is an earmark to think further about the link. That “the highly complex obscure abysses of the mind” would be “impenetrable by a needle” might also imply a favorable contrast of the “divinely” favored Freud to Edward Jenner, whose invention of the smallpox vaccination by injection was compounded in Indian popular imagination, in Bose’s time, with interventions by divinity.15 Add that the line “You have discovered the mysteries of the mind conferring great benefits on the world” fits Viṣṇu’s universal mission of restoring dharma whenever it wanes for the recurrent betterment of the world.16 More on these abysses later, in particular with reference to the snake Ananta. More important than clues offered by correlations between the statuette and the stotra, however, is the question of what Bose and company understood about the statuette itself. Here we face what was for me at least a research surprise. The name “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” under which the statuette was gifted to Freud seems to have no currency in iconographic literature. A look back at the photo of the statuette in figure 7.1 can now be (p.203) followed with a glance at a sketch of the iconography to which it seems to most closely correspond (see figure 7.2).

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? As one can see, the Bose-Freud statuette readily replicates a standard iconography for Paravāsudeva, as the latter is sketched in H. Daniel Smith’s Vaiṣṇava Iconography. It has the same emblems in the same four hands (upper right, chakra, showing frontally only in the sketch; lower right, lotus; upper left, conch; lower left, gadā, or mace). Each has the right leg lowered at the same angle and the left leg tucked up. But Smith’s Paravāsudeva is unhooded and forgoes the snake for an ordinary pedestal. I owe this research surprise about the noncurrency of the name “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” to Vasudha Narayanan, who, in response to my asking her

Figure 7.2 Iconography of Paravāsudeva. Source: Reprinted from Smith 1969, 112.

about the image, offered one view on this matter: that Bose did not know the iconography, and in typical North Indian fashion, went with a generic name, as is done with Viṣṇu (or Balāji) for Veṅkateśvara.17 (p.204) Another possibility is that Bose knew enough about the iconography to know that its conventional names would mean nothing to Freud, and chose one that could mean something were Freud inclined to ask someone—perhaps even Bose —about it. Both are possible, but the latter suggests greater initiative on Bose’s part, and I favor it slightly for that benefit-of-the-doubt reason. When I first sent Narayanan a scan of the statuette gifted to Freud, she wrote back that “Viṣṇu’s position is lalitāsana.” Lalitāsana means “the relaxed posture,”18 or, where it applies to Buddhist images, “the languid-relaxedsensuous-position.”19 Narayanan added, “This posture is generally described in Śrī Vaiṣṇava circles as the one seen in Vaikuṇṭha. Viṣṇu is said to be seated under Ādi Śeṣa in Vaikuṇṭha. The hands may be in different positions.”20 It seems there may also be variation in the position of the legs. For instance, two similar and early images, one from Badami, ca. 578 CE (see figure 7.3), and one from Tirukannamangai, show the left leg tucked up horizontally rather than the right, as with “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva,” and correspondingly the right leg is in the more vertical position, but dangles from the serpent seat only at Tirukannamangai, while at Badami the right leg does not dangle from the Page 8 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? serpent seat but, rather, shows an angular vertical position above the seat, so that both feet rest on the serpent’s uppermost coil. This position of the right leg at Badami may give the image a different posture. According to the Huntington Archive, it indicates rājalīlā-āsana, a “position of royal ease.” But the Viṣṇu from Cave 3 at Badami is particularly interesting for the name and pose by which it is actually known: again, it is sometimes called Paravāsudeva, and is said to be in lalitāsana. All of this would seem to confirm the propriety and likely antiquity of the name Paravāsudeva and the pose of lalitāsana for Freud’s “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva.” The lalitāsana pose is used for a number of Hindu deities beside Viṣṇu (for instance, at least as regards the legs and feet, Gaṇeśa (p.205) and certain goddesses21), as well as for bodhisattvas and cosmic Buddhas by Buddhists. Other Hindu deities in this pose, however, do not appear seated on and canopied by Ananta, and indeed, sometimes Viṣṇu is shown in lalitāsana but not with Ananta.22 What seems to be significant, though—even if it is not surprising, considering the well-established rapports between Viṣṇu, Ananta, and Garuḍa—is that only Viṣṇu, or forms, or avatars, of Viṣṇu (as

Figure 7.3 Paravāsudeva at Badami, Cave 3. Source: Wikipedia, photograph by Dineshkannambadi, Wikimedia Commons, License CC BY-SA 4.0.

discussed later), is seen seated on Ananta’s serpent coils and (p.206) canopied by Ananta’s hood. We must look into these combinations as we begin to entertain thoughts as to what Bose and company might have had in mind with their gift. Let us then try to imagine our way into Bose’s frame of reference by considering images in which Viṣṇu and Ananta appear together. By far the most representative icon is of the type typically known as Viṣṇu Śeṣaśāyin, in which Viṣṇu, under the name Nārāyaṇa, reclines on the back or coils of Śeṣa-Ananta while again being canopied by his multifaced hood. In such images, Viṣṇu as Preserver is shown waking up to the recreation of the universe, which is in the process of occurring from his navel. I have discussed the scene already in Page 9 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? chapter 3.23 A lotus stalk extends vertically up from his navel to a lotus flower in which the creator-god Brahmā is seen about to chant the worlds into being. We will not be the first to think of this as a representation of the “primal scene.” This is how Richard Davis does so about our next image (see figure 7.4): Vishnu, also known as Narayana, lies on the snake Shesha, floating on the cosmic ocean. The goddess Lakshmi caresses his leg, Vishnu awakens, and a lotus bearing the four-headed Brahman emerges from his navel. In this myth Brahman acts as agent of Vishnu in carrying out the work of creation. The primal scene here includes several other devotees: Hanuman, the horse-headed musician Tumburu, the musical sage Narada, and the eagle mount Garuda.24 We may call the devotees witnesses to the cosmogonic primal scene, here shown as one of turbulence. It limits Viṣṇu’s wife Lakṣmī to the not entirely asexual role of masseuse, while it also conceals Viṣṇu’s navel from view by the demurely lifted placement of his knee, and removes the navel from the intense lines of sight of all eyes except perhaps for those of the central snake-face of Ananta. Indeed, the intensity, the look of anxiety on some of the faces, and the apparent springing into action may suggest that the artist has in mind the interlude in which Viṣṇu as Madhusūdana gets up to fight and kill two demons, Figure 7.4 Śrī Śeṣanārāyaṇa. Lithograph, Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who 1888, Chitrapriyaprakesh Press. break in on the primal scene to Source: Collection of Mark Baron and steal the Vedas from Brahmā. Elise Boisanté, reprinted with permission. Nonetheless, the portrayal keeps features found in more static depictions of the scene, which seem designed (p.207) to show just Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin without alluding to the Madhusūdana myth. Demure placement of the navel and discreet positioning of the eyes seem to be characteristic of most such panels,25 no matter what else changes, as we see in one where the emphasis is on vivid eye contact not between those at the scene but of the divinities with the viewerPage 10 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? devotee (see figure 7.5), as if he or she could be distracted from the navel. (p. 208) These cosmogonic features are among the considerations that permit us to make it a rule of thumb for our inquiry that the imagery of Viṣṇu Śeṣaśāyin figures as the prototype for all icons in which we find Viṣṇu reclining or seated on, and hooded by, a coiled Ananta. That includes Paravāsudeva in lalitāsana, even though Paravāsudeva may be a higher form of Viṣṇu. Smith suggests a way we may account for such an inversion of prototypicality: In terms of our iconographical concerns, the most sublime of His Higher Forms that can be depicted is his “Para” aspect, sometimes (p.209) also called Viṣṇu in the form of “Paravāsudeva.” The difficulties of composition are readily understandable, when one considers that this Form should display all the “qualities,” reveal all the Divine Decorations, yet attest

Figure 7.5 Viṣṇu Anantaśayana. A more recent depiction of cosmogonic primal scene, by B. G. Sharma, goache on board, 1960s, Sharma Picture Publications, Bombay. Source: Collection of Raoul Goff, reprinted with permission of Parabola Books.

to His Unity. [He may thus have] two hands or four, may be seated, standing, or reclining, and may be shown alone or in company of other deities.26 Viṣṇu Śeśaśāyin would also be the prototype for Paravāsudeva statistically, since it is the more widely found and better known image. Ananta Padmanābhasvāmin (another name for Viṣṇu Śeṣaśāyin) is the name of this same deity in the great temple in Travancore, the city in Kerala from which Bose and company commissioned the ivory statuette of Viṣṇu Ananta Deva. Moreover, at least for the present, I know of no seated image of this Paravāsudeva/“Ananta Deva” type in the Trivandram Ananta Padmanabhaswamy temple, or anywhere else in Travancore or Kerala, that could have been the local prototype for the ivory Page 11 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” that Bose and company purchased. Vasudha Narayanan does not recall having seen a Viṣṇu sitting on a snake in Kerala, “though there well could be one.”27 And T. P. Mahadevan, who is from Kerala and knows firsthand the crush of viewers who file past the three doors through which one can see Padmanabha piecemeal in his Trivandrum sanctum,28 can likewise recall no images in Kerala of Viṣṇu seated on Ananta or, for that matter, no others where he reclines on him. I have proposed that snakes readily represent the unconscious, at least in the Mahābhārata, and it is no stretch to say that Ananta represents the unconscious both in that and in other texts, and in Śeṣaśāyin icons in particular. During “occasional (naimittika) dissolutions (pralayas)” of the triple world at the end of a “great age” or mahāyuga, which last for a night of Brahmā, during which Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa sleeps, the snake Ananta is composed of the “endless” (ananta) unconscious residue or remainder (śeṣa) of the karma of all beings who have not gone to heaven or attained perfected (p.210) consciousness in liberation.29 Let us keep this in mind as we apply our rule of thumb about the prototypicality of this image. One may note that the Ananta who supports the reclining Nārāyaṇa may be shown roiling atop the waters (as in figure 7.4) rather than tightly coiled, as when he forms Paravāsudeva’s seat, or supports a conventional Viṣṇu as the god of dharmic order flanked by his two main wives, Ṥrī (Prosperity) and Bhūdevī (Earth), on what looks like three piled-up inner tubes or a three-ribbed kiddie pool floating on a calm and glassy sea (see figure 7.6). Perhaps, despite appearances, we may imagine some carryover of this turbulent unconscious substrate into his everyday bodies when he assumes such diurnal manifestations.

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? Now, I discuss the psychoanalytic resonances of three iconic appearances of Viṣṇu seated on Ananta, beginning with Paravāsudeva. Bose and his colleagues could have had any, all, or none of these images in mind as part of their hidden message to Freud. After triangulating our inquiry through them, I will return to Anantaśeśāyin as the iconography he most likely had primarily in mind. My aim here is to open some initial possibilities with which to imagine what Bose and his colleagues might have thought would be pertinent or of interest to Freud. Let us first consider what comes with the name Paravāsudeva in the lalitāsana posture. We have no less an authority than Vedānta Deśika, the great ācarya of the Vaṭakalai (northern) school of Śrī Vaiṣṇavas (1269–1370), to speak to the subject. This is from “an old book” scanned and

Figure 7.6 Viṣṇu, seated, with two wives on a coiled Ananta. Like Paravāsudeva, but with his legs in reversed position and Ṥrī-Lakṣmī (Prosperity-Fortune) and Bhūdevī (the goddess Earth). Ṥeṣa Nārāyaṇa, lithograph, ca. 1915, Ravi Varma Press. Source: Collection of Mark Baron and Elise Boisanté, reprinted with permission.

sent to me by Vasudha Narayanan:30 (p.211) The Supreme God’s posture here is described by Sri Desika as under [i.e., as follows]: Left leg is hanging down; right leg is folded. Right hand is placed on the right knee; left hand is resting on Adishesha’s body. The two other hands in back wear the cakra and the conch.

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? Everything in this place is made of undiluted Sattwa Dravyam. The souls that reach this place never return to earth, nor do they perish during the Pralaya. These souls can take any form under (p.212) the direction of God to serve His Sankalpam [his will, pupose, or intention]. Just before this, the same document—but apparently not in the words of Vedānta Deśika—tells of the location of this icon in Vaikuṇṭha, at Viṣṇu’s “highest step,” calling him now “Paramapadanathan,” “Lord of the Highest Step”: God has manifested himself here in order to see and hear the grievances of Brahmā and other Devas, and it is from this place that He takes His Avataras to satisfy His devotees. . . . [The place is] situated beyond this Globe and more than three times in extent beyond this entire Globe, i.e., all the Lokas. This is where the Para Roopa [Supreme Form] of the Supreme Narayana is seen. It is eternal and devoid of Tamas and Rajas qualities. The Supreme God dwells here with Sri Devi, Bhoo Devi, Neela Devi, Nitya Suris [purely sattvic eternal deities], Mukthas [released souls], etc. It is extremely luminous and contains innumerable Divine [holy places]. There is no limit of time or space here. There is neither morning nor evening, nor night nor day; no today nor tomorrow, only before and after. Everything here is made of Sattwa Guna. This is the highest place or PARAMAPADAM which can be reached by all MUMUKSHUS [seekers of salvation], after observing an Upaya [means] and obtaining His Grace. The inclusion of Neela Devi, a personification of the yogic sleep (yoganidrā)31 from which Viṣṇu awakens, along with Viṣṇu’s two chief wives Śrī and Bhū, suggests, as we shall see, that Vedānta Deśika takes into account the aforementioned interlude in which Viṣṇu as Madhusūdana kills the two demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Now if we remember the stotra to Freud, which, I have argued, implicitly compares him to such an icon, the psychoanalytic possibilities are obvious. If “Freud, the great experienced specialist (who is) the new effulgent light of the learned in the ways of the internal organ (mind),” receives patients, he is comparable to Paravāsudeva who “has manifested himself here in order to see and hear the grievances of Brahmā and (p.213) other Devas.” “You,” Freud, “have discovered the mysteries of the mind conferring great benefits on the world,” as Viṣṇu does through his avatars. “The society of the learned located in India, charmed by your extraordinary fame, praises your glory. May you, enjoying pleasures with son, wife and friends, extend your research”—in a sattvic time-space medium, like Paravāsudeva, enjoying the company of wives and other Nitya Suris, presumably including his son Pradyumna, but without mention of daughters. Still, we might wonder whether all this sattva guna could Page 14 of 21

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? do justice to the distinctive abysmal character of Freud’s mortal psychoanalytic delvings, as in “You have by your knowledge illuminated the highly complex obscure abysses of the mind, which are impenetrable by a needle.” Paravāsudeva seems to be seated on an Ananta whose coils and hood rise beyond and above such obscure abysses. This brings us to an image that is hardly less likely to have been part of Bose and company’s inspiration for Freud’s gift. It was at least well enough known from poster art of their times. When I asked Vasudha Narayanan about the “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” sent by Bose and company to Freud, I also mentioned an icon featured in a book for which she had written a preface—one showing Kṛṣṇa as a baby on the serpent couch rather than as an adult Viṣṇu, and sucking his big toe. He appears with Ananta, in contrast to more typical Thanjavur-area artwork representing the toe-sucking scene, where he simply lies on a banyan leaf.32 Narayanan wrote back: Re the Krishna sucking his toe image. That image of baby Krishna is said to be on a banyan leaf (vaṭa patra). Interestingly enough, Viṣṇu in Srivilliputtur (where [the female Vaiṣṇava poet-saint or Āḻvār] Andal was born) is called Vaṭapatra śāyī. But even though he is called “the one who reclines on the banyan leaf” in this temple (bringing to mind a baby Krishna on a banyan leaf), the actual mūrti is that of anantaśāyī, that is, a mature Vishnu on Ananta. I would argue, therefore, that the two images are seen, at some level, as structurally or functionally similar.33 (p.214) I agree, and will take these comments to suggest a confirmation of our rule of thumb on the prototypicality of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin, with which this icon can be “at some level” conceptually interchangeable. Moreover, the interval of Viṣṇu taking on his role as Madhusūdana seems to also present a layer of meaning at the Srivilliputtur temple,34 to which such a prototypicality would likewise apply. The banyan leaf can be interchangeable with the serpent couch and hood; and Viṣṇu is interchangeable with the baby Kṛṣṇa. As was noted in chapter 3, an early literary source for the Vaṭapatraśāyin image is Mahābhārata 3.186–87. There is in each case a markedly oral component to the scene. In the Mahābhārata, where the banyan leaf is just a banyan leaf, the Kṛṣṇa who hears a story about his infancy hears about his own orality in swallowing and regurgitating the antediluvian Ṛṣi Mārkaṇḍeya, who saw the worlds he left in the baby’s mouth. Where the iconography transforms the banyan leaf into Ananta, we forget about Mārkaṇḍeya and just see the baby Kṛṣṇa sucking his big toe (see figure 7.7).

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? This oral-phase baby Kṛṣṇa sucking his big toe cannot really be the baby Kṛṣṇa of this, his own birth, whose oral-phase antics are sufficiently accounted for in stories and icons that portray him as a butter thief and carry over to when he eats dirt and his foster mother Yaśodā looks in his mouth and faints after seeing the whole universe, like Mārkaṇḍeya. As is brought out by the alternation of Ananta with the banyan leaf, it is really a baby manifestation of Kṛṣṇa as Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa who has just swallowed the whole universe. He is the selfsufficient pre-Oedipal baby, with no need for a mother or father, whom he would have swallowed or dissolved with the rest of the universe. Following this line of thought, we see that Ananta’s unexpected presence in a poster art image of Viṣṇu’s Man-Lion (Narasiṃha) avatar brings out a latent Oedipal

Figure 7.7 Bāla Kṛṣṇa. Lithograph, ca. 1880–1890, publisher unknown, printed in Germany. (I have read somewhere that peacocks frighten even Ananta. The two women bringing a peacock may be doing so to divert him.) Source: Collection of Mark Baron and Elise Boisanté, reprinted with permission.

content in the image.35 The artwork (see figure 7.8) is from at least twenty years after Freud’s seventy-fifth birthday gift, so it is uncertain whether Bose and company could have been familiar with such an image. The iconography relates a rather straightforward version of the family drama of an “Indian Oedipus” implicit elsewhere in the story behind it, and is thus worth citing on that account, and for the way the image recalls the lalitāsana pose of Paravāsudeva with Ananta. (p.215)

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? While Narasiṃha holds the cakra and mace in the same hands as Paravāsudeva, Viṣṇu’s devotee Prahlāda is seated on the tucked-back left knee after the Man-Lion has disemboweled Prahlāda’s father, Hiraṇyakaśipu. Narasiṃha’s right leg dangles over Ananta’s coils so that his toes are over the gash his claws have left in Hiraṇyakaśipu’s chest, while Garuḍa and Prahlāda’s mother (Mrs. Haraṇyakaśipu) are in devoted postures to Narasiṃha’s left and right, each with the same expression of pleasure as seen also on the face of Prahlāda. Nine heads show in the dark serpentcanopy behind Narasiṃha. The snake’s presence seems to intensify the conflation of the son’s and mother’s bhakti, with the scene’s (p.216) sacrificial violence at some deep unconscious level. The bhakti tableau certainly assimilates Narasiṃha to Paravāsudeva in

Figure 7.8 Narasiṃha. Photo-offset lithograph by Lakshmilai (of Nathadwara), 1950s, S. S. Brijbasi and Sons, Mathura. Source: Collection of Raoul Goff, reprinted with permission of Parabola Books.

resolving this Oedipal scene of patricide. The Prahāda story has been brought up in the literature on the “Indian Oedipus,” though, only by Spratt and in a footnote by Goldman.36 Spratt, as usual, forces the Freudian reading, suggesting a possible “original in which the son castrated the father. But that has long been forgotten”; he notes that worship of a Śākta type is offered to Narasiṃha at Ahobalam in Andhra, which “may confirm our view that aggressiveness normally derives from identification with the terrible (p.217) mother.”37 Goldman’s views can, however, add to what I present here: that with Viṣṇu’s transformation “into the monstrous Narasiṃha, the man-lion appears somehow to reintegrate the two aspects of the father into one personality. . . . The thrust of the legend is ultimately to demonstrate unequivocally the wisdom of filial deference and the terrible retaliatory power of even the most beneficent father.”38

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? An icon and story of such Oedipal potential might have appealed to Bose and his colleagues. But I have noted that its date makes this Narasiṃha the least likely image to have impressed them. To judge by the varied scenes depicting Narasiṃha seated on a darkened coiled serpent raising his hood above him, one can see, in the numerous instances found on the internet, that the image has become popular. But few if any such internet images would be older than that shown in figure 7.8. If we are getting some hints of why Bose and company might have chosen a Viṣṇu Ananta Deva for Freud’s seventy-fifth birthday present, let us hold on to them. I will build on them in chapter 8 but will not come to any conclusion until chapter 9. (p.218) Notes:

(1.) Hartnack 2001, 141. (2.) The transcript is reprinted as the Appendix of Vaidyanathan and Kripal 1999, 453–55. (3.) This is probably S. C. Mitra, whose paper Freud comments on in his last unanswered letter to Bose in German, sent in October 1937; see chapter 3, this volume. (4.) On Haldar, see chapter 2, this volume, letters 12 and 13, and chapter 6, notes 21–32, 50–52. (5.) September 11, 2013 email from Vasudha Narayanan, with her boldface for emphasis. (6.) Vaidyanathan and Kripal 1999, 453–54. (7.) According to Nandy 1996, 358, “It also says something about Bose’s organizational skills that, unlike its Western counterparts, the Indian Psychoanalytic Society quickly acquired a sound financial basis.” (8.) Nandy 1996, 360–61, writes, “Most remember Bose’s obsessive compulsive ways—the meticulous records, the orderly minutes, the spotlessly white, immaculately starched Bengali dress that was virtually his uniform, the frugality and . . . the fantastic devotion to timeliness. . . . He once told his trainee Desai, ‘I am an obsessive-compulsive.’ ” (9.) IPS [1964] 1999, 20. (10.) See Vaidyanathan and Kripal 1999, 454.

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? (11.) Both spellings appear when Googled. He authored seven books in Sanskrit on Nyāya and Indian philosophy between 1925 and 1973, and taught B. K. Matilal. (12.) Nandy 1996, 376, writes, “Bose did believe the Sanskritic tradition to be the core of Indianness.” (13.) See Nandy 1996, 346–48: Bose “acquired a good knowledge of Sanskrit from his school and his father, though Girindrasekhar would later claim inadequate knowledge of the language in a couple of Bengali essays and take the help of traditional Sanskrit scholars in his scholarly work.” (14.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 54. (15.) Jenner’s dates are 1749–1823, but there is a flowering in the late 1920s and early 1930s of public health–sponsored pamphlets and folk dramas that attribute roles to deities in the inspiration behind the vaccine; see Srinivasan 2009, 78–93. (16.) See BhG 4.7–8. (17.) Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 11, 2013: “I am not that sure about the ‘Ananta Deva’ term. I would think that Vishnu ananta deva is probably a generic term. It is a Vishnu and he is on Ananta, but that name does not tell one anything more and I suspect Bose took the easiest name on that one. Kind of like north Indians calling Venkateswara, Vishnu (or Balaji).” (18.) Hudson 2008, 93. (19.) As sent by Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 9, 2013. See the John C. and Susan L. Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art, at The Huntington Archive | Digital Database Collection at dsal.uchicago.edu/ huntington/database.php. (20.) Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 9, 2013. (21.) See Davis 2012, 60–62, plate 47; 100, plate 77; 168; 192, plate 154 (Gāyatrī); 127, plate 102 (Gaṇeśa). (22.) Such is the case with two images from Kanchipuram, one in the Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ Temple (Paramecuvara Vinnakaram), with the hands just holding weapons or in abhaya/ varadā mudrās; see http://photofeature.divyadesam.com/ vaikunta-ekadasi/sri-vaikuntanathar-vaikunta-perumal-templekanchipuram.shtml; the other in Tirupāṭakam, also called Pāṇḍava Dūta temple, with Viṣṇu sitting in lalitāsana (the serpent is, however, present in the utsava or

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? processional image). Information from Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 9, 2013. (23.) See chapter 4, this volume, note 33. (24.) See Davis, 2012, 57, plate 44 (caption). (25.) An exception is one of four oleographs in my collection that depict the scene, untitled but signed by V. Krishnamoorthy. Viṣṇu on his right side shows his navel frontally and nakedly. It might represent either Padmanabhaswami of Trivandrum or Raṅganātha of Shrirangam, who it seems can be depicted in such a fashion. An orange background replaces sky and water. No one in the large group around him can see the navel, but the viewer, on whom his eyes gaze, can. This may bespeak a correlation between Viṣṇu’s epithets Padmanābha and Padmākṣa (“Lotus–naveled” and “Lotus-eyed”). (26.) Smith 1969, 111. (27.) Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 11, 2013. (28.) See Vaidyanathan 1982, 29: “darshan of the deity is through three doors in a row—the face on the southern side, the sacred feet on the northern side and the nabhi (navel) in the middle from which appears Brahma.” (29.) See Malamoud 1996, 18–19, making this connection implicit for the end of a kalpa rather than the end of a mahāyuga: at each kalpānta, there survives a remainder which is the serpent Śeṣa. As an active remainder, this serpent—whose name means “Remains”—holds the earth up atop his infinite serpent coils between two pralayas, and becomes, during a pralaya, the support for the sleeping Viṣṇu, thus insuring the reconstitution of the cosmos. . . . What is true for the cosmic samsāra is equally true for the individual. There remains an anuśaya, a residue, an outstanding balance on one’s karmic account, which, once one has completed this period of pure consumption. brings about a rebirth. Śeṣa and anuśaya are from the same root śi, “to remain,” and both are constituted of remaining karman: the one, of all unliberated beings at the death of the cosmos; the other, at the death of each unliberated being. (30.) Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 11, 2013, on “an old book of mine,” possibly titled “Śrī Vaishnava Divya Desams,” citing pages 2–3, which “paraphrase Vedanta Desika writing about Vishnu in Vaikuntha.” (31.) See Hudson 2010, 116.

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The Party, The Guests, and Why Viṣṇu Ananta Deva? (32.) See FM, figure 5.20, contrasting this image with one cited there not over the alternation of Ananta with the leaf, but over his alteration with the ocean. (33.) Email from Vasudha Narayanan, September 8, 2013. (34.) See Hudson 1999; Hawley 2010. (35.) It is unique among the few Narasiṃha poster icons I know of; see, e.g., Pinney 2004, 53, plate 18; Vitsaxis 1977, 20. I also do not find it in sculptures of the scene, on which see Biardeau 1975. (36.) Spratt 1965, 133–34, 318–19; and Goldman 1978, 385. (37.) Spratt 1965, 134. (38.) Goldman 1978, 385 n. 173. Obeyesekere’s rich discussion (1990, 174–213) of King Kāśyapa of Sigiriya, “the Lion Mountain,” as the “true patricide” and Buddhist Oedipal hero could have built on Goldman’s insights into the Narasiṃha myth, rather than (or along with) his choice of the Gaṇeśa myth to exemplify a Hindu counterpart to this king’s mythic history of a Buddhist “psychic structure of the long run.”

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter further explores snake symbolism, highlighting also goddesses, Freud’s mother Amalia, and Freud’s brothers and half-brothers. The author considers the ideas of post-Freudian psychoanalytic writers who shed light on these themes, including Eric Erikson, and Freud’s “specimen dream” of “Irma’s Injection” as evoking a vagina. Here, Freud states his rule that every dream has an “unplumbable navel” beyond which the analyst cannot go. The chapter goes on to discuss ideas of Bernard This, John Abbott, and Bruno Bettelheim, with Freud’s early mention of the Loch Ness monster as a likely allusion to Athena with her snakes. Finally, the author takes up Bertram Lewin’s concept of the “dream screen,” as well as the personal universe of Romain Rolland’s oceanic feeling. Keywords:   saurian, Bernard This, Bruno Bettelheim, Athena, Loch Ness monster, Acropolis, the snake Ananta, Bertram Lewin, oceanic feeling

THIS CHAPTER CONTINUES to pursue the question raised in chapter 7 about the statuette sent to Freud, but leaves the task of answering it for chapter 9. Since there are reasons to stop contrasting our two psychoanalysts and appreciate things they have in common, we look at how either or both Bose and Freud might have imagined the “Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk.” This means considering associations that either might have made with goddesses, mothers, brothers, and snakes in Greek and Indian myths, rituals, icons, and cults. Although I talk mainly about Freud when addressing Greek materials and Bose when speaking about Indian ones, common threads cannot be overlooked. I bring only one new Page 1 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose criterion to such imaginings: I intentionally relax my own free associations more than I do elsewhere in considering what Freud, Bose, and some post-Freudian writers might have made of the material under scrutiny. Much of the psychoanalytic work discussed in this chapter was written by 1979.1 The chapter’s three sections that follow survey the ideas of some prominent postFreudian authors of this interim period.

(p.220) Martin Wangh, Carlo Bonomi, Erik Erikson, and Jim Swan I come back to our undemanding view of what Freud may have known about India, and to the complications of the form known as Ananta Padmanābhasvāmin, or Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin. Here, too, just as the great serpent does in the cases of Kṛṣṇa lying on the banyan leaf (Vaṭapatraśāyin) and the image of the Man-Lion (Narasiṃha), Ananta lends even greater depth to the abysses that might have been of interest in Freudian or Bosean psychoanalysis, and may have set off either’s curiosity insofar as it is about such a world-class snake. Indeed, Ananta can roil the depths, as we have seen, in a way that goes beyond what can be gleaned in the purely sattvic realm inhabited by Paravāsudeva positioned in his supple ease. A stotra attributed to Parāśara describes how Ananta (called Ananta Deva, the only usage of this term other than Bose’s I have found, but referring to the snake and not to Viṣṇu) holds up the worlds from one of the hells. There, the dark guṇa of tamas (stupor or delusion) rather than sattva guṇa is the medium through which Ananta oversees the process through which beings atone for their sins and obtain Viṣṇu’s grace.2 This aspect of the cosmic snake may show a darker, more monstrous side to his embodiment of the unconscious karmic motivations of unliberated beings. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud “allowed that many may possess” oceanic feelings, “but he did so in a slightly deprecatory context: these feelings are like the vanishing dinosaurs whose representative the crocodile still lives among us,”3 according to Martin Wangh. As Wangh sees it, Freud linked the oceanic feeling itself with the monstrous: “When trying to explain to himself that repressed remnants of the earliest wishes for union with the maternal breast could be the atavistic source of the ‘oceanic feeling,’ Freud used the simile of the Saurians,’ of which our present-day crocodiles are the representatives.” In Freud’s words, In the animal kingdom we hold the view that the most highly developed species have proceeded from the lowest; and yet we find all the simple forms still in existence to-day. The race of the great saurians (p.221) is extinct and has made way for the mammals, but a true representative of it, the crocodile, still lives among us.4 Wangh continues: “The image of the Saurians was apparently early connected in Freud’s mind with feelings of love and hate. In adolescence Freud called Gisela Fluss, his first love (a hometown girl who did not requite his love), an Page 2 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose icthiosaura, i.e., a huge female aquatic reptile.”5 And, “In correspondence with Gisella’s brother, Freud coined the nickname ‘Ictheosaura’ for her, playing on her name (‘Fluss’ means ‘river’) and her being a creature become altogether alien to him. The ironic mode dominates, with Freud then composing an epic poem to his fishy ‘principle,’ the code name for girls the boys were using some three years later, when Gisella got married.”6 Freud then vowed “to renounce this excessively playful fantasizing about the opposite sex: ‘Let no one seek a principle save in the present, not in the alluvium or diluvium, nowhere save among the children of men, not in the gruesome primeval past.’ ”7 Still at it, “Freud once called his future wife Martha ‘Melusine’: woman from navel up and serpent from the navel down,”8 and dreamed of giving her a golden snake bangle during their courtship.9 According to Carlo Bonomi, Freud used the image of the dragon as a “metaphor for the penis of a woman.”10 Bonomi says that in Freud’s 1913 paper “The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis,” “Freud came to the conclusion that when, later in life women age and transform into ‘old dragons,’ they regress to the illusion that they once had a penis.”11 Freud is not direct in saying this, however, and couches his discussion in terms of literary representations. He says, that after women have lost their genital function their character often undergoes a peculiar alteration. They become quarrelsome, (p.222) vexatious and overbearing, petty and stingy; that is to say, they exhibit typically sadistic and anal-erotic traits, which they did not possess earlier, during their period of womanliness. Writers of comedy and satirists have in all ages directed their invectives against the “old dragon” [gegen den “alten drachen”] into which the charming girl, the loving wife, and the tender mother have been transformed. We can see that the alteration of character corresponds to a regression of sexual life to the pregenital sadistic and anal-erotic stage, in which we have discovered the disposition to obsessional neurosis. It seems, then, to be not only the precursor of the genital phase, but often enough its successor as well, its termination after the genitals have fulfilled their function.12 Bonomi has nonetheless brought out several of Freud’s usages of the dragon–sea monster image, including the references to Martha as Melusine and to Gisella Fluss as a “fish-lizard.”13 Between Freud’s conversation with Rolland about the oceanic feeling and his receipt of Bose’s gift, Freud gives a somewhat more whimsical account of crocodiles and saurinans at the end of a moody letter of January 7, 1930, to his Swiss pastor-analyst friend Oskar Pfister: I can imagine that several million years ago in the Triassic age all the great -odons and -therias were very proud of the development of the Saurian race and looked forward to heaven knows what magnificent future for themselves. And then, with the exception of the wretched crocodile, they Page 3 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose all died out. You will object: “Well, but those Saurians thought nothing of the sort! They thought of nothing but filling their bellies. But man is equipped with mind which entitles him to think about his future and believe in it.” Now, there is certainly something special about mind, so little is known about it and its relationship to nature. I personally have a vast respect for mind, but has nature? Mind is only a small part of nature, (p.223) the rest of which seems to be able to get along very well without it. Will it really allow itself to be influenced to any great extent by regard for mind? Enviable is he who can feel more confident about that than I.14 Freud imagines a fateful contest between a masculine willing mind and a devouring feminine nature.15 There is also possibly a serious, potentially saurian image that I mention here not only for what it might add to the current growing list but also for what it will contribute to my answer to the question “Why a ‘Viṣṇu Ananta Deva’?” when I present it in chapter 9. In his famous “specimen dream” of “Irma’s Injection,” Freud and his wife, pregnant with their sixth child on the way, are receiving guests when Irma, Freud’s patient, a widow, arrives. Freud reproaches her for not accepting his “solution” to her neurosis. She complains of pains in her throat, stomach, and abdomen. Alarmed, Freud looks at her, finds her pale and puffy. Thinking he may have missed an organic cause to her neurosis, he takes her aside to look down her throat. But she resists opening her mouth, and Freud thinks there is no call for her to put on airs. Then she opens her mouth “properly.” Inside Freud sees a big white patch and elsewhere extensive grey scabs on curly structures similar to the turbinal bones of the nose.16 According to Swan, “Freud, in his associations to the dream, remarks that Fliess had drawn the analogy between the turbinal bones in the nose and a woman’s sexual organs. . . . The analogy is complete. The open mouth is a vagina.”17 I suggest that these associations, shared by Fliess and Freud,18 would be based on both the anatomical name for the turbinal bones and on their (p.224) curly look. A little inqury shows that, “In anatomy, a nasal concha, plural conchae, also called a turbinate or turbinal, is a long, narrow, curled shelf of bone that protrudes into the breathing passage of the nose in humans and various animals. The conchae are shaped like an elongated seashell, which gave them their name.”19 Turbinates are found in all tetrapods, including crocodiles, and they have been found in at least some dinosaurs, although since Freud’s time.20 The separate white patch Freud saw could be an underbelly, and the scabs could be scales or plates. Freud, whose anatomical studies from 1873 to 1881 as a medical student included work on the nerve centers of crayfish and anomalies in Page 4 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose the gonads of eels—“while in Trieste, he dissected 400 eels, the descendent of ichthyosauri, in search for the elusive male gonads, but ‘all the eels I have cut open are of the tenderer sex’ ”21—is unlikely to have missed the aquatic and atavistic associations of Irma’s oral turbinal bones. Freud supplied a footnote at this point in the dream that indicated resistance. After saying that it would “take us too far afield to pursue further the analogies between Irma, her more amenable friend (who ‘opened her mouth properly’),[22] and his wife Martha,” he adds, “ ‘Besides, there is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable—a naval [sic], as it were, that is a point of contact with the unknown.’ ”23 Freud puts his seal of unplumbability over Irma’s “oral turbinate vagina,” thereby marking the spot where the dream navel is invoked as one where Irma is partially identified with two other women, including Freud’s pregnant wife Martha, and with Freud himself. As Erik Erikson and Swan (p.225) have emphasized, Freud’s own “fusion” with Irma is at the heart of the dream.24 Erikson, however, disappointingly says “the body parts and disease entities mentioned” will be “ignored altogether”;25 but he indicates a monstrous impression: what the dreamer Freud “succeeds in focusing on is a terrifying discovery like the head of the Medusa.”26 Interpretations have, it seems, been scant.27 Swan says, “it is precisely the ‘unknown’ and ‘unplumbable’ in the form of a woman’s sexuality that arouses his resistance. More precisely, with the word “naval” [sic] it appears to be symbiotic fusion with the woman that is the object of resistance.”28 Whether Freud brought Irma’s mouth into line with his other saurian associations, the image of the navel is what registers the “naval”29 unplumbability of this point in the dream. In chapter 3, I made the point that, although we have no record of Freud’s doing any research on the Viṣṇu statuette on his desk, it is hard to imagine that he maintained it in “the place of honor” there from its receipt (p.226) in late 1931 to at least March 1933 just, as he said, to remind himself of the far-flung “proud conquests” of psychoanalysis.30 This uncertainty permits us to continue to wonder at associations Freud might have made, and thus to reinforce the point that the tenure of the statuette was during the time Freud would build from his finding “no peace” from Rolland’s oceanic feeling to his open letter on “Disturbance.” Indeed, even without our positing any current research by Freud, he is reported as early as 1904–05 to have attributed monsters to the Indian deep, one of whom swallowed Schiller’s diver on his second dive—according to the warning that Freud reportedly gave to the young university student Bruno Goetz to steer clear of the Bhagavad Gītā and avoid the fate of the diver who does not return from his second dive, for the deep is full of monsters.31

Bernard This, John Abbott, Suzanne Cassirer Bernfeld, and Bruno Bettelheim It is thus not so big a step for Freud to have been able to associate the coiled

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose serpent at the base of his new Viṣṇu gift with a theme he mentions in “Disturbance,” where he compares his derealization at the Acropolis to someone’s suddenly catching sight of the Loch Ness monster: “If I may make a slight exaggeration, it was as if someone walking beside Loch Ness, suddenly catches sight of the form of the famous Monster stranded upon the shore and found himself driven to the admission: ‘So it really does exist—the sea serpent we’ve never believed in.’ ”32 Is the Loch Ness monster just a “slight exaggeration,” a whimsy on Freud’s part? Or does it have deeper associations? Focusing on Freud’s “placing the Scottish dragon in classical Greece,” Bonomi writes: Immediately after his meditation on the Acropolis, the same “dragon” would resurface in his “Analysis Terminable and Interminable.” It would do so, tellingly enough, at the precise juncture in the text where Freud cautions against Ferenczi’s belief that traumatic memories are (p.227) accessible. Discussing the persistence of libidinous fixations and superstitious beliefs, he wrote: “One feels inclined whether to doubt sometimes that the dragons of primeval days are really extinct.”[33] Note the wording: Freud does not say “extinct dinosaurs” or “non-existent dragons” and instead speaks of extinct dragons, blurring the distinction between the real world of dinosaurs, which is testified to by fossils, and the fantasy world of dragons. This is a dramatic way of asserting that the interplay between reality and fantasy, trauma and defenses, cannot be disentangled.34 Says Bonomi, “the walk up to the Acropolis represented the successful coronation of his self-analysis; yet the pleasure was spoiled by the nightmarish feeling that what he was seeing was not real.”35 Note that the Loch Ness monster is the first image evoked by Freud to capture his sense of derealization, before he associates it with, or even mentions, his father, that came upon him as he “stood on the Acropolis, and cast my eyes around upon the landscape.” Could Freud have had someone in mind? Although I have said that Ruth Abraham goes too far in arguing that “the Oedipal father is constructed largely from characteristics and experiences with Freud’s mother,” Abraham speaks convincingly enough of Freud’s mother as “predatory.”36 We may recall the description of Amalia Freud as an old lady by her granddaughter.37 Freud’s words in describing older women as “old dragons” can be taken to refer precisely to Gisella Fluss, Martha, and Amalia, one after the other: “Writers of comedy and satirists have in all ages directed their invectives against the ‘old dragon’ into which the charming girl, the loving wife, and the tender mother have been transformed.”38 Wangh aptly writes that “the projection of his rage’ ” in the “early period of his life is retained in the monster imagery that frequently emerges in Freud’s associations when he discusses the mysteries of life, birth, and death.”39 Wangh is talking about Amalia Freud and Page 6 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose “the (p.228) fury of the toddler, Sigmund, at being abandoned by her too early” in the aftermath of the death of Julius.40 I present here a case made by John Abbott and Bernard This that Freud relates his derealization through the Loch Ness monster, first and rather subtly to Athena and his mother.41 Julian Stamm may also be mentioned as stating the basics of this argument: It is also significant that in describing his sense of depersonalization on the Acropolis, Freud draws an analogy with the feeling engendered when walking alongside the mythical sea monster, Loch Ness. My hypothesis is that his preoccupation with his identity precipitated a transient ego and libidinal regression with accompanying loss of self-boundaries and a revival of infantile incorporative fantasies such as the wish for union with the mother allegorically disguised in the association with the sea monster.42 But Stamm takes things no further. Abbott’s vision of what Freud would be saying about his mother is darker than This’s, but I think both views are to be accommodated. Abbott makes the point that the Loch Ness monster, whose Loch is located in a V-shaped cleft, is a symbol of the mother’s vagina.43 He says, “the serpent is an intimate aspect of the goddess Athena, and that . . . in the whole of his account [in “Disturbance”] she [Athena] is conspicuous by her absence.” For Abbott, these associations suggest that Freud’s derealization is focused more immediately on being faced with Athena’s Acropolis temple, with the derealization reflecting displaced feelings toward his mother more than the acknowledged ones about his father.44 Abbott, thus adds, “In short, we assume that Freud had an unconsciously frightening reaction to his own castrated and castratingly threatening mother to whom he (p.229) is reciprocally hostile and whose castrated state, whose lack of a penis, is incredulously denied.”45 Bernard This, observing that Freud does not write about what he saw at the Acropolis but, rather, about his surprise at seeing it,46 arrives at a similar conclusion, but after drawing different associations and not concentrating so much on hostility. This makes the case in a lyrical study. As if he were composing a conversational musical score, he keeps asking a recurrent question, but cumulatively adding different themes while building to a crescendo. I cite the three formulations of the driving question, the first two of which refer to analogies between Freud’s life story and that of Orestes, who avenges the killing of his father, Agamemnon, by killing Agamemnon’s murderers: Orestes’s own mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, the usurper Aigisthus, and for whom Athena, overriding the Fates (Erinnyes), casts the deciding vote that frees Orestes in his trial for matricide held on the Acropolis. Page 7 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose First, in regard to his mother’s death: Freud, in his most handsome shirt,[47] had evoked his father, he has told us. But did he have a thought about his mother, Amalia, on this hill where the goddess had founded the first tribunal that permitted citizens, in the name of the city, to judge a man who had killed his mother. He doesn’t speak much to us about his mother in 1936! However, she is not long dead.48 Amalia Freud died on September 12, 1930. Joan Raphael-Leff calls attention to Freud’s letter to Ferenczi, written four days later, in which Freud describes the still recent death of his mother as an event he expected would change the “deeper layers.” In “Feminine Sexuality,” written in 1931, “only four months after she died,” he claims his “surprising discovery” of “the phase of exclusive attachment to the mother,” of which we have seen him say: “Our insight into this pre-Oedipus phase . . . comes to us like a surprise, like the discovery . . . of the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization behind the civilization of Greece.”49 (p.230) Second, in pursuance of Freud’s learning from his half-brothers—the two sons of his father’s first wife Sally Kantner—that Amalia was not his father’s first wife: When Sigmund got dressed for the Acropolis, did he have a thought for his mother and the first wife of his father? For him to be able to visit Athens, Sally had to die. Death of the first woman beloved of the father. Had Sigmund-Orestes killed to live? No, for sure, since he had not been conceived when she died, but everything transpired as if he were guilty and a bit of a “matricide.”50 Third, in recognition of still other people in Freud’s family drama, and of the intended first reader of “Disturbance”: When Freud traversed the outstretched sea on which Greece comes to throw its divine hand, and when he has come to honor the goddess on the Acropolis, do you think he would be content to honor his father, forgetting his ancestors. And if he speaks of them still, in 1936, thirty years later, three years before his death, to a man who, for him, incarnates the “oceanic feeling,” do you believe it would by chance?51 Clearly, This thinks that Freud was not content just to honor his father, and that he recalls his mother along with others on the Parthenon in connection with Athena. As to associating her with the Loch Ness monster, that comes along only as a surprise in the crescendo. Before that, he covers Athena’s several associations with snakes, including those on her aegis that surround Medusa’s head, and the one that thrusts upright between her shield and her outer left leg. Page 8 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose Those snakes were on the statue made by Phideas that stood in Athena’s Parthenon temple. But an additional snake is also relevant. It appears in a myth that begins when Hephaestus tries to have his way sexually with Athena, spurred on by some banter with Poseidon. “Athena knew how to defend herself, but at the moment (p.231) when she disengaged herself from his arms, Hephaistos ejaculated on her thigh a little above the knee. She wiped off the sperm with a handful of linen which she threw on to the earth. It is thus that the earth-mother was fecundated.”52 When the earth refused to raise such an illconceived child, Athena “took charge of the infant as soon as he was born, calling him Éri-Chthonos (Erion-linen, but also Eris- dissension + chthonos, earth).” So that Poseidon could not laugh at his pleasantry, “she hid the infant in a sacred basket, which she remitted to Aglauros, the elder daughter of King Cecrops, telling her to take good care.” But Aglauros, her sister and their mother peeked under the basket’s lid. Having seen the infant with a serpent’s tail in place of legs, they cried out in panic and, jumping from the height of the Acropolis, perished. Learning of the accident while carrying a mountain from one place to another, Athena let the peak fall on the Acropolis, from which she made a new rampart. With Athena’s love and guidance, Erichthonius became king of Athens and taught the citizens the use of money and metal, introduced the four-horse chariot, and ended up a star in a constellation. “53 As it turns out, he did not have a serpent’s tail in place of legs. A serpent, son of the earth, had enrolled himself around the sleeping infant, to watch over the sleep of his ‘brother,’ and to protect him. When Erichthonius was king of Athens, the serpent lived in a crypt of one of the temples of the Acropolis, honored by the Athenians.” All these snakes associated with Athena might be sufficient justification for Freud to evoke the Loch Ness monster in connection with viewing the Acropolis, but they have not reminded anyone yet of Amalia Freud. Still, this matter of a protective snake plays into This’s overall argument about her. He comments, “Let us recall what happened when Freud was three months old; his mother became pregnant and he was brutally weaned.” He was eleven months old when Julius was born. In a letter to Fleiss, Freud recounted “having nourished[54] bad sentiments with regard to his rival, and added that his brother’s death (at eight months), a magical realization of aggressive desires, aroused in him a ‘strange’ sentiment of guilt: his nanny, to console him, told him that his little brother would revive one day. At nineteen months, the promise of the resurrection, Easter.” When (p.232) Alexander was born, Freud made it his affair, naming him and “becoming his ‘protector,’ the serpent who enrolls around him.”55 Bernard This then brings these associations together around Freud’s mother, with some wordplay he attributes to Freud in his description of the Loch Ness monster. I distill the gist of his argument from his last two pages, beginning with a new question: “Freud was forty-eight when, finally, in 1904, he got to Athens. Page 9 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose Why this long wait? He keeps to himself the reason while giving it. Greece, country of Oedipus, of Sophocles, of sacred stories, of muthos.” This notes, “Oedipus had already become familiar–heimlich—to him.” In an October 15, 1897, letter to Fliess, Freud had noted the importance of Oedipus: I have found, in my own case too, [the phenomenon of] being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I now consider it a universal event of early childhood. . . . If this is so, we can understand the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, despite the objections that reason raises against the presuppositions of fate. . . . Everyone in the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy and each recoils in horror from the dream fulfillment here transplanted into reality.56 In this letter, Freud specifies: My self-analysis is in fact the most essential thing I have at present and promises to become of the greatest value to me if it reaches its end. In the middle of it, it suddenly ceased for three days, during which I had the feeling of being tied up inside (which patients complain of so much), and I was really disconsolate.57 The italicized word suddenly (German plötzlich) now becomes a leitmotiv. This turns to Freud’s family’s story of the disappearance, suddenly, of his nanny. Here, This begins to register his own thoughts: This mother, svelte and pretty, had not more particularly drawn my attention. Svelte, because she was not pregnant, I have (p.233) thought, [58

] giving meaning . . . to what is being signified. But this “suddenly I understand” is already working on me, and the plötzlich, in a phrase marking an irruption, had not stopped resonating in my ears: “suddenly, my mother entered, belle and svelte.” “Where does this phrase come from? Surely, from the Psychopathology of Everyday Life. I soon verified this citation, but “sehe schlank” “Seeschlange” [“see svelte” “sea serpent”]/ this mother so beautiful to see, so svelte, was she not the Loch Ness Monster? Finally, I understood, all at once, plötzlich, why Freud had evoked this at the summit of such a place. It remains only to read the sequel of the paragraph evoking the brusque disappearance . . . des plötzlich verschwinden” of the Kinderfrau [nanny] who had been boxed (coffrée).59 The passage from The Psychopathology of Everyday Life now follows: When I began in my forty-third year to direct my interest to what was left (restes/resten) of my memory of my own childhood there came to my mind a scene which had for a long while back (from the remotest past, it seemed Page 10 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose to me) come into consciousness from time to time, and which I had good evidence for assigning to a date at the end of my third year. I saw myself standing in front of a cupboard (vor einem Kasten stehen) demanding something and screaming, while my half-brother, my senior by twenty years, held it open. Then suddenly my mother, looking beautiful and slim (belle et svelte), walked into the room, as if she had come in from the street . . . (und dann trat plötzlich meine Mutter, schon und schlank . . . ).60 Evoking the brusque disappearance of his nanny, Freud adds: When my mother left me a short while later, I suspected that my naughty brother had done the same thing to her that he had done (p.234) with the nanny and I forced him to open the cupboard [Kasten] for me. I now understood, too, why in the translation of this visual childhood scene my mother’s sveltness (die Schlankheit) was emphasized: it must have struck me as having just been restored to her. I am two and a half years older than the sister who was born at that time.61 This concludes: “When the signifiers are there, one must conclude—suddenly, in an instant: this mother who has disappeared, so beautiful to see, so svelte, this is our Seeschlange [sea serpent], the monster who has just taken the place of the serpents, protectors of children on the Acropolis.”62 I find Abbot’s and This’s arguments more convincing than that the Loch Ness monster evokes Freud’s nanny—that is, just her alone—which is an argument made by Masson and Masson, who regard the non-Jewish Catholic woman as having sexually “humiliated” the child Sigmund.63 Freud, however, calls up deep, unconscious affinities between the two of them. Swan, in his article “Mater and Nannie: Freud’s Two Mothers and the Discovery of the Oedipus Complex,” recalls the corrections that Freud’s mother made in 1897 to Freud’s dream recollection of the scene under discussion. “On the basis of the new information, Freud corrects what he is now sure was a mistake in his original interpretation.” But this “archival past,” says Swan, does not change the “phenomenological past” of the dream. “Identified with the nurse (“I = she” [as Freud describes them]) in the past that he now bears with him, he turns the bad moment now on his mother.” In his fantasy, now rather than in the dream, “he steals from her, he plunders her. In the special fantasy situation in which Freud maintains a careful split between the two mothers, ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ he acts with the introjected ‘bad’ mother to plunder the introjected ‘good’ mother,” with an outcome of guilt. Thus, making a point similar to Ilse Barande’s about Freud’s concealment of his desire for maternal seduction behind Leonardo da Vinci’s,64 “the conscientious, brave confessor of his own aggression, never quite comprehends that his aggression against the ‘good’ mother (wife, patient) is based, in fantasy, on identification with a (p.235) seductive, aggressive ‘bad’ mother and—hardest of all—that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers are one and the same woman.”65 They are Page 11 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose presumably the same, in that “in its first motives, the scene assumes an identification between nanny and mother: both have been ‘boxed up.’ ”66 Let me add, in this “ ‘bad’ mother” vein, that Bernfeld observes that Freud had called the old nanny “prehistoric when she first appeared to him in a dream”;67 and that we have also seen that Freud came to consider older women—an age group that came to include both his nanny and his mother—as regressive “old dragons.” Yet I think a good/bad split mother interpretation is contrived, and no more convincing here than it is for the Hindu Goddess. Bernfeld, for instance, also says the nanny “treated him as if he were her own child” and “had helped him when he suffered one of his earliest traumas” at the death of Julius.68 To take a page from Stanley Kurtz, this would appear to be an instance where “all the mothers are one”69—and not only Amalia and the nanny, but as This shows, also Jacob’s first wife, Sally Kantner. When he wrote “Disturbance,” Freud probably had “survivor’s guilt” for all three of them. But the nanny and Amalia are specifically fused, almost at the hip, in the memory Freud invokes about the “sudden” disappearance of the one and the appearance of the other. This distills something of the lifelong, lasting power of this evocation, where, as part of his conclusion, This asks his very last question: “Freud’s love of chests and armoires, of Easter, of archeology—would all that find its origin in the game of signifiers (Schlange—schlank—Schrank)?”70 We may turn back to Suzanne Cassirer Bernfeld to understand why the question includes an Easter plot. In Freud’s self-analysis, he called his nanny “ugly and old, but very clever. She taught him to have a high opinion of himself.” In letters to Fliess, “he reports that she told him much of God and hell, and that she had carried him into all the five churches of Freiberg. When he came home afterwards he preached to the family and demonstrated how God (p.236) had acted.” She “helped him when he suffered one of his earliest traumas” concerning Julius. Bernfeld explains: That these two are united in the same layer of his unconscious has its good reasons. Both vanished in Freiberg, the brother first. . . If it was terrible to realize that his mother did not love him alone, the guilt he felt about his rival’s death was far more painful. It seemed to him he had willfully caused his death and burial. But the nurse with her old wives’ tales was ready to console him: the dead are not really dead. They go to heaven and become powerful intercedents at the throne God. And on Easter Sunday, the most important of Catholic holidays, the resurrection of the dead is celebrated. Julius and Jesus are neither killed nor angry. They are buried for the time being. When the old woman visits the cemetery, they are happy—in heaven —to accept her flowers and prayers. This conviction lasted with undiminished strength until the old woman disappeared. . . . The adults found no reason to explain what had happened. All that he heard was a witty and evasive remark by his half-brother, who said that the old woman Page 12 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose was boxed in. . . . To make matters worse, just when she disappeared, his oldest sister was born. Her birth revived his old anger against his mother. Once when he couldn’t find her he became desperate, because he was afraid that her absence meant that he had killed her, as he had once killed Julius. He asked Philipp to open a cupboard believing, as he later wrote, that she was inside. . . . The cupboard is overdetermined as box, coffin, and symbol of pregnancy. Is it not also possible that it stands for the altar of the Catholic church?71 Into the gap left by the adults of Freud’s Jewish family, who “found no reason to explain what had happened” to Julius or to the nanny, Freud resurrected neither of them but, rather, his mother in an ineradicable image that he could transpose seventy-seven years later onto the Acropolis. That the Loch Ness monster should be imagined as Freud’s sleek and pretty, desired, young mother does not cancel out what was said by Abbott and others about her “castratingly threatening” and predatory traits. For already in Freud’s youngest years, there are memories of her two resented (p.237) pregnancies and his fearful thoughts of matricide with his fear that he has made her vanish, too. I stress, however, that Freud must have retained this haunted image, for in relation to Athena on the Acropolis, it is a matter of replacing one lost image (the physically lost one of Phidias’s Athena) with another (his own, the desired one of his mother that Freud would have to have kept alive for all those years72)—not really lost to Freud, but kept cryptic along with his non-acknowledgment in “Disturbance” of Athena. That it is specifically Athena (the former bisexual Neith, according to Freud) whose Parthenon temple would be behind Freud’s image of his mother has further to do with Athena’s own iconography. As Abbott says, Athena’s serpent, as one of her attributes, appears notably in the snaky tresses of Medusa’s fearful head emblazoned large and conspicuous on the aegis which Athena wears across her virginal but ample bosom (for Freud this head was the horrid reminder, polyphallic . . . of the male’s dreadful fear of castration). In renderings of the goddess which are familiar to every classical student such as Freud, a serpent the size of a boa constrictor rears its head, open jawed with fangs displayed and tongue lashing out, from coils disposed on the ground between Athena’s left foot and her shield, which stands on the ground beside her at her left and, with its lower edge on the ground, its upper edge steadied by her left hand, partially conceals the angry serpent.73 In referring to what was “familiar to every classical student such as Freud,” Abbott is referring to the lost statue by Phideas, which This imagines Freud imagining as still present:

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose It is an incontestable fact: on the Acropolis Athena is at home. And Freud would not be who he is if he did not evoke her presence: above all, one meets her image. There is that colossal statue[74] erected (p.238) with the booty of the victory over the Medes, the lance of which announces afar that the land is the country’s. In her very beautiful temple, there is this figure of gold and ivory which shines in the shadow of her sanctuary, among the weapons and heaped up cloths heaped up, like an idol of the Orient.75 As to why Freud would evoke his mother through the Loch Ness monster, we have followed enough of the plausible associations. This says, “Freud situates himself on the side of the respectful son, but if the memory of that which had lived on the Acropolis haunts him so often, if he needs an indulgence, it is no doubt because the problem is more complex than he wishes to tell us.”76 To that I would only add that it is a matter of Freud’s negative yet still ambivalent Jewish attitude toward iconography: of letting an image “we never believed in” stand in place of Athena’s “oriental idol.” Finally, Bruno Bettelheim’s book faulting translations of Freud, including many prominent misleading coinages in the Standard Edition translated and edited by James Strachey “in collaboration with” Anna Freud, mentions two examples before any others from “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.” Both are from Bettelheim’s preface, and they complement and reinforce Bernard This’s insights. Bettelheim comments, “At the beginning of the essay, where Freud first states that this memory reasserted itself frequently, and mentions that initially he did not understand why, he uses the expression ‘tauchte immer wieder auf.’ Auftauchen means, literally, ‘to surface’ (out of deep water), but it is also used more broadly to refer to anything that appears suddenly or abruptly.”77 Strachey, in his translation, has “kept on recurring to my mind.” But “kept on surfacing” (implying suddenly or abruptly appearing from the unconscious) would certainly have been good English, and could be taken to anticipate the sea monster who soon appears in “Disturbance” from the depths of its loch. Then, in beginning the final sentence of the essay, Freud’s exact words are: “Und jetzt warden Sie sich nicht mehr verwundern, das mich die Erinnerung an das Erlebnis auf der Akropolis so oft heimsucht.” Strachey’s translation is “And now you will no longer wonder that the recollection of this event on the Acropolis should have troubled me so often.” (p.239) As Bettelheim points out, the word Freud “uses here to refer to the frequent reappearance of this recollection, heimsuchen—to visit—is fraught with special meaning, because in Catholic Vienna the Maria Heimsuchung was (and still is) an important religious holiday, celebrating the visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth, an event depicted in many famous paintings and sculptures with which Freud had become well acquainted in the travels he could now no longer undertake.”78 Here, although “have troubled me” is smoother than “have visited Page 14 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose me,” the latter is hardly jolting. With a more faithful translation saying “you will no longer wonder that the recollection of this event on the Acropolis should have visited me so often,” we would have further confirmation of Bernard This’s idea that Freud was evoking not only his father but also his mother’s sudden visitation home “svelte and pretty,” backed up by Freud’s treatment of the visitation scene in his study of Leonado da Vinci. But Bettelheim did not take these extra steps.

Bertram Lewin and the Dream Screen Thus, even without research, Freud might have free-associated from the coiled serpent beneath the honored “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” on his desk to his own menagerie of maternal monsters of the deep. But with his own predilection for the masculine mind, we have a harder time imagining him being receptive to Bose’s deeper message, which I now begin to argue also concerns the Goddess and the abyss. Before I get to the Goddess, however, I want to show the potential of the abysses for a Bosean or Freudian reading, thus I bring into view a South Indian temple image that I look at more contextually in the next chapter. It shows ViṣṇuNārāyaṇa waking up with a dreamlike “long body,” still reclining on Ananta (see figure 8.1),79 and with an Asura-Demon armed menacingly behind him.

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose I hazard the thought that this image can be interpreted as showing Viṣṇu’s awakening to what Bertram Lewin calls a “dream screen.” It is certainly no stretch to say that Viṣṇu is dreaming while he is being awakened by an invisible female personification of the “sleep of yoga” (Yoganidrā), named “Nīlā.” We are, of course, left with the question of whether it makes sense to speak of a dream screen operating in myth and iconography. (p.240) As the Vermorels indicate, Bertram Lewin introduces the idea of the “dream screen” as “the surface upon which a dream appears to be projected.” They say that the “white screen” of the dream is “a metaphor for the maternal womb, marking at the limit of the space of the dream the surface on which it projects itself.”80 The “dream screen” need not be white, however, (p. 241) and its association with the space of the womb comes secondarily for Lewin to the curvature of the breast—

Figure 8.1 “Long” Madhusūdana on south-facing wall of second-floor circumambulatory, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple. Source: Hudson 2008, 266.

secondarily, as the initial blank dreams of the earlier “lap baby” give way to the more complex dreams of the “knee baby.”81 According to Lewin, “it is the blank background, present in the dream though not necessarily seen, and the visually perceived action in ordinary manifest dream content takes place on it or before it.” Lewin cites Otto Isikower, who interprets the large masses that approach beginning sleepers as breasts. As it approaches the sleeper, the breast begins to grow, its convex surface flattens out and finally merges with the sleeper, often to the accompaniment of mouth sensations. . . . A dream appears to be projected on this flattened breast—the dream screen—provided, that is, that the Page 16 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose dream is visual; for if there is no visual content the dream screen would be blank, and the manifest content would consist solely of impressions from other fields of perception.82 In a subsequent article, Lewin says that the dream screen is related to two other findings, both just mentioned: Isikower phenomena, and so-called blank dreams.83 I suggest that the elongated Viṣṇu in the waters would have such a blank multisensorial dream screen while he is yet to be awakened by an invisible Yoganidrā/Nīlā, whose name Nīlā means a “dark-blue,” that it is often symbolically interchangeable with black. Lewin interprets the end of a dream that consists in rolling it up as the “reverse”84 of the flattening out at the beginning of a dream: “a young woman patient reported as follows: ‘I had my dream all ready for you; but while I was here looking at it, it turned over away from me, rolled up, and rolled away from me—over and over like two tumblers.’ ” That is, after Lewin gains clarification, “the dream screen with the dream on it bent over backwards away from her, and then like a carpet or canvas rolled up (p.242) and off into a distance with the rotary motion of machine tumblers.”85 Lewin adds, forgetting or remembering a dream belongs to the dream content itself, and may be analyzed as a manifest dream element. Hence, when my patient’s dream rolled away from her while she was on my couch, she was putting the final element into the dream. Theoretically, under pressure of her resistances, she was taking the last step in waking up (forgetting the dream). . . . The dream screen rolling away was the final event in her complete awakening. As long as she remembered the dream, it might be said she was partly asleep.86 In awakening Viṣṇu, Yoganidrā/Nīlā awakens especially the eyes, which are instrumental in viewing the primal scenes of Brahmā awakening from the lotus and the killing of Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Indeed, we may adapt Lewin’s phrasing to put Viṣṇu on the psychoanalytic couch for the first time. I thus paraphrase, using quotation marks: “Hence, when Viṣṇu’s dream rolled away from him while he was on the serpent couch, he was putting the final element into the dream. Under pressure of his resistances from Madhu and Kaiṭabha, he was taking the last step in waking up.” Nārāyaṇa’s awakening by Yoganidrā/Nīlā thus suggests that the god, when he manifests himself as Madhusūdana, the “Crusher of Madhu,” he meets half-dreamed resistances after he brings about the lotus birth of Brahmā from his navel. To attempt to buttress the case for such a mythic and iconographic dreamscreen symbolism, I turn to two other scenarios that may also draw on a dream screen: an ethnographic or cultural setting involving Kālī; and a return to the personal universe of Romain Rolland’s oceanic feeling, now also including Kālī. Page 17 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose Regarding the first, Sarah Caldwell describes the beginning of a Muṭieṭṭu dancedrama performance in Kerala with the creation of a flat circular representation on the temple floor of the goddess Bhadrakālī (Kālī), called a kaḷam, which uses five colors (white, black, red, green, and yellow) made (p.243) from vegetal powders. A kaḷam takes three to four hours to complete, and depicts the Goddess in the angry and aggressive mood in which she will, in the enactment, kill the demon Dārikan, whose head she is shown holding in one of her left hands. The kaḷam is usually drawn by the male actor who will play the part of Kālī in the drama later that night, so he “spends many hours concentrating his mind on the goddess’s form and attributes, which helps provide the total identification required by the role, including his eventual possession by the goddess.” The only exceptions to the totally flat depiction are that “her eyes, nose, and conical breasts are built up to protrude three dimensionally from the floor. The eyes and nose are built up out of the coloured powders; but the breasts are constructed out of different kinds of rice, heaped up to make large conical shapes before being dusted with red powder.” The priest or artist then performs traditional Tantric pūjā, installing the deity into himself. In the deep of the night, he then destroys the kaḷam. “The artist wipes out the drawing with some tender coconut leaves, starting from the feet and moving upwards, but leaving the breasts and face. These are wiped out separately using the right hand and the powders are presented as blessed offerings (prasādam) to the sponsor of the evenings rituals and a few other devotees.”87 One could say that he rolls up a dream screen, breasts and all. Its background is not white but, rather, the dark earth. As Lewin mentions, a blackboard is “an interesting variant”88 of the white screen. Yet as the imagery of the kaḷam gets translated into the action of the Muṭieṭṭu performance, beginning at 2 a.m. a white curtain is held up so that “ ‘the illumination from behind due to fluorescent lights makes it look like a shadow play,” showing “the silhouettes of the people behind the curtain.”89 As far as Caldwell mentions, the curtain is used for only two characters—Dārikan and Kālī—during their introductions or “curtain looks.” In Kālī’s case, the artist who drew the kaḷam now represents its features in performance. First, he shows just the back, and then the front, of the muṭi, or heavy headdress that represents the Goddess’s hair, on which, on its front, is replicated a full standing image of Kālī—her large red breasts surrounded by snakes—as she appeared on the kaḷam. Then, as they advance toward combat, “Kāḷi is on one side of the curtain and Dārikan (p.244) is on the other. They cannot see each other but they are doing parallel movements: threatening, sticking their tongues out.”90 The white curtain, brought into play after the kaḷam is destroyed, is like a mobilized dream screen against which the manifest content of Muṭieṭṭu begins to unfold. When the Kāḷi actor has come fully into view, the breasts on his (Kālī’s) body, says Caldwell, “are large and covered with Page 18 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose gold, . . . very womanly. Heavy breasts, prominent, large nipple area; padded hips and waist, . . . very artful and earthy, sexy.”91 Kālī’s red breasts, originally emergent from the kaḷam, evoke among much else: the “small red hills” seen in nearly every compound just before festival season begins made of “carefully piled . . . neat rows of small conical mounds” gathered up “to preserve the nutrients in the mud for the following planting season”;92 and two psychosexually loaded themes: the idealized breastfeeding mother of early childhood who also hits,93 and male fantasies of fellatio, which is how Caldwell interprets scenes in which Kālī’s crude and comic double, Kūḷi, thrusts her red breasts into men’s mouths.94 Just so, Lewin says, that when the dream screen represents a baby nursing, it indicates “the fulfillment of one or more of three wishes which I assumed were part of that situation: the wish to eat, the wish to be eaten, and the wish to sleep.”95 In the second scenario, the elongated shape of Viṣṇu as a dreamscape image may remind us of Romain Rolland’s reimagining of his infantile memories in his La vie intérieur. In chapter 3, I compared it to a meditation on a Śeṣaśāyin/ Anantaśāyin oleograph, noting that his original “Moi” or “Ego” seems to envision itself both as Brahmā in the cup of the lotus that surges up from Viṣṇu’s navel and as Viṣṇu as he lies filling the horizons.96 I also brought up Obeyesekere’s notion of “it-thinking” for that vision of the primal ego, as distinct from the “Ithinking” of the more developed ego. Clearly, there are intriguing convergences between Obeyeskere’s “it-thinking” and Lewin’s dream screen—so much so that (p.245) Obeyesekere uses the term “dream-screen” apparently without having read Lewin.97 In this vein, I bring up the Vermorels’ interpretation of some other related passages from Rolland’s La vie intérieur. On the night of January 20–21, 1926, Rolland writes: The new spiritual period that I have entered. A sentiment that was unknown to me before these last years. The sentiment I have arrived at of submission to the Lord, of indifference to myself. I burn to be his instrument, —that he express himself by me, and that he then break me. The work matters more than me. The work, not because it is me.—Because it is not me, because it comes from him. Thy will be done. The cardinal prayer. The prayer of prayers

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose To say my prayers, every evening, for 50 years.98 As the Vermorels say, For the first time, Rolland had a sense of submission to the Lord. Fiat voluntas tua! Ordinarily, Romain Rolland, who every evening recited his Our Father, said: fiat voluntas, let the will be done, of God, of God who is in me, in nature—a polytheistic concept close to the Wille of Schopenhauer. In Que ta volonté soit faite [“Thy will be done”] the additional ta introduces a submission to the Lord, to the Father: a submission against which Romain Rolland had always rebelled. The Vermorels draw other works by Rolland into their interpretation, but they return to La vie intérieur. “Rolland wished to understand (p.246) the religious sentiment as arising from the development of his spirit as a child. One senses here the preface to this piece of self-analysis of which he would soon communicate the results to Freud: the oceanic feeling, whose definition is here outlined. What counts is that which touches the senses: Life is a mysterious essence that streams from and around me.”99 The Vermorels continue citing La vie intérieur: “Rolland wishes to guard this immersion in the universe, in the Gods, and to rediscover in each love the primal soul (Urseele). Thus the infant’s God, to whom come still the murmured prayers of the night, is transformed into a mother goddess with swollen breasts (“en déesse mère aux seins gonflés”).”100 I add what Rolland writes on the next page about seeing the Urseele: “Love is the eye which makes one see. The eye is blue, it is brown, it is green. Urseele is the white mother of the rainbow. She is the eternal Light.”101 In other words, the Vermorels take Rolland’s illumination about doing God’s will as an intimation of the oceanic feeling, with its turn, with Ramakrishna, to Kālī. One wonders what happened on that night of January 1926—what kind of (perhaps dreamlike?) state Rolland experienced and its relation to the many passages in his books on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda dedicated to the vision of Kālī as divine mother.102 By the Vermorels’ interpretation, it is as if Rolland had envisioned the transformation of God into the Goddess on a full-breasted dream screen. It is curious that Rolland withheld La vie intérieur from Freud—his, as it were, repudiated analyst. As Lewin points out, “Freud clearly explained the futility of writing down dreams. . . . He warned against it, stating that it presaged an intense resistance to the latent dream thoughts.”103 If Rolland communicated the oceanic feeling to Freud only as “the results” of “this piece of self-analysis,” just imagine what Freud would have had the wherewithal to do with the rest of La vie intérieur, especially if Rolland had delivered it to him verbally. Lewin further says, “The dreamer who mars or effaces the record has two motives: he wishes to destroy or censor the (p.247) dream content, he wishes to preserve Page 20 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose the dream screen.”104 Let us say that for Rolland, with the oceanic feeling, it was primarily the second motive of wishing to preserve. It is worth noting that Lewin conceived of his work in “dream interpretation” as “the study of the elations.”105 Lewin’s book The Psychoanalysis of Elation mentions the oceanic feeling twice, first in a section on “Ecstasy” in his sixth chapter, titled “The Oral Triad and the Elations.” The oral triad of wishes comprises the wish to eat, the wish to be eaten, and the wish to sleep. Lewin says of ecstasy that it “is a state wherein the latter two wishes of the oral triad predominate. The breast is often condensed psychologically with a superego, a deathless one with which the ego identifies itself, so that it can participate in its immortality. Along with the active devouring fantasies goes the sense of yielding to the deathless figure, relaxing into it, and ultimately joining it in sleep or a sleeplike state.”106 Recall Patient B’s “unwilling mother” as super-ego who promises “heavenly bliss” to Bose’s analysand.107 Lewin does not relate the oceanic feeling decisively to the dream screen, but they are parts of one discussion, making it worth looking at what he says. He builds up a comparison between the hypomania of a homosexual woman patient of his and the ecstasies of several saints. The patient’s “blank dream with orgasm” culminating a day spent in “a blissful mood” shopping with mother surrogates is an ecstasy: “a repetitive fulfillment of the oral triad of wishes to relax and to be devoured into happy sleep. After the night of the dream, the hypomania proper set in—a whirl of overactive, overtalkative behavior, full of ideas of independence and erotomantic fantasy, in which all interest, and particularly all passive interest, in mother figures was denied.”108 Lewin relates: She would tell of numerous fiancés, combining love with art and business. [109

] With one such lover, she said, ‘I melt into the other person . . . yet [am] in him part of a larger whole. . . . It is something like aligning oneself with a great cause like Christianity or woman’s (p.248) suffrage, a complete loss of self. . . . When he seemed to enter me I gained his attributes, for example his aesthetic taste, which was better than mine. It seemed that I absorbed the beauty that he made me aware of. . . . For a man to take a woman’s breast in his mouth at orgasm makes the sexual act mutual and simultaneous.” Fellatio is like suckling. During oral foreplay, she thought that a nipple must be as large, relatively, for a baby as the penis was for her as an adult. . . . In this concentrated many-layered fusion —with superego ideals, with the man, and with the breast—the patient depicted a blissful mutual incorporation. Here there was no apparent fear of death or being devoured, but a happy yielding to the repetitive experience of “being swallowed” and a blissful relaxation of the breast.110

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose Coming to the saints,111 Lewin cites particularly Saint Francis de Sales, who “was definite about the oral nature of what he called the ‘orison of quietude. . . . In this state the soul is like a little child still at the breast, whose mother, to caress him whilst he is still in her arms, makes her milk distill into his mouth without his even moving his lips.” He adds, “Consider the little infants, united and joined to the breasts of their mothers, you will see that from time to time they press themselves closer by little starts to which the pleasure of sucking prompts them. Even so during its oraison, the heart united to its God oftentimes makes attempts at closer union by movements during which it presses closer upon the divine sweetness.”112 Lewin then turns to “a ‘manifest element’ in many descriptions of the ecstatic state”: the allegation of inarticulateness or difficulty of putting the experience into words. St. Teresa of Avila says words only come afterward, and “do not seem commensurate with the ineffable experience.” Her state may be not unlike a blank, erotic, orally fulfilling dream. (p.249) The same phenomenon is indicted in my patient’s account: “It is hard to describe,” she said. The quality of inadequacy or incompetence of expression needs analysis, for it is purely subjective. Freud’s comments on the “oceanic feeling” give us a starting point for interpretation.113 Most likely Lewin is referring to Freud’s insistence that he cannot find either the oceanic feeling in his own experience or his own explanation of it, and not what Rolland says it is. We had best follow Lewin’s train of thought: The feeling of nonverbality is a repetitive manifest element and indicates a non-verbality in the latent thoughts. In these instances I believe we have a reference to the fact that the ecstatic mood repeats or relives the nonverbal or never verbalized experience of union at the breast. A similar element in many ecstasies is the allegation of “direct inspiration,” pure and immediate perception of inexpressible truth. . . . This certainly reflects the realness of the breast experience. This experience is what one knows because it is primal, immediate, and unquestioned experience. It was not learned by seeing or hearsay, but represents the primitive narcissistic trust in sensory experience.114 Lewin starts from Freud’s feeling of inarticulatenness faced with the oceanic feeling, and goes on to suggest that the dream screen offers improvements on Freud’s intepretation. He insists on a rapport between “rapt, inwardly attentive ecstatic states” and “states more nearly resembling sleep.” Lewin adds, “Trances, transports, and ecstasies have been called dreamlike, and all three words suggest a type of partial sleep or somnambulistic equivalent. We may suppose that the degree of sleep and waking varies. The predormescent state of Page 22 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose yielding relaxation, with its ideational content to be swallowed and to join the mother, can lead to heaven or nirvana.”115 Lewin’s second reference to the oceanic feeling then comes in the next section, titled “ ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Sleep and Death.” First he cites (p.250) a “convention” in psychoanalytic literature that differentiates “two contrasting infantile states of mind according to the pleasure principle. ‘Good’ means libidinally satisfying, pleasure-bringing. . . . With repression, things and actions originally ‘good’ may become ‘bad.’ ” Lewin then explains, “Very early in life some such distinction appears to be made in regard to two kinds of sleep. The primal blank sleep of the satiated infant at the breast is a model for the first type. . . . ‘Bad’ sleep is sleep disturbed, primitively by hunger or simple organic stimuli, later by inciters to bad dreams, of which the anxiety dream is typical. Observation tells us that both types appear very early in life.”116 Correlated are two views concerning sleep’s twin brother, death. The idea of death as a placid blank, a nirvana or state of rest, corresponds to the infant’s blank dream. Perhaps because it gets its content during the knee-baby stage, when the oral wishes are displaced downward, fantasies of blank afterlife are more apt to be about the womb. The timelesness that rules in the unconscious, and we suppose in the earliest days of infancy, deletes the distinction between annihilation and immortality.117 Lewin soon comes back to “the desired sleep state related to ecstasy,” where “we meet the quality of immortality, the unending heavenly bliss, but attached to the superego”—which recently reminded me of Bose’s Patient B118 and which may now also remind us of Romain Roland’s primal “Moi.” Lewin says that “union with the immortal superego figure” predominates, and the sense of immortality is a function of the fusion. . . . The ego’s fusion with the superego, repeating the original fusion with the breast, brings with it or includes this sense of eternity. The model for immortal happiness is “good” sleep. The earliest subjective experience of “good” sleep comes to have attached to it the idea of death with unending immortal happiness.119 (p.251) Lewin then says that some forms of suicide in cases of manic-depressive psychosis are influenced by this fantasy. In severe manic excitements which represent equivalents, psychologically, of suicide, the patients often visit heaven, see God or the saints, or have intimations of immortality and pleasant experiences of the other world, in contrast to the uninviting death that seems to await the depressed. . . . They organize their dreams as they wish Page 23 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose them to be. The elated, who do not enter the nirvana of a stupor—a blank dream of oral satisfaction—enter the psychological equivalent of a satisfying simple dream.120 Lewin comes back now to the comparison that interests us: “The matrix of subjective experience from which spring the ideas that become differentiated as sleep, death, nirvana, immortality, heaven, the oceanic feeling, is the blank state that follows nursing, and later good dreaming states.”121 In this second and only other reference to the oceanic feeling in the book on the elations,122 the elusive improvement Lewin offers on Freud’s interpretation is that it is ultimately the dream screen that is the matrix for the oceanic feeling and other ideas from which it may be differentiated. It is impossible to play it all back, of course, but had he done so, Freud might have clarified those years of “no peace” that the oceanic feeling had brought him. Had Freud lived eleven years longer, or long enough to read Lewin, he could have considered whether viewing the oceanic feeling as a variation on the dream screen gave him some measure of peace at last. (p.252) Notes:

(1.) That includes the studies that culminate in Kanzer and Glenn 1979 and the work of Bertram Lewin (1896–1971), much of it gathered together in Lewin 1973. Christopher Keats introduces a helpful comparison of a psychoanalyst’s and a surgeon’s office library. Whereas the former contains works of many dates that have to do with the studies that interest him or her, which may be as valid or stimulating today as they were when published, a surgeon’s shelves have state-of-the-art works. (2.) See www.kamakoti.org/kamakoti/vishnupurana/bookview.php?chapnum=8. (3.) Wangh 1988, 262. (4.) Freud 1953–74, 21:68. (5.) Wangh 1988, 280. (6.) Waugh 1988, 262. (7.) Appignanesi and Forrester 1993, 22. (8.) Bonomi 2013, 376. (9.) See Jones 1953–57, 1:156–57; cited in chapter 1, this volume, note 56. (10.) Bonami 2013, 376. (11.) Bonomi 2013, 376.

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (12.) Freud 1953–74, 12:324. (13.) Bonomi 2013, 376. Schur 1979a, 105–106: Freud’s ‘‘farewell” letter to Fliess from Vienna, June 9, 1901, includes chafing remarks about Amalia: “My aged lady, whom I have been visiting twice a day at fixed hours, was taken to the country yesterday, and I have been looking at my watch every fifteen minutes to see whether I am not keeping her too long for her injection. Thus we still feel the shackles even after they are removed and do not really know how to enjoy our freedom.” (14.) Schur 1972, 419. (15.) Freud 1953–74, 19:168, mentions parental personalizations of such entities as Necessity, Providence, God, Nature, and “the dark power of Destiny.” (16.) Swan’s summary (1974, 21) of the dream’s opening, adding “elsewhere” from Freud’s account. (17.) Swan 1974, 26. (18.) Schur 1979a, 93–94: Freud said Fliess “had drawn scientific attention to some very remarkable connections between the turbinal bones and the female organs of sex.” Probably the vaginal associations were shared personally or in Fliess’s lost letters. (19.) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_concha. Nobody else seems to discuss the Latin name. (20.) Because fragile nasal turbinate bones seldom survive as fossils, it was doubted dinosaurs had them, until a discovery in 1970–71, when ossified turbinate bones were identified in the ankylosaur dinosaur Saichania—weighing over two tons and five to seven meters long—in Mongolia. “Rudimentary ridges like those that support respiratory turbinstes have also been found in advanced Triassic cynodonts, such as Thrinnaxod and Diademodon.” See https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_concha and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/saichania. (21.) Appignanesi and Forrester 1993, 23. See Jones 1953–57, 1:37–38, on research in 1876 on the gonadic structure of the male eel (“a puzzling problem since the days of Aristotle”) at the Zoological Experimentation Center in Trieste; and 1:48, 51, 220, on Freud’s 1879–1881 demonstration that “the ganglion [of crayfish] constists of two structures, of which one is netlike and the origin of the nerve process.” Cf. ClaudeThis 1994, 71–82, recalling this early research. (22.) Freud identified various contemporaries of his, including other women patients, with moments in the dream; see Erikson 1954, 11–13. (23.) Swan 1974, 26, citing Freud 1953–74, 4, 111 n. 1. Page 25 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (24.) The fusion refers to a moment in the dream further along than what is described here, where Freud as dreamer says of an “infiltration” on Irma’s left shoulder, “I felt it (in my own body, that is)” (Freud 1953–74, 4:113). See Erikson 1954, 32: “one of those fusions of a dreamer with a member of his dream population which is always of central importance, if not the very center and nodal point of a dream.” (25.) Erikson 1954, 27–30. (26.) Erikson 1954, 37, continuing, “a dreamer with less flexible defenses might have awakened in terror.” (27.) Among the seeming few who have have opinions, Anzieu 1986, 136, suggests, “The ‘extensive whitish gray scabs’ on ‘some curly structures’ are traces of sperm and represent impregnation.” Sperm may be associated with the white patch, but this relies on Anzieu’s identification of Irma as Anna Hammerschlag—“a favorite patient of Freud’s” (315). Cf. Swan 1974, 27, emphasizing syphilis; Grinstein 1968, 27–28, recalling Freud’s worries about his daughter Mathilde’s diphtheria and his own nasal swellings, which led to thoughts of the cocaine-death of his friend Fleichl. Obeyesekere 2012, 377 and 573, 74n23, after mentioning it as a dream that lacks deep motivation, thinks “a reanalysis suggests that it is less innocent than Freud made it out to be.” He notes that “Irma was a beautiful widow,” and that “the ‘gap’ can be filled with Freud’s sexual fantasies.” Obeyesekere says Freud’s thought based on Mathilde’s diphtheria that the throat scab of the dream was a diphtheria membrane “is possible,” but bringing up Fliess’s association of the turbinal bones with the vagina, he says (without adding much), “one can treat Freud’s peering into Irma’s mouth with its scabs and white patch as his peering into her vagina, giving added significance to the well-known phenomenon of the displaceability of orifices.” Sprengnether 2003 says that Irma’s mouth resembles Freud’s mouth hemorrhaging from his 1923 oral cancer, taking on almost a “premonitory” status; but she ignores the turbinate bones, white patch, and scab. (28.) Swan 1974, 27. (29.) Swan conveniently misspells “navel” as “naval”: in the two instances quoted, and on page 33: “All the developmental themes are represented: prenatal fusion, oral, anal, urethral, and phallic; the naval [sic] that leads to the unplumbable unknown.” (30.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 35. (31.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 49.

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (32.) Freud 1954–73, 22:241. The German has what will be two key (italicized) terms: “plötzlich den ans Land gespülten Leib des vielbererdeten Ungeheuers vor sich sähe und sich zum Zugeständnis gezwungen fände: Also existiert sie wirklich, die Seeschlange, an die wir nicht geglaubt haben!” (33.) Freud 1953–74, 23:229. (34.) Bonomi 2013, 376. (35.) Bonomi 2013, 375. (36.) Abraham 1982, 451, cited in Wangh 1988, 277 (see preface, this volume). (37.) See the preface, this volume. (38.) Freud 1953-74, 23:229. (39.) Wangh 1988, 275. (40.) Wangh 1988, 278. (41.) Harrison 1977, 417, writes, “I believe that Freud, aroused by the Parthenon and the sea, was seized by awe—and that it was a distorted maternal awe.” (42.) Stamm 1979, 141. The passage is not in the 1969 version of this article. (43.) Abbott 1969, 357–58: “Long and narrow, Loch Ness, one of a chain of lakes linked to form Scotland’s Caledonian Canal, lies along the bottom of a cleft-like valley between, as the valley’s bounding lips, two long lines of upward rolling hills.” (44.) So, too, Shengold 1966, 326: “But the concomitant and even more forbidden wish to possess the mother (Athens, ‘the city, our mother’ . . .) is, curiously enough, not mentioned directly. An identification with the mother is implied.” (45.) Abbott 1969, 359. (46.) This 1994, 83. (47.) His best white shirt is not mentioned in “Disturbance.” (48.) This 1994, 91, my translation. (49.) Raphael-Leff 2007, 1353; Swan 1974, 2; see chapter 2, this volume, note 103, on the passage from “Feminine Sexuality”; and chapter 1, this volume, note 18, on the letter to Ferenczi. (50.) This 1994, 93; my translation. Page 27 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (51.) This 1994, 95 (in my translation). He also asks, “What does he seek with Romain Rolland, beside the sea, from femininity? The place of the great maternal divinities,” which Judaism “suppressed.” (52.) This 1994, 86. (53.) This 1984, 87. (54.) As with “weaned,” This’s italics. (55.) This 1994, 86–87. (56.) Trans. Masson 1985, 272, with ellipses as per This. (57.) Trans. Masson 1985, 270, with ellipses as per This. (58.) This cannot be an original thought, since, as Swan 1974, 45, says, “in a footnote added in 1924 to The Psychology of Everyday Life, Freud himself said “the real motive was to find his mother’s womb empty of sibling rivals.” Cf. Jones 153–57, 1:10 and others. (59.) In colloquial English, she had been “canned” or fired on suspicion she had taken family money—a charge raised by Philipp. For these details, see Bernfeld 1951, correcting the attribution to Emmanuel in Bernfeld and Bernfeld 1944, 111–12. (60.) Trans. Strachey, in Freud 1953–74, 6:50, with This’s italics, ellipses added. (61.) Trans. Strachey, in Freud 1953–74, 6:51, slightly modified. (62.) This 1994, 99–101. (63.) Masson and Masson 1978, 204–207; see also Bonomi 2013. (64.) See chapter 2, this volume, notes 67–70. (65.) Swan 1974, 40–43. (66.) Swan 1974, 46. (67.) Bernfeld 1951, 115, 116, 122. (68.) Bernfeld 1851, 116. (69.) See Kurtz 1992 ; for his book, see FM, ch. 4. (70.) This 1994, 101 says, “Freud specifies in a note: “Der Schrank oder Kasten (armoire or chest) is a symbol of the mother’s body).” (71.) Bernfeld 1951, 115–17. Page 28 of 32

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (72.) This (1994, 98) gives Freud words he could have said to Professor Dorpfeld, Heinrich Schliemann’s assistant at Troy, had Freud overcome his shyness and spoken to him when both were on board ship, crossing from Trieste to Brindisi on the trip to Athens: “the analyst, working among the living, has the luck: the unconscious is an ideal terrain in which to dig, since . . . the subsoil . . . protects the psychic object against the wear and tear of time.” (73.) Abbott 1969, 357. (74.) This 1994, 94. Phidias’s statue was 20 meters tall, Jupiter on Olympus 13 meters, and the Colossus of Rhodes 41.80 meters! (75.) This 1994, 94. (76.) This 1994, 89. (77.) Bettelheim 1984, x. (78.) Bettelheim 1984, ix–x. (79.) Hudson 2008, 273: “Madhusūdana’s long body . . . divides [the panel] horizontally into three portions. In the center, viewed as if from above, he stretches out on the Snake as bed.” (80.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 574. Lewin’s work on the dream screen seems largely forgotten, but where mentioned, it seems to be standing the test of time, as the Vermorels attest. See Little 1970 for an early affirmation; Gammill 1980 extends the dream screen to therapeutic listening; Saarinin 2003 finds dream screen symbolism in painters and writers. (81.) Lewin 1950, 108–20; see chapter 2, this volume, note 70. (82.) Lewin 1946, 420–21. (83.) Lewin 1953, 175. Lewin continues: “Isikower phenomena . . . appear . . . while a person is dropping off to sleep. Typically, a large, usually dark round mass seems to approach the sleeper; it envelops him, at the same time producing a rough doughy, corrugated feeling in the mouth and the skin, so that he loses his sense of ego boundary and cannot say where the division is between his body and the mass. All these qualities are reproductions of the little baby’s falling asleep at the breast.” (84.) Lewin 1946, 421. (85.) A later study distills further: “a dream which a patient was ‘looking at’ suddenly curved over backward, rolled up and then rolled off into the distance away from the patient” (Lewin 1953, 174).

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (86.) Lewin 1946, 420–21. (87.) Quotations from Caldwell 1999a, 73–75; a kaḷam drawing is on page 74 of her work. (88.) Lewin 1953, 188. (89.) Caldwell 1999a, 84. (90.) Caldwell 1999a, 92. (91.) Caldwell 1999a, 90–91. (92.) Caldwell 1999a, 114. (93.) Caldwell 1999a, 124. (94.) Caldwell 1999a, 97–98, 170–73, 177–83, 190, 192–93. (95.) Lewin 1953, 175. Cf. Lewin 1949, 431; Lewin 1952, 304. (96.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 32. (97.) Obeyesekere does not list Lewin in any of the four bibliographies cited in mine. Yet he uses the term “dream-screen” twice in his most recent book to describe shifting visualizations of Mary, the Church of England, and the crucifixion by Margery Kempe (2012, 218, 221). He says of the “ ‘I,’ or ‘ego,’ . . . [t]he physical person of course appears in the dream but pictorially, in a screen as it were, outside of the thinking ‘I’ ” (38). He also mentions a Tibetan vision of “a white light, like that of a curtain,” featuring two consorts and a guru (120), and writes, “ ‘Pictures in a diorama’ is a neat metaphor for ‘showings’ that simply appear before this visionary [Helena Blavatsky], unmediated by the thinking I” (342). (98.) Rolland 1959, 339, my translation, as with all Rolland passages that follow. (99.) Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 282, citing Rolland 1959, 201; cf. Lewin 1949, 427: “In short, the sleeper has lost all ego boundaries because when he went to sleep he became united with the breast.” (100.) See Vermorel and Vermorel 1993, 282, citing Rolland 1959, 216 and 217. (101.) Rolland 1959, 217. (102.) See Rolland 1930-, 1:27, 41–42, 43–47, 67, 81 197–99, 215, 239, 258, 264; 2:156–61. (103.) Lewin 1944, 226, citing Freud.

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose (104.) Lewin 1944, 227. (105.) Lewin 1952, 295; see Lewin 1949, 424, 432, 433. “The pure infantile dream without visual content, which repeats the infantile situation, was found heralding states of elation.” (106.) Lewin 1950, 144–45. (107.) See chapter 6, this volume. (108.) Lewin 1950, 87 and 138. (109.) See Lewin 1950, 87. (110.) Lewin 1950, 14–49. (111.) Here Lewin draws on William James. Lewin comments on James’s argument against a reductio ad absurdum of the sexual and against medical materialism: James wrote in 1902, three years before Freud’s Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality, so his stance against a “genital theory of religious ecstasy” was “not unfounded”; “but as fate and psychoanalytic research would have it, so far as he considered his argument from the digestive function a reduction ad absurdum, we can only say, psychoanalytically, as it was said patristically, ‘Credo quia absurdum’ ” (Lewin 1950, 147–48). (112.) Lewin 1950, 146–47. (113.) Lewin 1950, 149, my italics. (114.) Lewin 1950, 149–50. (115.) Lewin 1950, 150. (116.) Lewin 1950, 150–51. (117.) Lewin 1950, 151. (118.) See above, this chapter. (119.) Lewin 1950, 151–52. (120.) Lewin 1950, 152–53. (121.) Lewin 1950, 153, my italics. (122.) Cf. Lewin 1952, 315, on a bad agoraphobic dream, in which “the wide agora is like the dream screen and all those expanses which stand for the

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Thinking Goddesses, Mothers, Brothers, and Snakes with Freud and Bose surface of the mother”; “Thus it is a version, but an anxious one, of the oceanic feeling of which Romain Rolland wrote to Freud.”

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud Alf Hiltebeitel

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190878375.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords With the premise that the Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk implies an unmanifest goddess, chapter 9 answers why Bose’s gift was not a Bengali goddess like Kālī or Durgā. It looks further at the iconography of Ananta, Viṣṇu, and the Goddess at the south Indian Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple studied by Dennis Hudson, and then at the Śākta or Goddess-oriented text of the Devī-Māhātmya. Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple panels show Pañcarātra vyūha manifestations of Viṣṇu’s creative and destructive roles, and also images of Viṣṇu’s two wives plus an invisible Nīlā as his yoganidrā, who awakens him. The connection with the Devī-Māhātmya comes through in this temple’s iconography of Madhusūdana, related to Viṣṇu lying on Ananta. The Devī-Māhātmya, a pan-Indian text especially popular in Bose’s Bengal, supplies a version of the Madhusūdana myth, and is Bose’s likely reference point for his gift to Freud. Keywords:   Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple, Pañcarātra, vyūha, Devī-Māhātmya, Madhusūdana, prakṛti, yoganidrā, unplumbable navel

WHY DID BOSE and his colleagues choose a goddess-less “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” as their seventy-fifth birthday gift to Freud? It is a matter of finding an unmanifest Goddess in their gift. To make this point, however, requires shifting from the iconography of Viṣṇu to one that combines Viṣṇu with the Goddess. The main text here is one Bose certainly would have known: the Devī-Māhātmya. It was implicitly referenced in chapter 6 by Rangin Haldar, as a member of Bose’s circle of associates, where he described the myth of the crushing of the Buffalo demon in connection with Bose’s theory of child development. As noted in chapter 5, Bose was knowledgeable about the Purāṇas, and the Devī-Mahātmya, Page 1 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud a text from the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, would have been well-known within the Goddess traditions of Bengal and Bose’s natal area in Bihar. Before discussing that, however, we look at an iconography of Viṣṇu and the Goddess at the south Indian Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple in Kanchipuram, Tamilnadu, for the way it formulates similar themes. For our purposes of bestguessing the motivations of Bose and company’s selection of Freud’s birthday gift, the Devī-Māhātmya link is the more decisive, but the Kanchipuram temple gives many contextual flavors with which to anticipate it. Vasudha Narayanan sent me two photographs she had taken at Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ: one of a Viṣṇu seated in a pose similar to that of Paravāsudeva on a seat that is not a snake, as mentioned in chapter 7, and another of a figure in a similar position, “said to be of the king.”1 (p.254) Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ was built by Nandivarman Pallavamalla (ca. 731–796 CE), the stated king, and was named the “Emperor’s Vishnu House” (as Dennis Hudson renders one of the meanings of Tamil paramecchura-viṇṇagaram; Sanskrit parameśvara-viṣṇugṛham).2 The iconography of this temple became a great passion of Hudson’s once he discovered that “it could be illuminated by setting it alongside the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and some Tamil poems composed by the Āḻvārs.”3 Most important was a poem by Nandivarman’s contemporary, the Āḻvār poet Tirumaṅkai, which described the temple, and according to Hudson, referenced a three-storied feature of it. When built, this feature was an innovation that stood out architecturally, aesthetically, politically, and theologically.4 [Viṣṇu’s] vimāna palace is His body; and He lives inside the vimāna as three black stone icons. God’s body as palace has three stories (tritalavimāna). On each story, there is a sanctum (garbhagṛha) housing God’s body as icon in a specific posture. In the bottom floor sanctum, He sits. In the middle floor sanctum, He reclines. In the top floor sanctum, He stands.5 As we examine these icons through Hudson’s interpretation, we find him wrestling with virtually all the iconographic themes we have been looking at, but in a startlingly novel configuration. I follow Hudson where he is above all daring in ways that can engage Bosean and Freudian readings. I keep the discussion mainly to icons on the bottom and middle floors that involve Ananta, and stay clear of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s Kṛṣṇa iconography that surrounds them. The three sanctums are vertically aligned beneath a fourth space: a totally inaccessible empty cube. Hudson thinks it represents Paravāsudeva “as the dimension of God that cannot be seen” and as “the Self (ātman) present within Kṛṣṇa standing inside . . . the top sanctum” just below it.6 That would be the standing statue on the uppermost floor, which has long been (p.255) missing.7 Hudson thinks it would have been an image of Kṛṣṇa standing alone, with no Page 2 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud iconography on any surrounding wall space. Apparently, this top sanctum was accessible only by a ladder.8 Directly below it, on the middle floor, a reclining Nārāyaṇa lies asleep on Ananta, who curls his hood behind and above Nārāyaṇa’s head. Viṣṇu’s wives Śrī and Bhūmi sit behind the reclining image, by his left side (see figure 9.1). This sanctum is not accessible to the public, but the cognoscenti could have reached it by steps that come up from within the lower sanctum.9 In its restricted area, it is surrounded by iconography mainly from portions of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa that highlight the life of Kṛṣṇa. Directly below it, on the bottom floor, is the seated icon called Vāsudeva. It is accessible from the entrance, yet is recessed behind a frontal hall and thus hidden from where activities open to the public would have gone (p.256) on.10 This recessed seated Vāsudeva faces west in lalitāsana, his left leg dangling and right leg tucked to the side, his back two hands holding the wheel and conch (see figure 9.2)—all as we have seen with ParavāsudevaParamapadanātha. But instead

Figure 9.1 Reclining icon in middle-floor sanctum, with goddeses Śrī and Bhūmi. Source: Photo by Dennis Hudson.

of holding the lotus and mace in his front hands, they make the mudrās of “fear not” (abhaya, right) and “giving boons” (varadā, left); and no Ananta seats or hoods him.11

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud But Ananta is there, and not only on the second story directly above him. As Hudson interprets it, he figures in a somewhat more accessible iconography that emanates outward from the sanctum. This is a sequence of three (p.257) reliefs on outside walls of the sanctum that houses the recessed and seated Vāsudeva, which figuratively surround him in forming a four-directional mandala in panels that face out from the sanctum’s exterior north-, east-, and south-facing walls.12 Vāsudeva and his three ground-floor emanations are taken by Hudson to be four vyūhas, or “formations,” in accord with a schema

Figure 9.2 West-facing Vāsudeva vyūha,

associated with a liturgical system called Pañcarātra. The

ground-floor sanctum, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple, Kanchipuram.

north-, east-, and south-facing panels, featuring Saṃkarṣaṇa,

Source: Hudson 2008, 91.

Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, respectively, are vyūha “transformations” of the recessed Vāsudeva. Unlike Vāsudeva in the dark sanctum, the three other vyūhas would have been illumined by light coming from openings in a further exterior wall, which left them also relatively inaccessible. Beyond that, the public would still have had access to a whole gallery of images on the outer face of the next wall and the frontal hall, where visitors could see scenes of Pallava history and Bhāgavata Purāṇa lore (with only one scene about Kṛṣṇa). The vyūha panel connected with Ananta is Saṃkarṣaṇa, whose name Hudson translates as the “Plower.” Proceeding in a customary clockwise fashion, it would have been the first of the three seen by those who circumambulated the inner ground-floor sanctum (see figure 9.3). Here is how Hudson introduces Saṃkarṣaṇa’s vyūha image: The badly damaged sculpture portrays the white Plower, pleasantly inebriated, sitting in a royal pose of sensual ease [rājalīlāsana] on a flat throne. . . . His left leg is pendant and his right leg rests on the throne. Five cobras with expanded hoods rise behind his head and crown.13 Page 4 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud Of the four vyūhas, only Saṃkarṣaṇa has this distinctive posture. Saṃkarṣaṇa is a name for Kṛṣṇa’s brother Balarāma, who carries a plow through Kurukṣetra as his weapon in the Mahābhārata, in which the plow symbolism is important for its links with karma.14 He is also the incarnation of AnantaŚeṣa.15 The Mahābhārata also understands him to be a vyūha, or “emanation,” of KṛṣṇaVāsudeva, as are Kṛṣṇa’s son Pradyumna and his grandson Aniruddha. Those continuing the circumambulation would find that the Pradyumna and Aniruddha vyūhas replicate the lalitāsana posture (p.258) and the placement of the hands and 16

Figure 9.3 Saṃkarṣaṇa vyūha, facing out

feet of the Vāsudeva vyūha. These, as we have seen, mostly

from northern wall of ground-floor sanctum, Vaikuṇṭha Purumāḷ temple.

replicate those of a conventional Paravāsudeva

Source: Hudson 2008, 98.

seated in Vaikuṇṭha (according to Hudson, Paravāsudeva is represented in Vaikuṇṭha here by the empty cube above the three sanctums). Only Saṃkarṣaṇa is shown somewhat tipsy in a position of royal ease, and only he has five snakes rising to hood him that do not arise from a serpent-seat. The five snakes nonetheless betoken Ananta, who is identified with Saṃkarṣaṇa. Here, now, is what Hudson says further about Saṃkarṣaṇa’s signs of inebriation: This north-facing Plower formation represents the first pair of Vāsudeva’s glorious excellences (bhaga): om7niscient knowledge (p.259) (jñāna) and its indefatigable transformative power (bala). Saṃkarṣaṇa the Snake is portrayed here as the self-deluded omniscience on which everything is based. He is called Endless (ananta). He begins the sequence of formations as “First to Escape,” and after everything else dissolves he is the “Primordial remainder.” . . . The endless process, however, depends upon misperception (avidyā): God has to see double, as it were. . . . The universe of differing entities thus comes into being, one might say, when a dimension within the One gets inebriated enough to see double, couples with itself, and becomes pregnant. But this is the union of consciousness Page 5 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud with the primordial substratum of matter (pradhāna) and has the nature of a dream, of an imagined scene, or of a thought. The fetus produced exists only so long as the dreamer’s imagination or thought continues. In other words, our universe conceived within God exists only as long as God thinks it.17 The doubling of the One to set in motion the dreamlike quality of misperceiving this world, beginning with its cosmogony, is suggestive, as is the Plower’s masculine association with thought, as a misperception based on the dream of union with the primordial substratum of feminine matter. For the moment, though, another doubling occurs in a panel on the northern wall of the ground-floor circumambulatory walkway accessible to the public. This doubling does not occur within the inner transformations of the vyūhas but, instead, involves rather an outer iconographic transformation of just the Saṃkarṣaṇa vyūha. Saṃkarṣana now doubles as Ananta. The snake is shown in the form of the inebriated Saṃkarṣaṇa, likewise in the rājalīlāsana position of royal ease, looking even more tipsy by the grotesque (possibly lascivious)18 expression on his face and the curvature of his waist, and with his legs reversing the position of Saṃkarṣaṇa’s (see figure 9.4).19 (p.260) According to Hudson, he represents a “dark part of the Bhagavān” that lies “selfdeluded or ‘inebriated’ ” beneath the Brahmāṇḍa or egg of Brahmā, holding up the worlds from Pātāla (the underworld of snakes and demons) on one of his hoods.20 This is apparently the tamasic form that Parāśara’s stotra speaks of under the name Ananta Deva!21 Says Hudson, “His pleasant inebriation signifies Vāsudeva’s voluntary delusion (tamas) of omniscience, which is necessary if a sense of ‘I’ is to awaken within God to allow a perception of duality, the rise of passion, and the (p.261) act of

Figure 9.4 Ananta positioned like emanation.”22 As the most Saṃkarṣaṇa on north-facing wall of outer publicly accessible representation of the Ananta-Saṃkarṣaṇa configuration, it seems to be a kind of Page 6 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud public face on the same ground floor on which the snake doubles for a multiform of the vyūha Saṃkarṣaṇa.

circumambulatory on ground floor, Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple. Source: American Institute of Indian Studies.

As to the link between the Ananta represented doubly with Saṃkarṣaṇa on the ground floor and the Ananta who serves as a couch for Nārāyaṇa on the middle floor, it must lie not only in the self-contained transformative mutuality of the vyūhas but also in some carryover of the dreamlike quality of Ananta’s inebriation. At this point, we should see how Hudson interprets the rapport between the three sanctums and icons below the empty cube, which he takes to signify an aniconic Paravāsudeva in “three stages of self-transformation” below it. I cite two passages from Hudson’s description. In the first, the middle-floor icon is said to “mediate” between the other two: The three sanctums beneath that hidden cube in the vimāna . . . are esoteric depictions of the process by which Supreme Vāsudeva transforms himself “internally.” Each transformation is more “dense,” “manifest,” or “gross” than the one that produces it. The densest manifestation is represented by the upper sanctum housing the standing Kṛṣṇa. . . . The least dense manifestation is represented by the lower sanctum housing the sitting icon. . . . The middle sanctum housing the reclining icon mediates between the two extremes.23 The second passage explains such characterizations of God’s body while depicting the intermediate icon as representing that from which one seeks to escape. Hudson explicates an Āḻvār poem by Catakōpan (Tiruvāymōḻi 7.6.1), which he interprets in the right column here as alluding to the three positions found in the three sanctums: My cowherd [standing] my rough dark diamond how will this self of mine [reclining] ever-trammeled in the three (p.262) worlds unfolding in your navel’s lotus how will it come through [sitting] and reach you there in your overwhelming world of light?24

Hudson comments: The top sanctum is God’s grossly material body (sthūlaśarira) where he stands as Kṛṣṇa in the world we inhabit. The middle sanctum is God’s subtle material body (sūkṣmaśarira), where he reclines as the source of our world. This is where Brahmā repeatedly goes to sleep and awakens for a Page 7 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud lifetime we experience as the repeated dissolution and emanation of our seemingly endless world of death and birth, the realm of saṃsāra so difficult to cross. The bottom sanctum is God’s body of pure material being (śuddhasattva) which Kṛṣṇa calls his Highest Home. It is the ultimate goal for anyone seeking emancipation. Catakōpan’s problem translates into the terms of the three-story vimāna this way: How can we move from the topfloor sanctum to the bottom-floor sanctum without getting trapped in the middle-floor sanctum?25 Here, the mid-level icon links saṃsāra with the attachments to this world that have the god’s navel as their source, and which unfold from the lotus that arises from it. In the middle sanctum, Nārāyaṇa lies asleep on Ananta, who curls his hood behind and above Nārāyaṇa’s head. Nārāyaṇa has not yet awakened. His wives Śrī and Bhūmi sit visibly awake behind his lower legs and feet, where ŚrīLakṣmī will massage his legs once he awakens. Ananta also seems to be awake— at least enough to arch his hood over Nārāyaṇa’s head. No lotus with Brahmā arises yet from Nārāyaṇa’s navel. A standing Padmanābha in a niche on this midlevel sanctum’s outer wall marks the beginning of a pathway into the sanctum and shows “Brahmā’s lotus inside His stomach.”26 A third wife Yoganidrā/Nīlā (a name for Viṣṇu’s yogic (p.263) sleep, or yoganidrā) is not represented visibly but imagined to be there as well.27 Hudson describes the reclining deity as “the unmanifest Nārāyaṇa in the waters.”28 It seems that his serpent couch has yet to bring the dreaming Viṣṇu up to the surface. This rapport of an invisible Yoganidrā/Nīlā and Viṣṇu still sleeping within the waters and, as always, consubstantial with the serpent couch he lies on, suggests an intrauterine setting. In awakening Viṣṇu, Yoganidrā/Nīlā awakens especially the eyes, which, as we have noted in the last two chapters, play striking roles in the visualizations of the primal scenes of Brahmā emerging from the lotus and the killing of Madhu and Kaiṭabha. The Madhusūdana story is the subject of the panel that preoccupied us in chapter 8 (see figure 8.1): the one that faces out from the southern wall of the circumambulatory around the second-floor sanctum that shows Nārāyaṇa waking up with a dreamlike “long body,” still reclining on Ananta,29 and with one of the Asuras armed menacingly behind him. Hudson discusses the “long” Madhusūdana panel in relation to the image of the sleeping Viṣṇu, still in the waters, in the middle-floor sanctum, with the unmanifest Yoganidrā/Nīlā by his side along with the visible goddesses Śrī and Bhūmidevī. Hudson’s interpretation prioritizes a Pañcarātra text called the Jayakhyā Saṃhitā, according to which Nārāyāṇa arises from the navel of the vyūha Aniruddha, the Unobstructed: This subtle shape corresponds to the three formations rearranged as a male sleeping inside the sanctum on a snake before Brahmā appears. . . . This formation is Vāsudeva’s fully differentiated state called viraṭpuruṣa Page 8 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud and contains all phenomena that will come into being with spacetime, including avatars, mantras, and the devas to which mantras refer. . . . By means of the splendor of his unified omniscience, the Unobstructed’s ability to increase his size as he wills sends out the water lily of his heart. Its root is his navel and its shape is of requisite breadth and of extraordinary splendor. The unobstructed Hari then emits Brahmā. . . . But Brahmā’s passion (rajas or rāga) is excessive because he thinks he is the only cause, self-born as it were, in the lotus. Whatever Brahmā produces, therefore, is (p.264) chaotic. He makes worlds and then has to unmake them. . . . To educate Brahmā, Hari creates earth (bhūmi) in the midst of the water inside the lotus. With the pleasure of battle in mind, he then lies down on it in yoganidrā. . . . Two drops of his sweat descend from the lotus stalk and become desire (kāma) and anger (krodha) in the shape of two asura brothers.30 We now see that all three goddesses mentioned to be behind Viṣṇu in the middlefloor sanctum have roles. Lakṣmī massages Viṣṇu’s legs when he initially awakens; Bhūmidevī now forms a second bed for him; and Yoganidrā/Nīlā is his yoganidrā from which he reawakens, or awakens again. Let us note that Viṣṇu here resumes his yoganidrā, lying down to sleep this second time not on Ananta but on the earth, and not to emit the cosmogonic lotus from his navel but, “with the pleasure of battle in mind,” to trick and kill the two demons. Hudson translates yoganidrā as Aniruddha’s “sleep of unified consciousness,” but I am doubtful that this is fully appropriate, since Viṣṇu dreams in this state, which leaves us with the question of how unified his consciousness would be.31 Paradoxically, at this point Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa’s yogic semi-unconscious (one might say preconscious) sleep would seem to complement or double for Ananta’s semiconscious inebriation, which harbors the karma of all unliberated beings. It may enrich matters to think that this mutual semi-unconscious/preconscious dyad of deity and snake corresponds with the inebriation of Ananta-Saṃkarṣaṇa depicted on the ground-floor panel, which also is on an outer southern circumambulatory on which the public could move along, which is itself outside the inner, equally south-facing panel of the vyūha Aniruddha. From there, this dyadic consubstantiality would be carried upstairs, as it were, from the vyūha level of potentialities to the middle level where it can stage and inform the cosmogonic process, especially where Viṣṇu now awakens from his yoganidrā to engage Madhu and Kaiṭabha, desire and anger, “with the pleasure of battle in mind.” With this moment of awakening, we are almost ready to complete our turn from Viṣṇu to the Goddess, and with that to offer our best guess (p.265) for what Bose and company were thinking with their gift to Freud. But Hudson has two more insights that will factor into that answer. First, Hudson seems to be right

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud that Aniruddha’s vyūha lies behind Brahmā’s birth from the lotus. Here is how he sees that working: The Unobstructed begins to awaken with a sexual act. Lying on his snake bed, he ejaculates the embryo of Brahmā into the lotus womb located at his navel. In narratives and sculptures, that ejaculation is portrayed as the ākāśa lotus rising upward from the navel of the reclining Unobstructed. The embryonic Brahmā ascends the stalk to enter its lotus bud. The bud then opens, and Brahmā—the Unobstructed’s ego—is awake. Brahmā’s body and the lotus now unfold into the multilayered cosmos of spacetime, and the Unobstructed sets up the Plower on his throne. Again, he watches his own waking ego play the patriarch of a very large and very complex family in his residence on Mount Meru.32 Brahmā as Viṣṇu’s “waking ego” offers an explanation of how both deities could be present in Romain Rolland’s oleographic remembrance of his original “Moi” at his birth.33 The Plower’s throne I understand to be the underworld seat in Pātāla from which a slightly tipsy Saṃkarṣaṇa, a.k.a. Ananta Deva, upholds the full Brahmāṇḍa, or egg of Brahmā. Last, and for my purposes most important, I quote Hudson on the subumbilical origins of this “embryonic Brahmā”: Moreover, whether Brahmā is awake or asleep, his body exists inside Vāsudeva and never leaves. Brahmā is not born out of the womb in the way we are, but in it. Brahmā as spacetime may therefore be imagined as a fetus waking and sleeping within the chorion and placenta, which exist inside the uterus behind the mother’s navel. In the iconography of the middle-floor sanctum, the chorion and the placenta containing Brahmā are represented in the dark waters in which the Unobstructed sleeps on the Plower as snake.34 (p.266) So, it comes down to this. Viṣṇu’s navel must imply that of the mother, and beyond that, of course, is the mother’s womb—and not only as dreamed forth in the lotus. Hudson has been building up to this by speaking of a primal mother/father dyad in which Viṣṇu is the father and the mother is Śrī. But again, there could be a difficulty: Śrī-Lakṣmī already has a consistent, visible role in the primal scene massaging Nārāyaṇa’s legs that makes it difficult to explain how she could simultaneously provide Brahmā’s maternal womb.35 Rather, this new paradoxical situation where Viṣṇu’s navel implies the mother’s womb beneath it may be conceivable only incipiently in a Vaiṣṇava iconographic context, and possibly not even actually there. Where it is conceivable is in the goddessoriented Śākta theology of the Devī-Māhātmya, with which Bose and his colleagues had every likelihood of being familiar. It concerns there, moreover, the same interlude where Viṣṇu goes back into his yoganidrā to engage Madhu Page 10 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud and Kaiṭabha as Madhusūdana, except in this text there is no second yoganidrā and it is not a sequel. It is the main event of the whole brief story. It occurs in the last thirty-three verses of the first chapter of the Devī-Māhātmya, the first and most primal of three caritas, or narrative units, into which the text is divided. The second, its more famous centerpiece, tells of Durgā’s killing of the Buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura, and the third features her slaying of the demons Śumba and Niśumba. As Raj Balkaran shows, the three caritas form a ring structure around the midpoint of the second, with each carita having three times as many chapters as the preceding, but with the proviso that one counts the opening frame story as a part of the first carita. The frame story centers on a king, Suratha, suffering in forest exile from his family and kingdom, who quickly meets a similarly estranged Vaiśya named Samādhi and a sage, Medhas. According to Balkaran, The king’s internal monologue possesses a reflective “stream of consciousness” quality, perhaps mimicking the fluctuations of māyā itself, which will soon enough explicitly enter the discourse once he asks after the nature of his suffering. Like the phenomenal waking dreamscape which is māyā, wherein we are but reflections of each other, as soon as the displaced king begins reflecting upon (p.267) his wealth, a displaced merchant appears, as if projected from his own mental prompting.36 Balkaran adds, “In keeping with the tendency of māyā to multiply, just as one became two in the dreamscape of the king, the two become three as they together approach the sage.”37 This frame story introduces the passage where Yoganidrā/Nīlā awakens Viṣṇu from what we have now seen is his own “stream of preconsciousness” dreamscape. Balkaran says, “The absence of a chapter break serves to unite the plight of the king, the merchant, their interaction with Medhas,” and the role of the Goddess at the beginning of the eon, “as collectively indicative of the universal dreamscape of mahāmāyā, where the boundaries between individuals, events, and eons”—and I would add, names for the Goddess38—“are provisional at best.” Balkaran can thus ask, “Does the discourse of “Mahāmāyā” begin when the king asks after her greatness, launching the first exploit (DM 1,45)? Or prior to this, when the sage first names her (1.42)? . . . Or perhaps prior to this when the king begins his lament born of her illusion (1.10). Perhaps she is present from the very inception of the text” when Suratha falls “at the hands of his enemy, ‘though they were inferior (to him).’ ”39 The speaker is the antediluvian sage Mārkaṇḑeya, speaking in the Purāṇa named after him, this time to reveal a more primal scene than even his story about Kṛṣṇa on the banyan leaf:40 Here is the gist of his “discourse of ‘Mahāmāyā’ ” from the Devī-Māhātmya 1.45–77, extracted from Thomas Coburn’s translation:41

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud The king asks Mārkaṇḍeya, “Who is this Goddess whom you call Mahāmāyā? How was she born? What is her work?” The Ṛṣi replies, (p. 268) “Her birth is in many forms. When she becomes manifest for the sake of accomplishing the work of the gods, then, even though she is called ‘eternal,’ she is said to be ‘born in the world.’ ” When the universe dissolved into the primordial waters at the end of the eon, lord Viṣṇu, having stretched out Śeṣa entered yoganidrā. Then two terrible Asuras Madhu and Kaiṭabha arose from the dirt in Viṣṇu’s ear and set out to slay Brahmā. Brahmā Prajāpati dwelt in a lotus in Viṣṇu’s navel. And having seen the two fierce Asuras and the sleeping Janārdana, Brahmā with single-pointed concentration praised Yoganidrā, who had made her abode in Hari’s eyes, to awaken Hari. Brahmā said, “You are the Self of Vedic speech, the nectar of the gods. You are the Goddess, the supreme mother. By you is everything supported, created¸ and protected, and you always consume it at the end. You are the great knowledge, the great illusion, the great insight, the great memory, and the great delusion, the great Goddess, the great demoness. You are the primordial matter of everything (prakṛtistvaṃ sarvasya), manifesting the triad of constituent strands, the night of time, the great night, and the terrible night of delusion. You are śrī, you are modesty. Terrible with your sword, spear, cudgel, discus, conch, bow, arrows, sling, and iron mace as your weapons, gentle, exceedingly beautiful, you are the supreme queen. Whatever and wherever anything exists, whether it be real or unreal, of all that you are the power (śakti). By you is the creator of the world, the protector of the world, who consumes the world, brought under the influence of sleep. Who here is capable of praising you? May you confuse these two Asuras. May the unfallen lord of the universe be quickly awakened.” The goddess of darkness, praised there in this fashion, having gone forth from Viṣṇu’s eyes, nose, arms, heart, and breast, presented herself in front of Brahmā of unmanifest birth. And Janārdana, lord of the universe, released by her, arose from his couch on the single ocean; then he saw the two, Madhu and Kaiṭabha, of wicked soul, tremendously virile and valorous, their eyes red with anger, endeavoring to slay Brahmā. Having gotten up, the wise and blessed Hari fought with the two of them for five thousand years, striking them with his arms. Intoxicated by their excessive might, deluded by Mahāmāyā, those two said to Keśava: “Choose a boon from us.” The blessed one said, “May the two of you, who are pleased with me, be slain by me. Just this do I choose.” Thinking, “We have been (p. 269) deceived,” and having seen the entire universe to consist solely of water, the two of them addressed the lotus-eyed lord, “Slay us on a place where the earth is not flooded with water.” Having said, “So be it,” the blessed one who carries conch, discus, and club, put the two of them on his

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud lap and cut off their heads with his discus. This is how she, when praised by Brahmā, came into being. Although the myth is known in two Mahābhārata versions that are probably older and in fifteen accounts in the Purāṇas42 that are probably later, modern poster art on this Madhusūdana scene seems to be rarer than its Śeṣaśāyin prequel. I own only one such depiction (see figure 19.5), which seems to be rare, and to depict the scene as it is portrayed in the Devī-Māhātmya. It does not seem to appear in the few depictions of the scene available in internet collections, all of which portray a version from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa in which Viṣṇu uses his power of expansion to grow large so fast that the two demons, who can also expand but not as fast, are trapped beneath him in the waters, nearly drowning until he seizes them up onto his thighs and beheads them. On the contrary, figure 9.5 shows the killing of two dry demons with his mace or club, whom he draws into his lap or groin. As Coburn observes, the killing in the Devī-Māhātmya takes place differently from other versions where Viṣṇu outwits the demons by killing them on such spots as the earth or Viṣṇu’s thighs. The earth as medinī, formed from the demons’ fat (medhas), can supply a killing site uncovered by water, or in a Mahābhārata version, Viṣṇu’s uncovered thighs (ūrvī, taken as urvī, also a name for earth) can do the same.43 Both present the possibility of an etymological deception involving the earth, and thus make Earth a featured actor in the story, as does the Jayakyhā-Saṃhitā account told above and the second-floor panel at Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ, where Bhūmidevī sits beside Śrī behind Viṣṇu lying on Ananta in the waters. It is possible that the Devī-Māhātmya “misses the point,” as Daniel Ingalls put it in

Figure 9.5 Viṣṇu off his serpent couch but still on the ocean, killing Madhu and Kaiṭabha on his lap, presumably depicting the scene from the Devī-Māḥātmya. Source: Collection of Alf Hiltebeitel.

a note to Coburn;44 or, I think, more likely, it may streamline the story, substituting “lap” for “thighs” while Page 13 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud eliding Bhūmidevī, being interested in a grander vision of an all-inclusive Goddess and concentrating on her rather than the oft-told-about trickiness of Viṣṇu. (p.270) It is this all-inclusiveness of Viṣṇu’s yoganidrā that makes the DevīMāhātmya interesting as we attempt to peer into the choice Bose and his colleagues made of a “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” as their gift for Freud. Let me begin with an area where there is a loose match between Bose’s psychoanalytic interests and the Goddess-oriented theological interests of the Devī-Māhātmya. Insisting on the ontological unity of the Goddess but drawing on terms associated with Sāṃkhya dualism, the text articulates a soft dualistic monism, similar to what Nandy ascribes to Bose.45 But pace Nandy, Bose, again like the Devī-Māhātmya, would not (p.271) be interested in a “split goddess.”46 The full text exuberantly abounds in goddesses, both past and future ones, including the spousal Śrī-Lakṣmī and Pārvatī47 and other more aggressive consort goddesses called “the Mothers”; the unmarried Durgā-Mahiṣāsuramardiṇī whose reputation in most places (Bengal is the exception48) is that of a virgin; “tooth goddesses” like Kālī-Cāmuṇḍā49 (and the “red-toothed” Raktadantikā50; and “breast goddesses” like the “Supportress of the universe” or “Wet-nurse” Jagaddhātrī51) and Śākambharī, “She-who-supports-with-vegetables.”52 These devīs have been grist for split goddess” theorists’ mills, but their splits are not what the text begins with53 or what it theorizes about it in its so-called limbs, or aṅgas (basically, “appendices”). The text tells how this whole panoply of goddesses proceeds from one primal Goddess called Yoganidrā/Nīlā in the portion we have been discussing. In introducing Yoganidrā/Nīlā in its overture, the Devī-Māhātmya says she is one and eternal, yet “takes on many forms.” In the most schematically theological of the aṅgas called the Prādhānika Rahasya, or “The Secret Relating to Primordial Matters,” all female and male divine forms proceed from “the unmanifest form of Mahālakṣmī” whose first emanation is as the unmanifest yoganidrā under the name of Mahākālī.54 This aṅga, as Coburn nicely says, “presents what we might call the internal life of the godhead, or more properly the ‘Goddess-head.’ ”55 In introducing Mahālakṣmī as wearing a snake on her head, along with a liṅga and yoni,56 it bears some similarity to the head of (p.272) Medusa as Freud describes it, and offers the best confirmation I know of that snakes are a hermeneutical symbol of all “genera of becoming.”57 In the liṅgam and yoni on Mahālakṣmī’s head, we may now, however, recognize a primordial distillation of a more significant match between what the DevīMāhātmya says about yoganidrā and one of Bose’s signature convictions. As he wrote in his January 31, 1929 letter to Freud, much of the motivation of maternal deity is traceable to the joint-paternal imago of the Oedipus mother. Bose wrote this two years and a few months before sending Freud the statuette. In the interval, he had put his ideas on record to Freud, and did so leaving a long enough time to carry out the planning to send a gift that embodied those ideas, on which it is not too much to say that Bose remained fixated. To put the most Page 14 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud basic point that could have inspired Bose’s part in the choice of gift succinctly, the Devī-Māhātmya accounts for the “maternal deity” through a “combined parental image.” The lotus that rises from Viṣṇu’s navel rises above the waters of the goddess’s womb, making any births that come from Viṣṇu’s navel as much hers as his. Let me follow this point with four ramifications. First, let us tackle what it means that the “combined parental image” at the source of “ ‘maternal deity’ is traceable” in Yoganidrā/Nīlā’s case to an “Oedipus mother.” The case can be made once we recognize the primal scene as the family drama it is. Not only are Yoganidrā/Nīlā and Viṣṇu a combined parental image joined at the navel but also Brahmā, Madhu, and Kaiṭabha are their resistant sons. Brahmā is the firstborn and favored son, and the two demons are sons whom the oldest son wants the mother to awaken the father to kill. One of the Mahābhārata’s two older versions of the story makes this sonship explicit when Madhu and Kaiṭabha say to Viṣṇu that the boon they demand in return for accepting their killing on a spot “where space is uncovered” is that “we shall become your sons, fair-eyed one,” to which Viṣṇu agrees before thinking of “his own uncovered thighs” and beheading them there.58 We can now make something of the Devī-Māhātmya’s seeming correction of “thighs” to “lap,” which brings the two sons back closer to the “combined parental” womb and navel that bore them. Note how figure 9.5 depicts them drawn head-first into Viṣṇu’s lap, or more precisely, groin. Viṣṇu’s navel is openly on view above the (p.273) groin; he has what may be a slightly disapproving look on his face. In being beheaded, Madhu and Kaiṭabha come close to being “lap babies” castrated on the way back to their mother’s womb. Second, this segment of the Devī-Māhātmya presents a play on Viṣṇu’s lotus navel and lotus eyes, for which conventionally he has the parallel names Padmanābha and Padmākṣa. First, we hear, “Brahmā Prajāpati dwelt in a lotus in Viṣṇu’s navel.”59 Then we learn of Yoganidrā/Nīlā’s emergence “from Viṣṇu’s eyes, nose, arms, heart, and breast” to present herself before “Brahmā of unmanifest birth,” whereupon Viṣṇu releases her and then sees the two demons and gears up to kill them. Yoganidrā/ Nīlā must literally and “above all” emerge from Viṣṇu’s lotus eyes if she is to awaken him—an upward displacement as a mode of emergence from the womb (again, her womb) just as his navel is also hers if she is the mother of Brahmā. The lotus eyes are evoked last in our segment in association not with birth but with what Viṣṇu has been awakened by her to do when “the lotus-eyed lord”60 is about to behead Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Third, what about Yoganidrā/Nīlā as having—or perhaps better, being—the mother’s womb? Here is where I think we find the strongest indicator that the Devī-Māhātmya was in Bose and his colleagues’ thoughts as they decided on Freud’s gift. It helps to explain those “abysses” that show up in the Sanskrit stotra that was sent along with the gift. Those abysses would be topped with the roiling waters, which we still see in figure 9.5 even though Ananta has left the Page 15 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud picture. But as a womb, the abysses are denoted specifically as prakṛti, or primal matter. The Devī-Māhātmya is actually tacit on prakṛti as a womb, which would be something like when Kṛṣṇa says “This is my lower (nature), but know that I have a higher nature (prakṛti)” at Gītā 7.5ab, and adds that he furnishes the seed (7.10; 14.4)—except that the Goddess’s femaleness in her identity as prakṛti skews the comparison and disrupts Kṛṣṇa’s male hierarchies. Yet if not explicitly a mother’s womb, prakṛti with its three gunas functions as a matrix. Coburn notices that where the Nārāyaṇīya version describes the tamasic and rajasic births of Madhu and Kaiṭabha,61 it delineates “the ontological status of the Asuras” by accounting for their “presence by assimilating them to the raw material (p.274) with which creation is accomplished, viz., prakṛti.”62 But Coburn does not connect the dots with Brahmā’s laud of Yoganidrā/Nīlā in the Devī-Māhātmya, which says much the same thing, but fittingly, I would add, provides a maternal context since Brahmā speaks as her son—and probably not unknowingly, since, of the three brothers, he alone has a predominant measure of the illuminating sattva guṇa when he says: You are the Goddess, the supreme mother. By you is everything supported, created¸ and protected, and you always consume it at the end. You are the great knowledge, the great illusion. . . . You are the primordial matter (prakṛti) of everything, manifesting the triad of constituent strands, the night of time.63 Indeed, Coburn has noticed that among the fifty-one epithets he discusses for the Goddess in her many roles and forms, prakṛti is “interwoven” with uses of the epithets śakti and mahāmāyā, as in the full Yoganidrā/Nīlā passage cited earlier. There is also her singular trait of being named only in hymns to her, just one in each of the text’s three caritas. Brahmā’s hymn is the first, followed by one intoned by Indra and the gods after Durgā has slain Mahiṣāsura. This second laud never addresses Durgā as a mother, but otherwise keeps to much the same terms: (You are) the cause of all the worlds; although possessed of the three qualities (triguṇā), by faults, you are not known; (you are) unfathomable even by Hari, Hara, and the other gods. (You are) the resort of all, (you are) this entire world which is composed of parts, for you are the supreme, original, untransformed prakṛti.64 Note that she is “unfathomable”—again the abysses—even to Viṣṇu and Śiva. The third use is then in a hymn by the gods at the beginning of the third carita, asking the aid of “the Goddess who is Viṣṇu’s māyā”65 in routing Śumbha and Niśumbha. The gods’ first words are, “Hail to the Goddess, hail eternally to the auspicious great Goddess! Hail to Prakṛti, (p.275) the auspicious! We who are restrained bow down to her.”66 This hymn includes a verse mentioning maternal Page 16 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud associations but not a maternal role: “The Goddess who abides in all creatures in the form of mother, hail to her.”67 The word “mother” culminates a litany68 in which the associations emerge serially with other words used in the same spot in the otherwise identical sentence: “loveliness,” “fortune” (Lakṣmī), “activity,” “memory,” “compassion,” “contentment,” “mother,” and, certainly complicating the series, “error.” Prakṛti is here a form or image through which one may visualize a mother. In the three hymns that make prakṛti one of the Goddess’s “epithets,” then, only the first laud of Yoganidrā/Nīlā by her son Brahmā makes prakṛti explicitly maternal. She is tantamount—where all else but Viṣṇu and Ananta is a single ocean—to the unfathomable abysses or womb of the premonstrous deep. Finally, fourth, as we saw in chapter 8, irrespective of whether Freud brought the scabrous turbinal bones and the white patch he saw when peering into Irma’s mouth into line with his other crocodilian and dinosauric associations with women’s vaginas, the image of the navel is what registers the unplummability of this horrifying point in his “specimen dream.” On this, he says in a footnote that it would “take us too far afield to pursue further the analogies” between Irma, her more amenable friend, and his wife Martha, and adds, “Besides, there is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable—a navel, as it were, that is a point of contact with the unknown.”69 Didier Anzieu says that the reference comes in a note that is “difficult to understand” because Freud uses Unerkannten (literally, the “ungraspable”) for “the unknown,” rather than Unbekannten (the unknown), as Anzieu explains: the word which one would expect in this context, and which appears, incorrectly, in most translations. If Freud preferred Unerkannten it was probably because the word recalled the biblical expression ein Weib erkennen, “to know a woman.” The overall meaning of the note is . . . hard to “grasp,” and, unconsciously and symbolically, Freud no doubt wished it to be so. . . . A fantasy, then, has infiltrated both his (p.276) thinking and its written expression, a fantasy that would have made him write, if he had used plain language: the woman we dream of is the woman to whom we were once connected by the umbilical cord, and who remains unknowable by us in the biblical sense. Freud’s feeling that it is impossible fully to interpret a dream or a symptom is much more an internal resistance caused by the barrier against incest than the consequence of any inadequacy in the theoretical and clinical equipment. This brief and obscure footnote is the only point in the whole dream and its extensive commentary—and I cannot say this is a surprise to me[70—where an Oedipal emotion, which in any case goes no further than the incestuous dimension of the Oedipus complex, makes a fleeting appearance before being swiftly nipped in the bud.71

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud Freud’s mother lies in any case behind many an “ungraspable” dodge. Remember that by a “fusion” of Freud with Irma, Freud identifies with her in that he “feels” what she does. It is enough that in 1895 Freud brings his pregnant wife, who earlier he spoke of as “Melusine,” into these associations, to leave one with the strong impression that, consistent with Freud’s elevation of his “matrem” out from the morass of virtually every psychosexual plot he was to devise in 1895 and the following years, that the “analogies” he mentions would also apply, but only implicitly and probably hidden from himself, to her.72 In 1936, however, six years after his mother’s death, when Freud took time out from Moses and Monotheism to write “Disturbance,” he could relax those restraints and, as I have argued along with John Abbott and Bernard This, leave the impression that the Loch Ness monster is his mother as his first topic of derealization. (p.277) If Irma’s mouth is the spot in Freud’s specimen dream at which it is “unplumbable—a navel, as it were, that is a point of contact with the unknown,” the navel in question would have to be the one that links Freud as dreamer with his mother, still possibly hidden from himself, but now by association with Athena and her many attendant snakes rather than by a series of analogies extended to her from Irma and his wife. Joined at the navel with his mother, Freud is like Viṣṇu joined at the navel with Yoganidrā/Nīlā, who, possibly hidden from himself as well, is the primal mother prakṛti. Let me then put the final touches on my guesswork as to the thinking that lay behind Bose and his colleagues’ choice of gift. I do so with the artifice of pretending they were narrowing their choices. Let us say that they started from the idea of having a prominent snake in the icon as something typically Indian as much as typically Freudian, leading them almost inevitably to Ananta. Then, the donors would have sought some way to identify the gift with the recipient, and would have wanted something with a human form in it. A Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin would have been a possibility, but it would have had several drawbacks. Its somewhat awkward horizontal design could have been one such drawback. Even though, if a parallel between Freud and Viṣṇu were being evoked, to imply that Freud lay sleeping or waking on the serpent couch could have been too obvious a joke.73 Moreover, Viṣṇu is not shown in anything like introspection or meditation while he is lying down. Once a reclining Viṣṇu was ruled out, one seated on Ananta would start looking good, especially if the prototypicality of the reclining form was considered. But now the meditative, introspective part would become key, for what this Viṣṇu-Freud would be meditating on would begin with his own dreams, going on to his own self-analysis in Freud’s case and his larger dream-self and dream screen in Viṣṇu’s cosmogonic dreamscape, and in both cases, on to the preconscious abysses that lie beneath his and his mother’s navel. But wait, you say, we’ve lost Freud here, who had more serious things to do than contemplate what lay beneath his or his mother’s navel. True, but not the Freud magic-lanterned at his seventy-fifth birthday party, who was to receive this Page 18 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” and be invited to see that at least someone took the practice seriously. But now we come to an impasse, for there is more to Freud’s navel resistance than meets the eye. Jonte-Pace (p.278) suggests that his feelings about his own mother probably figured into his idea that “the interpreter must look away” from an “unplumbable” dream-“navel,” which blocked the Oedipal hero’s speaking of the dangers and “horror” of the mother’s genitals.74 Since Freud uses these images in perfectly well-known writings, including The Interpretation of Dreams,75 it is highly likely that Bose and some of his colleagues would know them, and tie them to an implication of their gift. As we have shown, Bose is among those who challenged Freud’s Oedipal construct, like Romain Rolland, from the pre-Oedipal, maternal side. Given the one-way cultural dynamic, only Bose and some of the guests at the party would likely have understood such a challenge—unless Freud were to bring some ingenuity to the matter. Thus, my suggestion is that Bose and company might have enjoyed a bit of intercultural irony at their birthday party for the absent Freud. As stated, the Devī-Māhātmya is the sufficient text for my guesswork. But counting iconographies as visual texts, questions still arise from the array of Vaiṣṇava iconographies I have treated as intertextual with the Devī-Māhātmya’s first carita and its fourth aṅga. Bose and company would not have known all these texts, and they could not have known what Dennis Hudson would put into his interpretation of Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ. Could Bose and his colleagues still have had Freud’s dreamwork in mind in connection with Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa’s dreamlife as he sleeps in or on prakṛti’s wombish waters or oceanic womb? Certainly, for they would likely have known other texts that are pertinent to Hudson’s interpretation on the point of Viṣṇu’s dreaming, beginning with the Mahābhārata’s account of Mārkaṇḍeya entering the mouth of the baby Kṛṣṇa on the banyan leaf. They could not have known what Hudson would say about yoganidrā in relation to Saṃkarṣaṇa-Ananta’s “pleasant inebriation.” But here we come back to the question of what Bose knew about the statuette he was sending Freud under the specific name he gave it. I have maintained that the most minimally sufficient explanation is that what he knew about it would have derived solely from the Devī-Māhātmya and its yoganidrā narrative. But I think there are hints that Bose’s iconographic frame of reference was not so limited. The name given the statuette, “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva,” is not actually “generic”; rather, it seems to carry a certain sophistication that may imply a closely related iconography of Saṃkarṣaṇa. Bose was (p.279) not alone in making the gift. He sought colleagues with reputations for expertise in iconography. The proceedings from Freud’s birthday party tout the contributions of Professor Suniti Chatterji as “a great authority on Philosophy and Iconography,” and Mr. Bahadur Sing Singhi as “the famous Indian art connoisseur and collector.” Rangin Haldar’s article “The Oedipus Wish in Iconography” also shows a fine command of Indian iconographic resources.76 If Page 19 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud Bose had conferred with these associates, their combined knowledge about “Viṣṇu Ananta Deva” could have been extensive, and have at the least included its affinities with Saṃkarṣaṇa and Paravāsudeva and the doctrine of vyūhas. Finally there is also a way in which Bose’s psycho-physical parallelism may be understood to lie behind this reading I am attributing to him of the DM’s opening scene. His “dualistic Vedānta would evoke the Sāṃkhya categories of puruṣa and prakṛti at the moment of cosmogonic conception, with Viṣṇu as the puruṣa being awakened to creation by Yoganidrā/Nīlā, who is as much from her as she is his hidden third wife. There is a purpose to giving Bose and Freud the benefit of the doubt, as I have done in these closing chapters. Given the discordant notes with which I left them in chapter 1 concerning Bose’s Christmas greeting, and in chapter 3, at the actual end of their correspondence, it is a pleasure to go back to a point where their cautious esteem for each other trumped narrower considerations. Although this chapter presents largely guesswork, it makes a point that both Freud and Bose could have recognized through their exchange, and that Freud suggested often in his own writings: that anyone’s religion harbors psychoanalytically loaded material. Closing this topic and discussion on an affirmative note also allows me to log off with an adieu to the scholar whose work got this book going. If, as Christiane Hartnack says, for Bose and Freud their correspondence was a “missed chance,” then it can be taken as one they left others to pick up on, as she, I, and some others have sought to do. (p.280) Notes:

(1.) Vasudha Narayanan, email to author, September 9, 2013. (2.) Hudson 2008, 3; Hudson 2010, 113. (3.) Hawley 2010, xv. (4.) See Hudson 2008, 8. Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ was apparently the first. (5.) Hudson 2008, 6–7. (6.) Hudson 2008, 88–89. (7.) Hudson 2008, 299: “those who conquered Nandivarman’s descendants at the end of the ninth century” may have removed it as a symbol of Pallava power. (8.) Hudson 2008, 87 and 544–45 n. 2. (9.) See Hudson 2008, 88, figure 5.2. (10.) See Hudson 2008, 300–301. (11.) See Hudson 2008, 91, 93–94, and figures 5.4 and 5.5. Page 20 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud (12.) See Hudson 2008, 86–87, 544n1, and 93. (13.) Hudson 2008, 96–97; see also 98, figure 5.8, and 377. (14.) See Hiltebeitel 2016, 115. (15.) See Mbh 12.326.68; 16.5.12–15. (16.) See Hudson 2008, 100, figure 5.9 (Pradymuna) and 104, figure 5.10 (Aniruddha). (17.) Hudson 2008, 110. (18.) “When daughters of snakes touch his arms he stimulates their erotic feelings. . . . To his left stands a daughter of Vāsuki, Pātāla’s premier nāga. . . . She has come to ask for a husband” (Hudson 2008, 377–79). Cf. Vāsuki’s daughter Jaratkāru, mother of Āstīka, who saves the Mahābhārata’s snakes. (19.) Hudson 2008, 378, 376–80, figure 13.2, panel N6. (20.) Hudson 2008, 376–77. (21.) See chapter 8, this volume, note 2. (22.) Hudson 2008, 380. (23.) Hudson 2008, 88. (24.) Ramanujan 1981, 29, cited in Hudson 2008, 25. (25.) Hudson 2008, 25. (26.) See Hudson 2008, 120. The lotus inside the stomach suggests that this Padmanābha is Viṣṇu, although the Mahābhārata tells of a snake by that name (Mbh 12.340–53). (27.) Hudson 2010, 116; for the image with Śrī and Bhūmi, see Hudson 2008, 88, figure 5.2. (28.) Hudson 2008, 137. (29.) Hudson 2008, 273. (30.) Hudson 2008, 268–69. (31.) Cf. Underhill, 1921, 34: In the rainy season, which corresponds to Viṣṇu’s yoganidrā, “Vishnu is understood to have retired to the bottom of the ocean for a four-months sleep, leaving the world without his close protection.” (32.) Hudson 2008, 311. Page 21 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud (33.) See chapter 3, this volume, note 32. (34.) Hudson 2008, 302. (35.) Hudson’s interpretation here is through the Bhagavad Gītā, from which he takes Śrī-Lakṣmī to provide Vāsudeva’s womb as “the ‘great brahman” (mahad brahma) into which he plants the embryo (BhG 14.3–4). (36.) Balkaran 2015, 139–40. (37.) Balkaran 2015, 141. (38.) I do not see as much gained as lost in reading Durgā back into the first carita. (39.) Balkaran 2015, 147. (40.) See Balkaran 2015, 143: “The crucial exchange between the king and the merchant . . . occurs before Medhas is introduced, and is relayed by Mārkaṇḑeya.” His voice “authorizes the DM, as he interweaves Medhas, Suratha, and Samādhi as ideological archetypes in his brilliant introduction of the Goddess as Mahāmāyā.” (41.) Coburn 1991, 36–39. I modify his translation by restoring divine names, changing some syntax, avoiding duplication, condensing. and making minor changes with cosmological stand-byes like “primordial matter” rather than “primordial material” for prakṛti. “The text I use is Jagadīśvarānanda 1972, 13– 23 (whose verses are numbered 1.59–104). (42.) Coburn 1985, 215n11. (43.) See Mbh 3.194.30a; Coburn 1985, 214–18. (44.) Coburn 1985, 215n11. (45.) See chapter 4, this volume, note 55, citing Nandy 1996, 368. See Coburn 1991, 110–11, on monistic readings of .the Devī-Māhātmya. (46.) See chapter 5, this volume, note 86. (47.) DM 5.37–41. (48.) See McDermott 2001; she marries Śiva. (49.) DM 8.52–59. (50.) DM 11.42. (51.) DM 1.53, 4.27, 13.10. Page 22 of 24

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud (52.) DM 11.45. (53.) See Balkaran 2015, 179–84, critiquing the breast-mother/tooth-mother formulation of Ramanujan’s (1986)), as applied to the Devī-Māhātmya by Wendy Doniger (1980, 90–91; Doniger 2009, 390) and David Kinsley (1989, 10), (54.) See Coburn 1991, 109–14, 185–87. (55.) Coburn 1991, 109; see also 143–44. (56.) Along with a liṅga and a yoni; Prādhānika Rahasya 4–5; Coburn 1991, 185. (57.) See Adluri 2011, 164 and 197n184, on cosmology, genealogy, sacrifice, and war (agōn), as “the four genera of becoming,” and 202n134: “snakes in the Mahābhārata are a symbol of hermeneutics.” (58.) Mbh 3.194.26–30. (59.) DM 1.49cd. (60.) DM 1.75. (61.) At Mbh 12.335.22c–35, just quoted. (62.) Coburn 1985, 217. (63.) DM 1.55d–56, 58–59. (64.) DM 4.6; Coburn 1991, 48; Coburn 1985, 180. (65.) DM 5.6. (66.) Coburn 1991, 53. (67.) DM 5.31. (68.) DM 5.25–32. (69.) Swan 1974, 26, citing Freud 1953–74, 4:111n. 1. (70.) The footnote is from 1909, when Freud first named the Oedipus complex the master complex. (71.) Anzieu 1986, 154. (72.) Atwood and Stolorow 1999 argue that by the time of Freud’s “my beloved mother” dream, he already felt suppressed rage and a death wish toward his mother that followed from his losses with Julius. They see the same pattern

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The Oceanic Goddess in the Gift to Freud pervading other facets of Freud’s work: An innate death instinct is “the final triumph of the wish to absolve the mother” (58). In sum, we have attempted to show that the defensive operations which Freud employed to protect the idealized vision of his mother from invasion by deep unconscious ambivalence conflict fatefully left their mark on his theory of psychosexual development and its central metapsychological reifications, in which the sources of evil were internalized, hostility was displaced onto the father, and the split-off bad maternal image was relegated largely to the psychology of the girl (59). (73.) Randy Kloetzli suggested “Viṣṇu on Freud’s Couch” or “Freud on Viṣṇu’s Couch” as a title for this book,” which tempted me for a while. See also Hartnack 2011. (74.) Jonte-Pace 2001, 29–33. (75.) See Jonte-Pace 2001, 32, on Freud 1953–74. 4:110, 111n1. (76.) See chapter 6, this volume, notes 32–40; and Haldar 1938, 53.

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References

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.281) References Alf Hiltebeitel

Bibliography references: Abbott, John. 1969. “Freud’s Repressed Feelings about Athens.” American Imago 26: 355–67. Abraham, Ruth. 1982. “Freud’s Mother Conflict and the Formulation of the Oedipal Father.” Psychoanalytic Review 69: 441–53. Ackerman, Sarah. 2017. “Exploring Freud’s Resistance to the Oceanic Feeling.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 65, no. 1: 9–31. Adluri, Vishwa P. 2011. “Frame Narratives and Forked Beginnings: Or, How to Read the Ādiparvan.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies 19, no. 2: 143–211. Akhtar, Salman, and Pratyusha Tummala-Narra. 2005. “Psychoanalysis in India.” In Freud along the Ganges: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the People and Culture of India, edited by Salman Akhtar, 3–25. New York: Other Press. Anderegg, David. 2006. “Freud on the Acropolis.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 23, no. 2: 408–16. Anderson, Wayne. 1994. “Leonardo da Vinci and the Slip of Fools.” History of European Ideas 18, no. 1: 61–78. Anderson, Wayne. 2001. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Vulture’s Tail: A Refreshing Look at Leonardo’s Sexuality. New York: Other Press. Anzieu, Didier. 1986. Freud’s Self-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press.

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References Biardeau, Madeleine. 2004. Stories about Posts: Vedic Variations around the Hindu Goddess. Translated by Alf Hiltebeitel, Marie-Louise Reinische, and James Walker, edited by Alf Hiltebeitel and Marie-Louise Reinische. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Biswas, Santanu. 2003. “Rabindranath Tagore and Freudian Thought.” International Journal of Pychoanalysis 84: 717–32. Blowers, Geoffrey. 2006. “Crossing Borders: Oedipus in Asia and the Resistance to Psychoanalysis.” https://www.ipa.world/ipa/CongressTaipei/Theme/ CongressTaipei/Theme.aspx?hkey=d4e0ee8a-88dd-4541-87f3-236a78750a9f. Paper prepared for the International Symposium for the History of Psychoanalysis, “History and Function of Myth in Psychoanalysis: Relations between Mythology, Tragedy and Clinical Practice” Athens, 4–8 October 2006 under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Psychoanalysis (Paris) and the Hellenic Society of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy. Blum, Harold P. 1979. “The Prototype of Preoedipal Reconstruction.” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 143–63. New York and London: Jacob Aronson. Bolon, Carol Radcliffe. 1997. Forms of the Goddess Lajjā Gaurī in Indian Art. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Bonomi, Carlo. 2013. “So It Really Does Exist—The Sea-Serpent We’ve Never Believed in! Ferenczi’s Influence on Freud Revisited.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 73, no. 4: 370–81. Bose, Girindrasekhar. 1921. The Concept of Repression. Calcutta: G. Bose; London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner. (p.283) Bose, Girindrasekhar. 1926. “Is Perception an Illusion?” Indian Journal of Psychoanalysis 1: 135–52. Bose, Girindrasekhar. [1928] 1949. “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish.” Samiksha 3: 222–40. Bose, Girindrasekhar. 1930a. “The Psychological Outlook of Hindu Philosophy.” Indian Journal of Psychology 5: 119–46. [Reprinted in Modern Review, January 1931, 14–25.] Bose, Girindrasekhar. 1930b. “Dream.” Indian Journal of Psychology 5: 37–86. Bose, Girindrasekhar. 1933. “A New Theory of the Mental Life.” Indian Journal of Psychology 8: 37–157.

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References Freud, Sigmund. 1953–74. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud. Assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Freud, Sigmund. 1960a. The Ego and the Id. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Freud, Sigmund. 1960b. Sigmund Freud Briefe 1873–1939. Frankfurt: S. Fisher Verlag. Freud, Sigmund. 1963. Studies in Parapsychology: “The Uncanny,” “Dreams and Telepathy,” “A Neurosis of Demonical Possession.” New York: Collier Books. “Freud as Collector.” 1970. Tokyo: Exhibition. www.kajima.co.jp/csr/culture/ freud/collection/greece03.html (p.285) Gammill, J. 1980. “Some Reflections on Analytic Listening and the Dream Screen.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 61, no. 3: 375–81. Gamwell, Lynn, and Richard Wells, eds. 1989. Sigmund Freud and Art: The Personal Collection of Antiquities. London: Freud Museum. Garcès, Elena. 2008. Colombian Women: The Struggle out of Silence. Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books. Gay, Peter. [1988] 2006. Freud: A Life for our Time. New York: Norton. Goldman, Robert P. 1978. “Fathers, Sons, and Gurus: Oedipal Conflict in the Sanskrit Epics.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 6: 325–92. Green, André. 1983. “The Dead Mother.” In On Private Madness, 142–73. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Green, André. 1999. “The Intuition of the Negative in Playing and Reality.” In The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green, edited by Gregorio Kohon, 204–31. London: Routledge. Grinstein, Alexander. 1968. Freud’s Dreams. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Grubich-Simitis, Ilse. 1996. Back to Freud’s Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Grubich-Simitis, Ilse, ed. 1987. A Phylogenetic Fantasy: An Overview of the Transference Neurosis. Translated by Alex Hoffer and Peter F. Hoffer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Page 6 of 17

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References Guest, Barbara. 1984. Herself Defined: H. D. and Her World. Tucson: Schaffner Press. Haldar, Rangin. 1938. “The Oedipus Wish in Iconography.” Indian Journal of Psychology [no vol.]: 49–54. Handelman, Don and David Shulman. 1997. God Inside Out: Ṥiva’s Game of Dice. New York: Oxford University Press. Harding, Christopher. 2009. “Sigmund’s Asian Fan Club? The Freud Franchise and Independence of Mind in India and Japan.” In R. Clarke, ed. Celebrity and Colonialism: Fame, Power, and Representation in (Post) Colonial Cultures, 2–15. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Harrison, Irving B. 1966. “A Reconsideration of Freud’s ‘A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis’ in Relation to Identity Disturbance.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14: 518–27. Harrison, Irving B. 1975. “On the Maternal Origins of Awe.” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 30: 181–95. Harrison, Irving B. 1977. “On Freud’s View of the Infant-Mother Relationship and the Oceanic Feeling—Some Subjective Influences.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 27: 399–422. Hartnack, Christiane. 1999. “Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: Psychoanalysis in Colonial India.” In Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, edited by T. G. Vaidyanathan and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 81–106. Delhi: Oxford University Press. (p.286) Hartnack, Christiane. 2001. Psychoanalysis in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hartnack, Christiane. 2011. “Colonial Dominions and the Psychoanalytic Couch: Synergies of Freudian Theory with Bengali Hindu Thought and Practices in British India.” In Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Dominion, and Global Sovereignties, edited by Warwick Anderson, Deborah Jenson, and Richard Keller, 97–111. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hawley, John Stratton. 2010. “Introduction.” In Krishna’s Mandala: Bhagavata Religion and Beyond, edited by D. Dennis Hudson, 13–36. New York: Oxford University Press. H. D. [Hilda Doolittle]. [1945] 1974. Collected Poems 1912-44. New York: New Directions. H. D. [1956] 1974. Tribute to Freud. New York: New Directions. Page 7 of 17

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References Heidelberger, Michael. 2003. “The Mind-Body Problem in the Origin of Logical Empiricism: Herbert Feigl and Psychophysical Parallelism.” In Logical Empiricism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Paolo Parrini, Wesley C. Salmon, and Merrilee H. Salmon, 233–62. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Heller, Judith Bernays. 1973. “Freud’s Mother and Father”. In Freud as We Knew Him, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeck, 418–21. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 1984. “Two Kṛṣṇas on One Chariot: Upaniṣadic Imagery and Epic Mythology.” History of Religions 24: 1–26. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 1988. The Cult of Draupadī. Vol. 1: Mythologies: From Gingee to Kurukṣetra. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2001. Rethinking the Mahābhārata: The Education of the Dharma King. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2010. Dharma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2015. “Dialogue and Apostrophe: A Move by Vālmīki?” In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain, edited by Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 37–77. London: Ashgate. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2016a. Nonviolence in the Mahābhārata: Śiva’s Summa on Ṛṣidharma and the Gleaners of Kurukṣetra. London: Routledge. Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2016b. “Draupadī y Sītā: dos differentes tipos de mujeres poderosos.” In En busca del Mahābhārata: Al Encuentro de la Diosa. Textos Escogidos de Alf Hiltebeitel. Translation and introduction by Fernando Wulff Alonso, 99–131. Seville; Editorial Universidad de Sevilla. Edited by Wulff Alonso. Hiltebeitel, Alf, and Randy Kloetzli. 2004. “Kāla.” In. The Hindu World, edited by Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, 553–86. London: Routledge. Holt, Robert D. 1992. “Freud’s Parental Identifications as a Source for Some Contradictions within Psychoanalysis.” In Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis, edited by Toby Gelfand and John Kerr, 1–28. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. (p.287) Hudson, D. Dennis. 1999. “A New Year’s Poem for Krishna: The Tirupallantu by Vishnucittan (Periyalvar).” Journal of Vaishnava Studies 7, no. 2: 93–129.

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References Parsons, William B. 1999b. “Freud’s Encounter with Hinduism: An HistoricalTextual Overview.” In Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and HInduism, edited by T. G. Vaidyanathan and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 41–80. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Phillips, Adam. 1974. “Postscript.” In Tribute to Freud, edited by H. D., vi–xiii. New York: New Directions. Phillips, Adam. 2014. Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. New York: Oxford University Press. Ramana, C. V. 1964. “On the Early History and Development of Psychoanalysis in India.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 12: 110–34. Ramanujan, A. K., trans. 1981. Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Viṣṇu by Nammāḻvār. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ramanujan, A. K. 1986. “Two Realms of Kannada Folklore.” In Another Harmony New Essays on the Folklore of India, edited by Stuart Blackburn and A. K. Ramanujan, 41–75. Berkeley: University of California Press. Raphael-Leff, Joan. 1990. “If Freud Was an Egyptian.” International Review of Psychoanalysis 17: 309–35. Raphael-Leff, Joan. 2007. “Freud’s Prehistoric Matrix: Owing Nature a Death.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88, no. 6: 1345–73. Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rolland, Romain. 1924. Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being. Translated by C. Groth. New York: Century. Rolland, Romain. 1930. Essai sur la mystique et l’action de l’Inde vivante. Vol.1: La vie de Ramakrishna; Vol. 2, Part 1: La vie de Vivekananda et l’évangil universel; Vol. 3, Part 2: La vie de Vivekananda et l’évangil universel . . . . Paris: Librarie Stock Delamain et Boutelleau. Rolland, Romain. 1959. Le voyage intérieure (Songe d’une vie). Nouvelle édition augmenté de textes inédits. Paris: Éditions Albin Michel. Rolland, Romain. 1960. Inde Journal 1915–43. Nouvelle édition augmentée de textes inédits. Paris: Éditions Albin Michel.

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References Russell, R. V., with Rai Bahadur Hīra Lāl. [1916] 1969. The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India. 4 Vols. Oosterhoot: Anthropological Publications. Saarinen, Prijo Irmeli. 2003. “Dream Screen Phenomena in Psychotherapy and Artistic Work.” Nordic Journal of Psychiatry 57, no. 5: 383–88. Schorske, Carl E. 1993. “Freud’s Egyptian Dig.” New York Review of Books 41, no. 10 (May 27): 35–40. (p.291) Schur, Max. 1972. Freud Living and Dying. New York: International Universities Press. Schur, Max. 1979a. “Some Additional “Day Residues” of “The Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis.” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 87–116. New York and London: Jacob Aronson. Schur, Max. 1979b. “The Background of Freud’s “Disturbance” on the Acropolis.” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 117–135. New York and London: Jacob Aronson. Searles, Harold F. 1959. “The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy—An Element in the Aetiology and Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia.” British Journal of Medical Psychology 32: 1–18. Shapiro, Meyer. 1956. “Leonardo and Freud: An Art-Historical Study.” Journal of the History of Ideas 17, no. 2: 147–78. Sharma, Arvind. 1990. “Karma and Reincarnation in Adviata Vedānta.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 18, no. 3: 219–36. Shengold, Leonard. 1966. “The Metaphor of the Journey in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’” Amjerican Imago 23, no. 4: 316–31. Shengold, Leonard. 1979a. “The Metaphor of the Journey in The Interpretation of Dreams.” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 51–66. New York and London: Jacob Aronson (reprint of Shengold 1966). Shengold, Leonard. 1979b. “Freud and Joseph.” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 67–87. New York and London: Jacob Aronson. Sinha, T. C. 1955. “A Short Life Sketch of Girindrasekhar Bose.” Samiksa 10, no. 4: 62–74 (Bose Special Number). Sinha, T. C. 1966. “Development of Psycho-Analysis in India.” Indian Journal of Psychoanalysis 47: 427–39.

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References Slochower, Harry. 1970. “A Symbolic Relic of ‘mater nuda.’” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 39: 90–102. Slochower, Harry. 1971. “Freud’s Gradiva: mater nuda rediviva. A Wish Fulfillment of the ‘Memory’ on the Acropolis.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 40: 646– 52. Smith, Daniel H. D. 1969. A Sourcebook of Vaiṣṇava Iconography according to the Pañcarātrāgama Texts (Sanskrit Texts Compiled and Arranged with Commentary in English). With K. K. A. Venkatachari and V. Ganapathi. Pañcarātra Paricōtaṉa Pariṣat velliyītu, 2. Madras: Pañcarātra Paricōtaṉa Pariṣad. Spratt, P. 1965. Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psychoanalytic Study. Bombay: Manaktala and Sons Pvt. Ltd. Sprengnether, Madalon. 1990. The Spectral Mother: Freud, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sprengnether, Madalon. 1995. “Reading Freud’s Life.” American Imago 52, no. 1: 9–54. Sprengnether, Madalon. 2003. “Mouth to Mouth: Freud, Irma, and the Dream of Psychoanalysis.” American Imago 60, no. 3: 259–84. (p.292) Srinivasan, Perundevi. 2009. “Stories of the Flesh: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the South Indian Goddess Māriyammaṉ.” PhD dissertation, George Washington University. Stamm. Julian F. 1979. “The Problem of Depersonalization in Freud’s ‘Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.’” In Freud and His Self-Analysis, edited by Mark Kanzer and Julius Glenn, 135–43. New York and London: Jacob Aronson. Steinberger, Deborah. 1997. “The Song of Rolland: An Interpretation of Freud’s ‘A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.’” American Imago 54: 69–80. Sugarman, Susan. 1998. Freud on the Acropolis: Reflexions on a Paradoxical Experience of the Real. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Swales, Peter. 1982. “Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Conquest of Rome: New Light on the Origins of Psychoanalysis.” New American Review 1: 1–23. Swan, James. 1974. “Mater and Nannie: Freud’s Two Mothers and the Discovery of the Oedipus Complex.” American Imago 31: 1–64. Thibaut, Georges, trans. 1981. The Vedānta Sūtra. Sacred Books of East, vol. 30. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Page 15 of 17

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References This, Bernard. 1994. “Plötzlich, . . . Schön und Schlank; Trieste.” Cahiers de lectures freudiennes: L’Acropole 3–4: 83–101, 216–24. This, Claude. 1994. “L’oubli du souvenir; Au bord de l’océanique.” Cahiers de lectures freudiennes: L’Acropole 3–4: 71–82, 166–81. Underhill, M. M. 1921. The Hindu Religious Year. Calcutta: Association Press. Vaidyanathan, K. R. 1982. Temples and Legends of Kerala. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Vaidyanathan, T. G. and Jeffrey J. Kripal. 1999. Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vassilkov, Yaroslav. 1999. “Kālavāda (the Doctrine of Cyclical Time) in the Mahābhārata and the Concept of Heroic Didactics.” In Composing a Tradition: Concepts, Techniques, and Relationships, edited by Mary Brockington and Peter Schreiner, 17–33. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Vermorel, Henri, and Madeleine Vermorel. 1993. Sigmund Freud et Romain Rolland Correspondence 1922–1936: de la sensation océanique au Trouble du souvenir sur l’Acropole. Collection Histoire de la psychanalyse. Paris: PUF. Verrmorel, Henri, Anne Clancier, and Madeleine Vermorel, directors. [1992] 1995. Freud, Judéité, Lumières et romkantisme. Lausanne: Delachaux & Niestlé. Vermorel, Henri, and Madeleine Vermorel. 2013. De la psychiatrie à la psychoanalyse. Paris: L’Harmattan. Vermorel, M. 1987. “Emma Eckstein, un personnage en quête d’un auteur.” Bulletin Groupe lyonnais de Psychanalyse 1, no. 8: 11–20. Vitsaxis, Vassilis G. 1977. Hindu Epics, Myths and Legends in Popular Illustrations. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Wadia, A. R, The Indian Philosophical Congress 1925-1950: A Retrospect, In Indian Philosophical Congress Silver Jubilee Volume. Madras: Associated Printers. (p.293) Wangh, Martin. [1950] 1988. “The Genetic Sources of Freud’s Difference with Romain Rolland on the Matter of Religious Feelings.” In Fantasy, Myth, and Reality: Essays in Honor of Jacob A. Arlow, edited by Harold P. Blum, Yale Kramer, Alene K. Richards, and Arnold D. Richards, 259–85. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. White, David Gordon. 1998. The Alchemical Body: The Siddha Tradition in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Index

Freud's India: Sigmund Freud and India's First Psychoanalyst Girindrasekhar Bose Alf Hiltebeitel

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780190878375 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190878375.001.0001

(p.295) Index Acropolis, 28, 50–52, 78, 176, 226–231, 234, 236–239 action situation, 101, 103, 105–106, 114, 116 action-identity, 114, 163, 166, 175, 177 Aklujkar, Ashok, 139 n. 41, 140–141 ambivalence, 32, 34–35, 45, 50, 54, 82, 98, 103–105, 110, 122, 169, 174, 276 n. 72 Ananta, 70, 72, 77, 202–208, 210–211, 239, 244, 254–265, 269–270, 273, 275 Ananta Deva, 220, 260, 265. See also Viṣṇu Ananta Deva Anzieu, Didier, 225 n. 27, 275, 279 Arjuna, xiv 77 n. 58, 129 n. 10 Athena, 73, 86–87, 145, 151 n. 80, 228–231, 237–238, 277 avatāra, avatar, 71 n. 34, 205, 212–214 Bachofen, Johann Jacob, 34, 146 banyan leaf, baby Kṛṣṇa on, 70, 163, 213–214, 220, 267, 278 Barande, Ilse, 36 n. 27, 42–44, 46–50, 170, 171 n. 49, 234 Basu, Amit Ranjan, 2, 71 n. 34, 97–100, 112, 116, 119, 193 Bernfeld, Anne Cassirer, xi n. 3, 3 n. 10, 4 n. 12, 51 n. 96, 226, 233 n. 59, 235–236 Bettelheim, Bruno, xx, 72 n. 38, 236, 238–239 Bhagavad Gītā, 71 n. 34, 77, 112, 114, 116, 129, 131, 134, 174, 202 n. 16, 226, 266 n. 35, 273 Bhattacharya, Dipak, 139 n. 42, 140–141, 143 Bhattacharya, Pradip, 30 n. 13, 71 n. 34 Bisexuality, 82, 90, 100, 146 n. 61 Bose, Girindrasekhar, home life, 1–11, 18, 27, 34, 190 n. 109, 199 n. 8 cited writings of: “Ambivalence” (1938), 74–75 “Analysis of Wish” (1952), 30 The Concept of Repression (1921), 12–14, 16, 32, 35, 103, 106, 113–115, 121–123, 183 “Dream” (1930), 30, 97, 156 “The Duration of Coitus” (1937), 11

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Index “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish” (1949), 30, 106, 113– 114, 162, 173, 176, 191–192 “Genesis of Homosexuality” (1950), 30, 159, 192–193 “Is Perception an Illusion?” (1926), 30 “The Mechanism of Defiance” ([1938] 1951), 93–94, 111, 159, 173, 175– 176, 178–187 (p.296) “A New Theory of the Mental Life” (1933), 96–99, 103, 105–106, 108, 111, 115, 121, 123–124, 159 “The Psychological Outlook of Hindu Philosophy” (1930), 126–140 debates and difficulties with Freud, ix–x, xvii, 16–19, 39 their only real debate, 83–85, 89–90, 199 leadership of psychoanalytic movement in Calcutta and India, 1, 21, 83, 195–204 lost letters, 11, 20–21, 83 Phases of correspondence with Freud, phase 1, 11–19 phase 2, 20, 29–36 phase, 3, 20, 82–85 Calcutta, 1, 7–8, 14–15, 17–18, 21, 90, 140, 197–198, 201 Caldwell, Sarah, x n. 2, 242–244 Citragupta, 8–11, 116 Clooney, Francis, 136, 142–143 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 30, 39, 41–51, 145–146, 234 Davis, Richard, xx 205–206 dead mother, x 57, 94, 162, 176 dead mother complex, xv 165, 171, 189 déjà vu, 70 derealization, 51–52, 70, 226–228 devatā, 8, 124, 127–128, 135–142, 144, 153–156 Devī-Māhātmyam, 253, 266–274 Draupadī, 71 Draupadī cult, xii Durgā, 11, 156, 166, 168, 252–253, 266–269, 271, 274 as Mahiṣāsuramardinī, 168, 253, 266, 271 earth, Earth as goddess, 264, 269 ego, id, super-ego, 97, 99, 126 ego, 102, 181 n. 88, 247 id, 100, 112 superego, 57, 100, 112, 150, 181 n. 88, 247–248, 250 ego-fugal and ego-petal wishes, 105 ego-identity, 161, 164, 167, 171, 175 Erikson, Erik, 221, 224–225 father deity, 143, 148–149, 152 firstborn, x 42, 49–50, 272 Fliess, Wilhelm, 9, 17, 19 n. 67, 27, 38, 41, 44, 46, 49, 53, 56, 75, 78, 146, 222 n. 13, 223, 225 n. 27, 232, 235 Freiberg, Moravia, x 3–4, 6, 235–236 Freud, Alexander, 18 n. 57, 51–52

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Index Freud, Amalia, x, xii, xv, 3–5, 6 n. 22, 40, 43–44, 46, 50, 54–55, 176, 222 n. 13, 227, 229– 232, 234–235 Freud, Anna, 5, 11, 12, 18, 74–75, 84, 85, 201, 238 Freud, Jacob, 3–4, 235 Freud, Julius, xi, xv, 3, 35–39, 51–57, 81, 176, 228, 231, 235–236, 276 n. 72 Freud, Sigmund, adolescence, 221–222 cited writings of: “A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Origin of Sexual Perversions” (1919), 40, 96, 110 “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy” [Little Hans] (1909), 44, 157 n. 99 “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937), 191, 226 “On Aphasia: A Critical Study” (1891), 122 “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men” (1910), 2 n. 5 (p.297) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), 39, 76, 97, 120 n. 89, 121 n. 90, 130 Civilization and its Discontents (1930), xx, 3 n. 1, 61, 63–64, 69, 76–77, 113, 220 “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis” (1936), 28, 50–52, 70, 74, 77– 81, 152, 176, 180, 226, 228–230, 235, 237, 38, 276 The Ego and the Id (1923), 97, 120, 121 n. 90, 174–175 “Female Sexuality” (1931), 40 “Femininity” (1933), 40, 47–50, 53–54 “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” [Dora] (1907), 41 The Future of an Illusion (1927), 28, 59, 64, 130, 148, 152, 154 “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” [Wolf Man] (1914), 37–41, 180, 191 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), 27–28, 36 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), 39 The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), 24, 37–38, 41, 53, 56, 66 n. 29, 72 n. 38, 75, 98 n. 12, 110 n. 60, 154, 160 n. 4, 278 Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), 39 Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910), 8, 39, 41–50, 146–146, 234 “Medusa’s Head” (1922), 145, 230 Moses and Monotheism (1937–39), 17, 34, 94, 147, 149–151, 276 “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), 6 “A Neurosis of Demonological Possession” (1963), 171–72 n. 54 “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis” [Rat Man] (1909), 41, 189– 190 “Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia” [Dr. Shreber] (1911), 41, 171–72 n. 52 “Screen Memories” (1899), 35, 38, 53 Totem and Taboo (1913), 34, 146, 148, 193 “The ‘Uncanny’ ” (1919), xv, 5, 77, 116, 120 courtship of Martha Bernays and starting their family, 7, 19 n. 66, 221–222, 224, 227, 275 founding and leadership of psychoanalytic movement, 7–11, 119 n. 86, 174 Page 3 of 7

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Index early years, xi, xv, 3–4, 35–39, 51–57, 81, 176, 228, 231, 235–236, 276 n. 72 illness of, 17, 23, 28, 39, 229 n. 57 self-analysis of, 6, 27, 37–38, 51, 53, 55, 78, 80–81, 169, 227, 232, 235, 246, 277 Gaṅgā, 151 garbhagṛha, “womb house,” inner sanctum of a Hindu temple, 169, 254 Goldman, Robert P., 2, 216–217 Greco-Mediterranean Goddess, ix, 127, 147 Green, André, xv, 100 n. 22, 161–162, 171–172, 176, 189 Grinstein, Alexander, 225 n. 27 Grubich-Simitis, Ilse, 6 n. 20, 9 n. 39, 55–56, 78 n. 48 guṇa, 3 guṇas, 132, 135, 212–213, 220, 273–274 guru, 94, 97 n. 102, 186, 245 n. 97 (p.298) H. D., Hilda Doolittle, xvi, 73, 77, 85–92, 96, 145–147, 175–175 Hindu cosmogony, 206, 208, 259, 264, 277, 279 Hindu Goddess, ix, xiv, xv, xvii, 2, 11, 43, 50, 126–128, 138, 140, 142, 147–148, 152– 156, 165, 167, 183, 185–187, 189, 195, 206, 211, 215, 235, 239, 246, 259, 261, 263, 265 –279 Hudson, Dennis D., 204 n. 118, 212 n. 31, 214 n. 34, 239–240, 254–266, 278 iconography, 56, 68–69, 71, 117, 203–204, 210, 217, 237–239, 253–256, 265, 278–279 identification, 4, 13, 41, 46–47, 55, 93, 95, 97, 107, 112, 114, 151, 160–162, 164, 167, 173–174, 178, 187, 190, 197, 199, 216, 223 n. 27, 228–229, 234–235, 247 Indian joint family, 4, 6 intuition and introspection, Freud’s distrust of, 63, 154 positive uses by Bose, 123 n. 104, 127, 133, 138, 140, 154, 156, 277 and by Rolland, 24, 63, 67, 74, 154 “Irma’s Injection,” dream of, 31, 223 I-thinking, 96, 155, 244 It-thinking, 72 n. 38, 96, 155, 186, 244 Jayakyhā-Saṃhitā, 263 Jenner, Edward, 202 Jewish (Mosaic) monotheism, 42, 144, 148, 150, 152 jīvātman, 114, 119 Jones, Ernest, xx, 5 n. 18, 14, 16, 18 n. 59, 19 n. 60, 29, 44, 82, 90 n. 89, 122, 130, 180 n. 104, 195, 224 n. 71, 233 n. 58 Jung, Carl, xi, 3 nn. 8–9, 19 n. 67, 27, 34 n. 17, 56, 63, 68, 74, 119, 153, 156, 174, 191 Kālī, 153, 242–244, 246, 271 Kanzer, Mark, 36 n. 29, 51 n. 96, 52, 78 n. 60, 80–88, 219 n. 1 Kapila, Sruti, x n. 1, 2 n. 2, 8 nn. 30–34, 85 n. 75, 126, 141–142 karma, 10–11, 116–120, 142, 209, 210 n. 28, 251, 264 Kerr, John, 3 n. 9, 7 n. 27, 18 n. 39, 119 n. 86, 121 n. 90, 174 n. 63 Kripal, Jeffrey, x n. 2, xix, 144 Kṛṣṇa, xiv, 70–71, 73, 77, 105 n. 41, 113, 134–135, 156, 163, 213–215, 220, 254–255, 257, 261–262, 267, 278 lalitāsana, 204–205, 208, 210, 216, 257 Lewin, Bertram, 44, 101, 180, 219, 239–251 Little Hans, 41, 47, 157 n. 99 Loch Ness monster, 226–234, 236, 238, 276 Lotus-eyes, Padmākṣa, 202, 207 n. 25, 273 Page 4 of 7

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Index Lotus-navel, Padmanābha, 72–73, 88, 206, 207 n. 25, 262–266, 268–269, 273 Madhu and Kaiṭabha, 206, 212, 240, 242, 263–264, 272–273 Madhusūdana, 206–207, 239–240, 242, 263, 268–269 Mahābhārata, ix, xv, 70–71, 77, 107, 131, 174, 209, 214, 262 n. 26, 266, 269, 277–278 Mahālakṣmī, 271–272 Mahāmāyā, 267–268, 274 mantra, 135, 186, 263 Mārkaṇḍeya, 70–71, 156, 214, 267, 278 Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, 258 (p.299) Masson, Geoffrey Moussaieff, 51 n. 96, 53 n. 109, 70–71, 74–75 Maternal deity, 31, 34, 58, 125, 127, 129, 145, 186, 189 maternal transference, 56, 91, 94, 176 maternel singuliere, le, 35–36, 43, 50, 57, 69 matriarchy, 34, 147 māyā, 70–71, 117, 266–268 Mīmāṃsa, 118 n. 2, 127, 136, 138, 141, 142, 144, 156 Minoan civilization, 40, 86, 146–147, 227 Mother right, 34, 146 Muṭieṭṭu, 242–244 Narasiṃha, Man-Lion avatar, 214–215, 220 Nārāyaṇa, 71, 206–207, 209–212, 214, 239, 242, 255, 261–264, 266, 278 Narayanan, Vasudha, 197, 203–205, 209–210, 213, 253 Neumann, Erich, 153 Nīlā, 262–264, 267, 271–275, 277 nirvāṇa, 249–251 nirvāṇa principle, 76 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 72 n. 38, 96, 121–122, 152–155, 183, 191 n. 112, 217 n. 38, 225 n 27, 244–245 object-relations, 38, 41, 108–109 oceanic feeling, xvi, 23–24, 28, 51, 61–62, 64–66, 69–70, 76–78, 80, 112–113, 154, 176, 220, 222, 226, 230, 242, 246–247, 249, 251 Oedipus complex, 4, 27, 38, 41, 47, 65–74, 141, 148–149, 160, 170–172, 182–183, 187– 188, 193–194 Oedipus mother, 31, 34–36, 40, 57, 67–70, 80, 91, 159, 170, 172, 178, 187, 189–190 Oedipus myth, 30–31, 89, 93, 173, 177 Oedipus point, 162, 172, 194, 266–267 Oedipus wish, 29–32, 173, 176, 188, 190–191 opposite wishes, 10–11, 19, 30–32, 34, 68–69, 83–85, 92–93, 95–98, 100–108, 110–114, 116–120, 173, 177, 190, 193 oral triad of wishes for nurslings, 44, 101, 244, 247 Pañcarātra, 257, 263 Pāṇḍavas, 71, 134 n. 34 Parallelism, psycho-physical parallelism, 105, 118, 121–124, 139, 141–144, 151, 279 Paravāsudeva, 203–205, 208–216, 220, 253–254, 256, 258, 261, 279 Parsons, William, xvi n. 15, 23, 25 n. 3, 59 n. 1, 63 n. 7, 64, 74–75, 76 n. 55, 77 n 56, 79 nn. 62–63 phallic mother, 145 146 n. 61 prakṛti, 267 n. 41, 268, 273–275, 277–279 pralaya, 70, 77 n. 58, 209, 210 n. 29, 211 Page 5 of 7

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Index preconscious, 120, 121 n. 90, 264, 267, 277 pre-Oedipal, 37–39, 41–42, 49, 51, 66 n. 20, 152 pre-Oedipus, 40, 90, 146, 229 prehistoric period, 5, 27, 38, 55, 146 primal scene, 37–38, 91, 170 n. 46, 180, 206, 208, 242, 263, 266–267, 272 primary process, 155 projection theory, 127, 129–131, 148, 151, 182 puruṣa, 263, 279 Raphael-Leff, Joan, 31 n. 96, 55, 229 Rat Man, 41, 189–190 Reincarnation, 116–119 Revenants, 38, 52, 55, 120 (p.300) Rolland, Romain, career of, 23–24, 26, 28, 60, 66, 68, 77, 89 cited writings of: correspondence with Freud, xv–xvii, 12, 23–28, 36–37, 51–52, 59–81 period 1 of, 24–28 period 2 of, 59–70 period 3 of, 78–81 difficulties with Freud, xvii 26–28, 51–52, 63, 69, 71–72, 74–76, 80–81, 151, 176 Essai sur la mystique et l’action de l’Inde vivante. Vol.1: La vie de Ramakrishna, Vol. 2, Part 1: La vie de Vivekananda et l’évangil universel, Vol. 3, Part 2: La vie de Vivekananda et l’évangil universel (1930), 24, 60, 66–67, 70–72, 74, 76, 114 n. 70, 246 Inde Journal 1915–43 (1960), 71 n. 35, 72 n. 37 Le voyage intérieure (Songe d’une vie) (1959), 71 n. 35, 245–247 Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being (1924), 24 meeting with Freud, 25 on mysticism, 26, 61–62, 74–75, 81, 112, 129 n. 7, 132 Ṛṣi, Ṛṣis, 70, 127–135, 140, 142, 151, 156, 167, 214 saṃsāra, 220 n. 29, 262 saurian, 220–225 Schur, Max, xv n. 11, 5 n. 18, 6, 16 n. 52, 17 nn. 53–54, 19 n. 67, 27 nn. 7–9, 39 n. 42, 51 n. 96, 53, 56 n. 114, 222 n. 13, 223 nn. 14–18 secondary process, 72 n. 38, 96, 155 serpent-couch, 70, 213–214, 242, 263, 277, 279 serpent-seat, 204, 258 sexuality, 107, 225 Sinha, Tarun Candra, 35 n. 20, 92, 100, 107, 111–114, 116, 119 Śiva, 43 n. 65, 131, 153, 156, 163, 167–168, 171, 274 Spratt, Philip, 216–217 Sprengnether, Madalon, 2 nn. 3–4, 3–4, 5 n. 15, 6 n. 21, 34 nn. 17–18, 37–38, 40–42, 45, 50–51, 145 n, . 57, 151–152, 225 n. 27 Śrī, 153, 210–212, 255, 262–264, 266, 268–269, 271 Swan, Jim, 160–161, 169–170, 220, 224–225, 229, 233 n. 58, 234–235, 275 n. 69 theoretical ego, 105, 111–114, 119, 156, 174 This, Bernard, 226, 228–235, 237–239 topography, Freud’s first, 120, 121 n. 90 Freud’s second, 97, 120–121, 173–174 Page 6 of 7

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Index Totem and Taboo, 34, 146, 148, 193 Tribute to Freud, by H. D., 91 Upaniṣads, 76, 114, 117, 129, 132–135, 140–142, 156, 174 unified consciousness, 264 absolute freedom from repression, 115 pure consciousness, 134, 137 unplumbable navel, 224–225, 275, 277–278 unwilling mother, 93–94, 175–178, 181–185, 187, 189–190, 247 Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple, 205 n. 22, 240, 253–254, 256, 260, 269, 278 Veda, Vedas, 133, 135–137, 141–144, 156, 206 Vedānta, 105, 111, 113–116, 118–119, 121, 124, 126–127, 133–134, 137, 142–144, 154 (p.301) Vedānta Desika, 210, 212 Vermorel, Henri and Madeleine, xv–xvii, xx, 4, 5, 8 n. 32, 20 n. 69, 24 n. 2, 25 n. 4, 26– 27, 32 n. 15, 35–37, 40, 41 n. 47, 41 nn.51–52, 43, 50, 65 n. 17, 68 n. 23, 69, 71 n. 36, 72 n. 37, 73–74, 76–77, 80–81, 112–113, 151 n. 80, 154, 170, 171 nn. 49–50, 172, 176, 240, 245–246 On Julius Freud as Sigmund’s “revenant” companion on walks through the Prater, xvi n. 15, 51–57 partial unblocking of Freud’s self-analysis, 51, 78 Vienna, x 3–4, 6–7, 13, 33, 52, 80–81 n. 68, 82–83, 89 n. 89, 90–91, 195, 222 n. 1, 239 Violence, 45, 49, 95, 106, 216 Viṣṇu Ananta Deva, Viṣṇu Anantadeva, 70, 195–197, 202–204, 212, 217, 223, 253, 270, 277–279 Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk, xv 11, 196 “white Vishnu”, 86–87 Vyāsa, 135 vyūha, 256–259, 261, 263–265, 279 Wolf Man, 37–39, 41, 180, 191 Yama, 9–10, 116 Yoganidrā/yoganidrā, 212, 239, 241–242, 262–264, 266–268, 270–275, 277–278 Yudhiṣṭhira, 70, 134 n. 29 Yuga, 209, 210 n. 29

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