Girindrasekhar Bose

Girindrasekhar Bose (30 January 1887-3 June 1953) [ [http://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/authors/texts/girindrasekhar.html Short biography (with photo)] ] was an early 20th century South Asian psychoanalyst. Bose has been the first president of Indian Psychoanalytic Society (presidency from 1922 until 1953).He carried on a twenty-year dialogue with Sigmund Freud. He is known for disputing the specifics of Freud's Oedipal theory, and has been pointed to by some as an early example of non-Western contestations of Western methodologies.

His doctoral thesis, Concept of Repression (1921) in which he blended Hindu thought with Freudian concepts and which he sent to Freud, led to a correspondence between the two men and to the formation of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society in 1922 in Calcutta. Of the fifteen original members, nine were college teachers of psychology or philosophy and five belonged to the medical corps of the Indian Army, including two British psychiatrists. In the same year, Bose wrote to Freud in Vienna. Freud was pleased that his ideas had spread to such a far-off land and asked Bose to write Ernest Jones, then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, for membership of that body. Bose did so and the Indian Psychoanalytic Society, with Bose as its first president (a position he was to hold till his death in 1953) became a fully-fledged member of the international psychoanalytic community. [ [http://www.answers.com/topic/bose-girindrasekhar?cat=health Girindrasekhar Bose: Information and Much More from Answers.com ] ] , [ [http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/india International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis] ] .

The review of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society has been called Samiksa [ [http://www.indianajournals.com/journals%20category%20detail.asp?cat=77&p=6 Samiksha (Journal of the India Psycho-analytical Society)] ] and its first edition appeared in 1947.

He has been written about extensively by Christiane Hartnack, Amit Ranjan Basu and Ashis Nandy, Sudhir Kakar [ [http://www.sudhirkakar.com/index.htm Official Website of psychoanalyst and writer Sudhir Kakar] ] , Manasi Kumar, amongst others.

The correspondence between Freud and Bose is to be found in the Sigmund Freud Archives, section Organization of the Papers, General Correspondence, Box 18 (page 19) Bose Girindrashekar [ [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/mss/eadxmlmss/eadpdfmss/2004/ms004017.pdf Sigmund Freud/ A Register of His Papers in the Sigmund Freud Collection in the Library if Congress] ] . Some of the letters are availabe in the Archives of the Freud Museum London [ [http://www.freud.org.uk/fmrese.htm see: Archive Catalogue of the Freud Museum London] ] . In 1964 the Bose-Freud correspondence had been published in a booklet by the Indian Psycho-analytical Society (Calcutta).

Bibliography

*Bose G. The psychological outlook of Hindu philosophy. Indian J Psychol 1930;5:119–46.
*Bose, Girindrasekhar. (1933). A New Theory of Mental Life. Indian Journal of Psychology, 37-157.
*Hartnack, Christiane. (1990). Vishnu on Freud'sDesk:Psychoanalysis in Colonial India. Social Research, 57 (4), 921-949.
** [http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/30/IIASNL30_10.pdf Online text: Freud on Garuda's Wings/ Psychoanalysis in Colonial India]
*Indian Psychoanalytical Society. (1955). Special Issue on Bose. Samiksa.
*Ramana, C.V. (1964). On the Early History and Development of Psychoanalysis in India. Journal of the American Psychoanal. Association., 12:110-134.
*Kakar, Sudhir. (1997). Encounters of the psychological kind: Freud, Jung and India. In Culture and Psyche: Psychoanalysis and India. New York, Psyche Press.
*Mehta, P. (1997). The Import and Export of Psychoanalysis: India. Journal of American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 25:455-471.

Further reading

*T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): VISHNU ON FREUD'S DESK : A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Oxford University PressISBN 0195658353, Paperback (Edition: 2003) [ [http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/IDG634/ Table of Contents] ]
* [http://www.dbdouble.freeuk.com/Historicizing.htm Historicizing Indian psychiatry by AMIT RANJAN BASU] Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 47, No. 2, 2005, pp. 126-129

References

External links

* [http://www.answers.com/topic/bose-girindrasekhar?cat=health Biography]
* [http://www.getcited.org/pub/102580352 Bose-Freud correspondence]
* [http://openlibrary.org/b/OL2303618M Bose-Freud correspondence.]