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Abstract

This essay provides an analysis and review of Dinesh Sharma's edited collection Childhood, Family, and Sociocultural Change in India: Reinterpreting The Inner World. The authors in this book provide a retrospective critique of Sudhir Kakar's grand narrative on Hindu psychology and childhood. While recognizing the tremendous intellectual significance of Kakar's book The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India, the authors in this collected volume make a case for reanalyzing and rereading this classic work within the contemporary cultural context of India. The review essay is organized around three significant themes of this book: (1) re-imagining the self in global India; (2) mothers, fathers and the development of self in Indian children; and (3) colonization, postcolonial identity and Indian psychology.

Keywords

culture family globalization Hinduism India self

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Reinterpreting the Inner Self in Global India:‘Malevolent Mothers’,‘Distant Fathers’ and the Development of Children's Identity

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