Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Osamu Kitayama and Jhuma Basak, "Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India" (Routledge, 2025)

Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Ashish (New Books Network)

Episode Overview

This episode features an illuminating conversation with Dr. Osamu Kitayama and Dr. Jhuma Basak, authors of Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India. The discussion explores their transnational psychoanalytic collaboration, the complex intersections of the maternal and cultural subjectivity, myth, gender, and individuation in Indian and Japanese contexts. The episode dives into how psychoanalytic theory, predominantly rooted in Western models, engages with and sometimes clashes with Eastern psycho-cultural realities, particularly concerning the mother-child and mother-son relationships.

Origins of Collaboration and Thematic Foundations

[00:22–05:06]

• Cross-cultural Interest and Encounter:
  Dr. Basak shares how her early fascination with Japanese arts and resilience, combined with her work in psychoanalysis, led her to collaborate with Dr. Kitayama, whom she met at the 43rd IPA Congress in 2004. Dr. Kitayama later became her PhD mentor, deepening their collaboration and research.

  “…my interest in Japanese culture actually goes back to my rather youthful days as a contemporary dancer... Japanese concepts in art like Minimalism and their arts practices like Noh, Kabuki, buto… Japan’s history of resilience… found some similarity with the Indian context given our innumerable foreign invasions and colonial history.”
  — Dr. Jhuma Basak [02:08]

• Cultural Contrasts & The Bridge Building:
  Dr. Kitayama highlights differences: India’s “chaos” versus Japan’s “neat organization,” and delves into how social order in Japan conceals psychological and social suffering, such as homelessness, with deep shame.

  “Japanese culture itself also creates powerful, unseen worlds, as many people feel a deep and heavy shame if they face big problems… we have to keep on creating bridges between us and doing that even today.”
  — Dr. Osamu Kitayama [06:33]

The Maternal as Universal and Particular

[07:25–16:28]

• The Maternal Across Cultures:
  The discussion pivots to the universality of the maternal archetype and its differing cultural expressions. The hosts compare Western and Eastern mythic echoes (e.g., Jesus’s self-sacrifice vs. the mythic maternal death in Japanese lore). Kitayama introduces the this and that dualism, rejecting a stark maternal-paternal dichotomy.

  “…my thinking in Japanese while also thinking in English… paternal English… but my mother tongue is always here in the back of my mind. And as I ego, you know, I’m always thinking about both. Maybe I’m speaking one language today, but they are based on the two cultures, two languages, and the mother and the father at a time...”
  — Dr. Kitayama [09:15]

• Indian Perspective – Ardhanarishwar and Gender Duality:
  Dr. Basak discusses the Indian philosophical construct of Ardhanarishwara and points out how maternal fusion in Indian (and also Japanese) contexts creates a privileged space for the son but may erase the subjectivity of women.

  “…the maternal continues in a living undercurrent in adult life at the background… I wonder if the maternal eminence is a cultural structure of gendered attachment where the son holds a privileged, authentic position of bearing that maternal continuity, that cultural continuity… behind this celebrated maternal fusion in the Eastern relational life, I wonder if there is a cultural disavowal of female subjectivity altogether.”
  — Dr. Basak [14:33]

Rethinking Psychoanalysis: East vs. West

[16:28–23:14]

• Cultural Embeddedness vs. Western Rupture:
  Dr. Basak critiques the universal application of the Western psychoanalytic ideal of individuation and maternal “rupture”, arguing for recognition of Eastern models of embeddedness as alternative, not pathological.

  “…the Eastern relational embeddedness and the maternal fusion may often appear to be rather regressive or pathological, quote unquote… perhaps we also need to voice our own psychoanalysis whichever way we understand and allow it to be heard by the other and not allow our mind or the intellect to be ruled by an imperial psychoanalysis from the pre-independence era.”
  — Dr. Basak [17:01]

• Bridging Cultural Gaps with Horticulture:
  Kitayama uses the metaphor of ‘horticulture’ for cross-cultural psychoanalytic work—cultivating a shared field rather than imposing order from above.

  “So here we are creating our new culture by cultivating the field between us so that we need horticulture to cultivate and to be cultivated.”
  — Dr. Kitayama [22:29]

Japanese Myth, the Feminine, and Erasure

[23:14–32:19]

• The Myth of Izanagi and Izanami:
  Kitayama describes the creation myth as a site where the feminine is erased through suffering, death, and formlessness—a metaphor for the social and psychic dynamics of femininity being rendered invisible, polluted, or monstrous.

  “…the meaning of the feminine in this mythological story is really manifold… a spectacular mixture of this and that, life and death and men and women, sex and pregnancy and death.... Thus, within this Japanese mythological framework, the erasure of sexuality and femininity would be marked by the prominence of formlessness and deformity…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [24:01]

• Contemporary Gender Pressures:
  Social pressures towards beauty, conformity, and “cuteness” (kawaii) in modern Japanese society reinforce the struggle for self-recognition, with significant impacts on women and men (cosmetic surgery boom, peer pressure).

  “…to make a difference is very difficult… the shame-based psychology of concealing perceived ugliness are indeed intensifying… this fosters the profound psychological conditions resulting in the cosmetic surgery boom in Japan and Korea…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [29:25]

Gender, Exclusion, and Individuation in the East

[32:19–41:36]

• Exclusion of Female Subjectivity:
  Kitayama notes cultural tendencies to link ugliness with formlessness and avoidance, and highlights clinical psychoanalytic syndromes (blushing/gaze phobia) as cultural symptoms tied to these gendered exclusions.

  “…the Japanese word for ugly carries the homophonic connotation of difficult to see… the excluded represents disorderly nature that the act of establishing order in nature inevitably generates… the analyst… must manage this digestive process of the formless, shaping forms.”
  — Dr. Kitayama [32:19]

• Mother-Son Dyad and National Identity:
  Dr. Basak connects the privileged mother-son bond to nationalistic imaginings of the “Motherland” in India—a mechanism for both subjective and collective identity, which paradoxically erases women’s subjectivity and perpetuates patriarchal culture.

  “…the maternal fusion as a culturally structured gendered attachment that privileges the male child… this unifies with a larger symbolic deification of the motherland, the nation… the woman’s internalization of this… prepares the ground for her eternal subjective sacrifice, almost a disavowal of her entire being in order to construct a national cultural ideal of the maternal…”
  — Dr. Basak [36:18]

• Individuation and Community:
  In India (and by extension in Japan), individuation does not denote separation from the family/community, but rather “differentiation without disavowal,” leading to a complex psychic journey where autonomy and belonging are perpetually intertwined.

  “…individuation along with community. Where the process of both the autonomy and the sense of belonging remains psychically intertwined. And that undoubtedly creates a very… fertile ground, conflictual ground, for the ego to navigate and differentiate.”
  — Dr. Basak [40:07]

The Triadic Bed and the Primal Scene

[41:36–51:58]

• Triadic Sleeping Arrangement as Cultural Bedrock:
  The co-sleeping tradition in India and Japan—parental tryst with the child in the bed—creates a unique psychic environment of closeness, entanglement, and “filial pledge,” generating complex Oedipal and ambivalent ties.

  “…the triadic sleeping arrangement… undoubtedly indicates a quality of psychic coexistence… the physical closeness experienced… signifies an intense bodily triangulation… which further subsequently creates a sense of paralyzing filial commitment to the family…”
  — Dr. Basak [45:07]

• Primal Scene: From Trauma to Entanglement:
  Kitayama challenges the Freudian assumption that the “primal scene” (witnessing parental sex) must be traumatic, emphasizing instead the cultural normalization or comedic rendering of such scenes in Japan. The psychic “muddy” (entanglement) is to be tolerated and worked with in the analytic session, rather than forcibly clarified.

  “…to most of us in Japan… primal seeing is a matter of laughter. But in my book… I presented the clinical cases that have shown me their traumatic memories… disentangle. To understand the parental sex realistically… requires enormous time and work. Therefore, we must begin by leaving the entanglement in the session as it is…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [48:22]

  “…as for sexual desire, it is a movement towards becoming natural to us, including become animalistic, especially in sexual activities… rules and authority figures dissolve. This… signifies nothing beyond the mingling of human and beast… this disenzered mixture may be unfathomable… we start thinking in threesome way…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [50:24]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cultural Psychoanalysis:

  “I feel a little bit strange today because I’m wondering whether I belong to the east or the west here. But I’m trying to remember the Japaneseness because I’m expected to talk about Japan…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [20:00]

• On Bridging Worlds:

  “This book of ours can be seen as an explanation of that very dual language process or dual cultural process…”
  — Dr. Kitayama [09:15]

• On Patriarchy and Nationalism:

  “Internalization of this enigmatic glorified maternal… prepares the ground for her eternal subjective sacrifice, almost a disavowal of her entire being in order to construct a national cultural ideal of the maternal… a unique patriarchal architecture that creates national stereotypes…”
  — Dr. Basak [36:53]

• On the Analyst’s Task:

  “The analyst… must manage this digestive process of the formless, shaping forms.”
  — Dr. Kitayama [35:40]

• On Triadic Living:

  “We are talking about living with coexistence and paradoxes which are not necessarily pathological, but comes from a completely different psychic design, a different child rearing process, cultural process.”
  — Dr. Basak [43:55]

Key Timestamps

• [02:08] – Dr. Basak’s introduction, artistic/cultural roots of collaboration
• [06:33] – Dr. Kitayama: Cultural differences and the issue of shame/order
• [09:15] – Maternal as both universal and particular—dual language/culture metaphor
• [14:33] – Maternal fusion and erasure of female subjectivity
• [17:01] – Critique of psychoanalytic universalism; need for local theory
• [22:29] – Horticulture metaphor for cross-cultural psychoanalysis
• [24:01] – Izanagi/Izanami myth—formlessness, erosion of the feminine
• [29:25] – Contemporary Japanese peer pressure, “kawaii,” beauty culture
• [32:19] – Gendered exclusion and its clinical/cultural symptoms
• [36:18] – Mother-son dyad and its political/national symbolism in India
• [40:07] – Individuation as intertwined with community
• [45:07] – Triadic sleeping arrangements and filial commitment
• [48:22] – The primal scene: trauma, entanglement, humor across cultures
• [50:24] – Psychic “muddy-ness,” animality, and triadic relationships

Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Drs. Kitayama and Basak have woven a pioneering comparative psychoanalytic tapestry that urges listeners to reconsider familiar developmental and gender schemas. Their work privileges complexity, paradox, and the cultivation of shared meaning (“horticulture”) over imposing singular models of health or individuation. Central themes include:

• The maternal as universal yet distinctly articulated in Japan and India—bridging, but also dividing cultures
• Gender, especially the son’s privileged relationship to the maternal, as a site of both individuation and erasure
• How cultural rituals (myth, triadic sleeping, national identity) create unique psychic architectures
• The need for cross-cultural “translation” and openness in psychoanalytic training and practice

This episode is a layered and intellectually rich primer on the ways that culture, gender, and psychoanalysis endlessly reflect, refract, and re-imagine one another.