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

Summary

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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)

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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.

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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

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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.

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Transcript

[Dr. Basak]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Good morning everyone. I welcome you all to the New Books Network.

[Interviewer]

We are interviewing Dr. Kitayama and Dr. Basak today on their book Psychoanalytic Explorations

[Interviewer Ashish]

into the Primal Relationship in India and Japan.

[Interviewer]

Dr. Kitayama is a training and supervising analyst at the Japan Psychoanalytic Society, Professor Emeritus at Kyushu University and President of Hakuo University. He served as President of the Japan psychoanalytic society from 2016 to 2019 and continues to work with patients in private practice. He has authored numerous articles on culturally oriented psychoanalysis and books. I welcome you, Dr. Kitayama. Dr. Basak is a training and supervising analyst at the Indian Psychoanalytical Society. She has published on culture and gender. Over the past 20 years she has presented at IPA Congresses along with the first keynote from Asia Pacific at the 4th IPA region at the 53rd IPA Congress. A past co chair of OVAP Asia Pacific, she co edited Psychoanalytic and Socio Cultural Perspectives on Women in India, Violence, Safety and survival in 2021. I welcome you, Dr. Basak, and I look forward to this interview. I would like both of you to begin by saying a little about your collaboration and if you could orient our audience to how your collaboration began. What is the history of your work together and how did the two distinct perspectives, Indian and Japanese, merge for this project?

[Dr. Kitayama]

Well, thank you very much for your asking, but I'm forgetting things in detail, so maybe Juma would like to start our history. Thank you. Sure.

[Dr. Basak]

Thank you, Dr. Kitama. Thank you, Ashish. I think I've written in the book also about it, but it'll be nice to talk with you, Ashish, on this. My interest in Japanese culture actually goes back to my rather youthful days as a contemporary dancer from my city, Calcutta. And I have been intrigued with Japanese concepts in art like the concept of Minimalism and their arts practices like Noh Kabuki, buto. So this was from the arts side. The other side, which has been, you know, profound for me, has been Japan's history of resilience. Not only, you know, the countless natural disasters which we are all aware of, and it continues even till date, but also its rising resistance and resilience with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And here perhaps I somewhere could find some similarity in this history of resilience found similarity with the Indian context given our innumerable foreign invasions and of course our colonial history. So when I heard about Dr. Kita Yama's musical background to begin with, along with his work on the prohibition of don't look which is about the mother son dyadic experience. So that had an immediate interest for me, coming from India, where we are all aware of the dominant mother son cultural dyadic relationship. So this was very captivating for me. And our first meeting was in one of the IPA Congresses, I believe, in New Orleans, the 43rd IPA Conference in 2004. And after that, I've had the privilege of having Dr. Kita Yama as my PhD mentor. That was a very, very enriching period for me, not only about his work, but also living in Japan and experiencing Japanese culture directly, and which later led to our joint thinking, if I may say so, Dr. Kitayama, and then further collaboration. And this book is, I would say, a creation of that collaborative thinking.

[Interviewer]

Dr. Kitayama, would you like to add anything to this?

[Interviewer Ashish]

Wonderful.

[Dr. Kitayama]

I would like to add something, but can I use system of sharing a screen?

[Interviewer Ashish]

Sure.

[Dr. Kitayama]

I have to make a request. Is it possible now? Oh, yes, I can do that. Thank you very much. Okay. In addition to that, let me read what I have written already to answer this question. During our collaboration on her doctoral work at the university, I noticed we shared many commonalities, as Juno mentioned. For instance, she used to describe the situation in India as chaotic, whereas in Japan everything is neatly organized. Juma may remember that we do not see many homeless people, for instance, on the urban streets in Japan. In many other countries, these people are often visible, but in Japan, they are hidden in many subtle ways, keeping the streets looking orderly and clean. But the Japanese culture itself also creates powerful, unseen worlds, as many people feel a deep and heavy shame if they face big problems socially or psychologically. Japanese culture often teaches that being homeless is seen as a personal fault, like a sin, so that we must shamefully hold the homeless people anyhow. But we could imagine what is going on behind the screens, behind the scenes, as from a psychoanalytical perspective, they are just two sides of the same coin. In this way, we have to keep on creating bridges between us and doing that even today. Thank you.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Thank you. That's a very rich description that both of you have given that encompasses an interest in culture and also creates a bridge between what is chaotic and organized. Let's take that forward. And while reading your book, I couldn't help but notice that there is a universality of the maternal that reverberates in different parts of the book. And in your introduction, you differentiate between the Western sacrifice of Jesus dying for humanity and the Japanese mythic echo of the mother dying for the child. I also came across sudhir Kakkar's ideas of maternal enthrallment and Andre Green's dead mother complex in some of the chapters. Do you see the maternal as a unifying dimension that bridges the east and the west, or is its manifestation in the east fundamentally different?

[Dr. Kitayama]

Okay, let me go first. This is an important question. However, the answer cannot yet be clearly defined as either this or that, as even Jesus is so maternal as well as paternal to us, just like this picture. Maybe asis you can describe the picture for the audience later. Maybe so. In both the east and the west, the mother figure has always been, and elusive, enigmatic. Not through the either this or that dichotomy, but rather through this and that approach. If I may speak without fear of misunderstanding, there is no such thing as a mother. For instance, when I speak about Japan in English like this, I constantly think in Japanese while simultaneously translating my mother tongue into English, thereby singing and speaking in Japanese and English at the same time. This book of ours can be seen as an explanation of that very dual language process or dual cultural process. My thinking in Japanese while also thinking in English as a result of this, the dual language process, paternal English, which I speak today in the flown and I have to follow the English father, 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. So in this way I'm. I'm undifferentiatedly speaking maternally, paternally, at the same time. So I'm comfortable with this idea. So that is why Eddie's mother is not sharply distinguished from father in this way of thinking. I hope I'm clear to you.

[Interviewer]

Yes, thank you.

[Interviewer Ashish]

And I would like to describe for the audience the image that you have shared of this black and white image of a pelican giving blood to chicks. And you also write it's a way of recalling Jesus's own sacrifice. It's a very poignant image.

[Dr. Kitayama]

Yeah. And this Western, this, this image was made by non western creator. So I'm sure the idea of Jesus sacrificing himself for us may have come from our shared idea, the mother is sacrificing herself for us. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Kuma, what about your thoughts?

[Dr. Basak]

Yes, yes. I think, as Dr. Kitayama mentioned, about the dual aspect, the this and that and not this or that is something that we have both resonated in the book and possibly also may come out in my thoughts. And of course, coming you and myself coming from the Indian context, the concept of Ardhanarishwar itself, the conjoined body of male female energy, does give us the foundation of, let's say, a dual presence of maternal and paternal energies or masculine and feminine energies. So from the psychoanalytic perspective, I would tend to see that the maternal is the psychic origin of subjectivity, you know, beyond all cultures, whether in India, Japan or the West. But I think the distinction comes about in how we negotiate the two different cultures, how we negotiate maternal attachment dependence. It's a separation. And in that context, I would say that the Western cultural model perhaps sees the maternal rupture in a very distinct manner, in a decisive manner, to achieve individuation, which is also a very heroic, victorious element, to enter into the Oedipal order and thereby possibly the Oedipal configuration becomes vital. When I see from the Eastern perspective, as also I have written in one of my chapters, the cultural emphasis is on maternal eminence and relational configuration. And if we look at Kakkar's maternal enthalpment there, we would find that the separation is often. The maternal separation is often ambivalent and ambiguous, overlapping. And interestingly, culturally, this separation in the Indian context is not necessarily a culturally victorious position. If we look at. In Japan, if we look at Doi's concept of Takeo, Doi's concept of amae, we would find that their dependence is culturally and enriching mode of attachment. So in a way, we may find that the maternal continues to kind of continues in a living undercurrent in adult life at the background. The interesting part for me probably is that I see both the concepts Kakar and Doy is here talking about the mother son dyad. And that raises a significant concern for me. And 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. And I can say that perhaps in an experiential manner, more in the Indian context than the Japanese context, and thus behind this celebrated maternal fusion in the Eastern relational life, I wonder if there is a cultural disavowal of female subjectivity altogether. So that. That is an interesting, you know, I would say concern for. For me.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Yeah, yeah. I think that we will come to the erasure of the female subjectivity also a little later. But I would like to ask you that there is a concern that psychoanalytic training based on Western models might inadvertently distance an Eastern analysis from their own cultural significance. And what are your thoughts on how can the field evolve to better address this gap?

[Dr. Kitayama]

Okay, maybe Juma would like to go fast.

[Dr. Basak]

Oh, okay, sure, sure. As I, as I just mentioned a while back, I think the Western model somehow appears to privilege the maternal rupture and individuation, which are unique and very significant concepts, but to have them as maybe universal developmental ideals in psychoanalysis. And in context to that, the Eastern relational embeddedness and the maternal fusion may often appear to be rather regressive or pathological, quote unquote. Now, in the Western context, I think that the separation individuation has a very decisive moment of entry into subjectivity, whereas in the Eastern context, the cultural ground sees this, the emotional embeddedness, as an alternative organization of subjectivity. And I would say that perhaps if you, you know, your question, how can the field evolve to better address this gap? I feel that maybe the west maybe needs to open itself up, which I believe it already has. And our experience also says that significantly in comparison to previous times, but much more to a comparative inclusive psychoanalysis, where even if it's an unfamiliar concept or it's different from dominant ideals of psychoanalysis, it does not necessarily imply a pathological foundation. Similarly, from the Indian perspective, I would say that 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. Kitayama]

Oh, yes.

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[Interviewer Ashish]

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[Dr. Basak]

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[Dr. Kitayama]

Okay, let me add the something else. I'm feeling like foreigner here, speaking English, and 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 because I see patients here in Japanese and they are very Japanese. And so I'm representing my patients and I feel falling. And if I'm falling here, I need myself or you, both of you, as A translator to bridge the gap between us. Thus an analytic also for English audience or readers. I began with the analytic translations of Japanese mythology, which had been very untouchable. Therefore, today I'm very happy to make use of our mythological stories to introduce myself and my mother culture. But I must ensure that the shameful mother goddess and the intrusive father God do not get divorced in my mind, thereby transcending the tragedy of the prohibition of don't look by creating something new to bridge the gap you have just mentioned. So India and Japan may differ in language and ethnicity, and yet I sense we share commonality in how our cultures are produced from nature. To simplify, Freud's cultural theory posits that culture arises to control nature, whereas for us Easterners, culture emerges to coexist with nature. And both Juma and I share the idea that humans are not sharply distinguished from nature. It is by our cultivating the shared land that our culture is produced. 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.

[Interviewer Ashish]

I think that's a so beautiful response, and I love the use of the metaphor horticulture in imagining this. As I was reading the book, I couldn't help but notice that there are so many myths that are made reference to and many chapters in this book. Also look at the erasure of the feminine that Juma just mentioned and where the feminine merges with the non human. And I was wondering if, Dr. Kitayama, you could walk us through the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and to help us understand some of the contours that are being laid out in the book.

[Dr. Kitayama]

Yeah. Thank you very much. I am very, very grateful to you for your interest in our mythological stories. First. Okay, let me outline the story again. First, the couple marry and have sex and give birth to many, many gods and goddesses. And she. She gets pregnant many times, and then the mother goddess gets injured and she dies. She. She's violated or exposed and she abandoned. She. She got abandoned and she became very furious. And. But in the end, she is isolated completely by her husband. So this is the outline of the tragic story. So in my view, as far as I see it, the meaning of the feminine in this story, in this mythological story is really manifold. And consequently, I believe it has been erased because the spectacular mixture of this and that, life and death and men and women, sex and pregnancy and death, This and that. So this spectacular mixture of this and that is too unfathomable. So the causal factors are too numerous to rest up. But I have explained them one by one in my book, in our book, to some extent. For instance, during the process of revealing the mother's death, the responsibility of the father, the sexual partner who caused it, remains unclear. In the story, she, enraged by his humiliation, excluded. In the end, the father's guilt over the role in her pregnancy and death, over breaking the prohibition, then humiliating and abandoning her, has never been fully articulated. Maybe, I have to say, had never been fully articulated until we started working on this. So furthermore, as Japanese people, patients also express, as long as a corpse retains a bodily form, the possibility of life persists. It is within the process of deformation, the decay and loss of form between life and death, that the humiliated goddess and ugly women generate his persecutory experiences of filth and ugliness. Moreover, in the Kojiki, the ancient record of Japanese mythology, the female genitalia are described as ungrown, while the male genitalia are described as overgrown. Thus, within this Japanese mythological framework, the erasure of sexuality and femininity would be marked by the prominence of formlessness, formlessness and deformity. This supports the theory that the Japanese word dirty, katanashi in Japanese derives from formless katanashi. Oh, no, no, no. Dirty is pronounced kitanashi in Japanese derives from formless katanashi. So as I have shown, we are mixing them up. Formless and darkness.

[Interviewer Ashish]

I mean, yes, the images that you have shared also very vividly show this.

[Dr. Kitayama]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So our goddess is getting rotten, decaying. Thank you.

[Interviewer Ashish]

What also came to my mind while thinking about the theme of the non human was that in the midst there's a struggle where women are made invisible. And I was wondering, how does this struggle to separate or recognize the woman made manifest in today's generation?

[Dr. Kitayama]

Oh, that is very interesting question. So I remember many, many young people coming here based on, from our young patients, including mine, I believe the peer pressure, you know, our society so homogeneous, very homogeneous. So to make a difference is very difficult. So here is a peer pressure. So this peer pressure is to pursue beautiful forms. The shame based psychology of concealing perceived ugliness are indeed intensifying, intensifying in this homogeneous society even now. And given that the Japanese aesthetic sensibility favoring kawaii, have you ever heard of it? Kawaii, which means cute. Yes, this is a famous concept. It is now becoming internationally known, and this may be internationally well known through this, I mean, Japanese pop culture, One can imagine how this fosters the profound Psychological conditions resulting in the cosmetic surgery boom in Japan and Korea, as far as I know, and I refer this cluster of issues using the metaphor the mermaid's landing, which is more popular than the Japanese stories of animal life. Just as amphibians cannot make the complete transition from water to dry land because they can bear to expose their fishy bodies outside the prohibition of don't look is still too powerful, so the violation of this prohibition can be profoundly traumatic and shameful, not only for women, but also for men. And this is true powerful. I have to say. Thank you.

[Interviewer Ashish]

I was also. My mind went to thinking about that. How do we understand the male mind that refuses to give recognition to women's subjectivity? And how do you see this exclusion in your framework?

[Dr. Kitayama]

Oh, yes, thank you for your asking this also. And yeah, ugliness is in my mind. And as I mentioned again and again in a book of ours, Japanese word for ugly carries the homophonic. Homophonic connotation of difficult to see. You have to notice that our Japanese was always almost ambiguous. But as an analyst, we have to make a use of it to explain ourselves. Moreover, it goes without saying that fear of becoming formless exists for both men and women. And exclusion or avoidance of formless things, once manifested clinically as gaze phobia, blushing phobia, and. Dysmorphophobia, this is a fear of being ugly. This used to be very common in Japan, but they may now appears to have been vanishing at the symptomatic level alongside Westernization in Japan. I think that these fears are still stimulating us in Japan deeply beneath the surface, as cultural anthropologists and folklorists suggest. This extrusion, driven by fear of disorder, arises from the very process by which humans, seeking to understand, classify, and impose order upon nature, inevitably create the unfathomable, that which cannot be categorized or which cannot be comprehended. Thus, I believe the excluded represents disorderly nature that the very act of establishing order in nature inevitably generates. Thus, the Japanese people believe the mind dwell not only in the upper body, but also in lower body. In the lower body, the abdomen. So the unfastenable, the incomprehensible, and the indivisible must be placed in the swamp of the mind or the lower body of the mind within the abdomen. I place a place where formless entities shape something tangible. And I believe the analyst, as I have written repeatedly in books, must manage this digestive process of the formless, shaping forms.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Yeah, thank you for that elaborate response, Juma. In one of the chapters on cultural maternal fusion, you build on Kakar's idea of maternal enthrallment. And you describe a specific misan of the mother son dyad. And you also link this with the cultural and political landscape in India. And I found that framework to be so interesting. And if you could tell our audience and listener something about this.

[Dr. Basak]

Well, I must say the question is very provoking but very difficult to respond in this conversational manner. But I have elaborately written about it in our book. But let me try and respond to some extent. So as I have already mentioned earlier about the maternal fusion as a culturally structured gendered attachment that privileges the male child. From that perspective, if I'm looking with a critical agenda, I see I tend to see this as that which unifies with a larger symbolic deification of the motherland, the nation. And this invites a willingness in the subject, primarily the male subject I'm talking about about to give up their lives and sacrifice for the mother nation. And we have also seen the benevolent aspect of that vis a vis the innumerable foreign invasions that India has undergone and definitely in terms of the colonial resistance. So this generates an awe inspiring climate for a passionate maternal enthalpment with the motherland itself, starting from the subjective to the collective. And I would see this journey of the subjective and collective as a counterfeiting mechanism, while the woman's internalization of this enigmatic glorified maternal. Glorified maternal of the nation 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. And this, I think is perhaps a unique patriarchal architecture that creates national stereotypes, highlighting national cultural. Highlighting hegemonic national cultural imagination, which is in direct conflict with the reality of our country, which is definitely emitting a cultural pluralism. So in this context, I see the maternal mes essence to be gradually constructed where the subjective and the collective, the very private maternal immersion and the very, I would say, collective submission towards the maternal of the mother nation gets connected.

[Interviewer]

Thank you.

[Interviewer Ashish]

I think the listeners can really go into the book also because you elaborate this very dense topic so vividly. But I was also wondering that you have also made a very interesting observation that in the Indian context, individuation doesn't mean separating from the family, it means something else. So if you could reiterate what it means and how does this dual process that you refer to, which I found very interesting, make the adult journey more complex?

[Dr. Basak]

Thank you. I think this is something the book covers both from Dr. Keitha Emma's perspective And mine, I would see the individual. I would not see this to be individuation versus community, but rather individuation along with community. Where the process of both the autonomous, the autonomy and the sense of belonging remains psychically intertwined. And that undoubtedly creates a very, very difficult, fertile ground, conflictual ground, for the ego to navigate and differentiate. So in a way, one is expected to differentiate without disavowal. So often this collective, communal sense, including the family over here, can become overwhelming for the subject as my clinical experience, objective experience in India shoals. So in this situation, naturally, the subjective journey becomes very, very complex. Often this journey is with many conflicting loyalties. And I would say, sense of betrayals, all at the same time.

[Interviewer Ashish]

There's so much that is going on.

[Interviewer]

And that brings me to my next question that how should an analyst trained

[Interviewer Ashish]

in the Western model place the individual and the community together without forcing an interruption or a break?

[Dr. Basak]

I really appreciate this question because this is an awareness of, I would say, today's psychoanalysts of India. Rather than what we have been trained and grown up listening and learning. So this is a critical ground for us, an unknown ground. And I'm not sure, you know, whether what I have to share is the way. But I am navigating, so I will share what I am navigating through. As I've said before, that we see this break in the Western model to be a very decisive psychic rupture from the maternal, which is also a very precise moment of entry into subjecthood. But from the Eastern perspective, I would say that it is more a relational differentiation. From a completely different developmental psychic design. This psychic design is probably something we are articulating about right now. And is in the form of getting formed, hopefully. Now, once again, this is. This implies a very complex emotional plane for the ego to navigate. Because it is looking at a very delicate bridge between the subjective and the collective. But as Dr. Keith Ayma has mentioned before, and we've written about it in the book, and I've also had, you know, the. I would say, the opportunity of hearing my other Japanese colleagues from the Japan society when I had the opportunity of physically interacting with them in Japan and otherwise, we are talking about living with a coexistence. This whole book, especially the second part, the triadic tryst that we're talking about. 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.

[Interviewer Ashish]

Thank you, Juma, for emphasizing that And I'm really glad that you have, because it's such a significant part of the latter half of the book. And the latter half of the book also talks about the triadic sleeping arrangements and the primal scene, the cultural nuances in the primal scene. And in one particular part, Juma, you have said that this triadic arrangement is the bedrock of the filial pledge. And I was wondering that how does this closeness of this triad shape the constitution of the mind separately than the Western nursery model where, like you have already said, that separation is emphasized?

[Dr. Basak]

So I've. I've tried to talk about this in the chapter on enthralled infancy in a bed of parental tryst. So I'll try to respond from that chapter. So the triadic sleeping arrangement, or as we say, the co sleeping with parents, undoubtedly indicates a quality of psychic coexistence that I just mentioned a while back. And I believe Dr. Kitayama will have elaborate sharings on this. So the physical closeness experienced in this triadic sleeping together for the child definitely signifies an intense bodily triangulation which is charged with an equally Oedipal environment of both seduction and rivalry in that very site of the triadic bed. Now, this emotional embroilment is very, very intense, as we can understand, which further subsequently creates a sense of paralyzing filial commitment to the family, as I put it in my chapter, which symbolically relates to the unconscious totemistic order of commitment to the collective, to the community. And for the infant, the family is its first experience of a complex, rich sense of clan. And in that way I relate the filial commitment, the paralyzing filial commitment. Now, this further creates a much more intricate and multiple attachment schema where there is an enthralling sense of interconnectedness between all the participants in this triadic journey, which may lead to fantasies of incestuous claims as well as acute ambivalence, and definitely leads to a much more complex Oedipal sexual bedrock in the adult life. I would say that the triadic sleeping arrangement has a significant impact on the psychosensual development, psychosexual development of the child differently, qualitatively, differently, psychically, differently for the boy child and the girl child, which I have tried to talk through my clinical citations in the book.

[Interviewer]

Dr. Kita Yama, I would also like to hear from you that when you talk about a culturally nuanced primal scene, how do you see it? How does it differ from the classical Freudian interpretation? And what does that mean in our

[Interviewer Ashish]

Understanding of desire and authority.

[Dr. Kitayama]

Okay, I understand that the question is how we Japanese perceive the primal thing. In Freud's understanding, I believe most of primal seeing experiences are traumatic. However, subsequent findings from our various cultures have reported that this is not necessarily the case. Yet in my view, there is no clear consensus whatsoever on what makes a primal Singh experience problematic or what makes it relatively unproble problematic. To most of us in Japan, it is a subprimal thing is a matter of laughter. But in my book, in our book, I presented the clinical cases that have shown me their traumatic memories of the parents loving and killing each other at a time, often making the whole thing messy or entangled. So disentangle. Disentanglement. To understand the parental sex realistically and to grasp historically that many mothers died during childbirth in the past requires an enormous amount of time and work. Therefore, I want to emphasize that we must begin by leaving the entanglement in the session as it is not focusing on how to understand or interpret it immediately, but simply, simply leaving the Mahdi as Mahdi and most importantly, becoming accustomed to it or natural to it. As for sexual desire, it is a movement towards becoming natural to us, including become animalistic, especially in sexual activities. I believe the human self or false self temporarily dies by killing each other in making love and within the state of interdependency and mutual regression. Or am I? Rules and authority figures dissolve. This mudhi requefaction signifies nothing beyond the mingling of human and beast. Unless cultivated. It possesses rich potential, yet bears no meaning for whatsoever, just nonsense, a matter of laughter. This disenzered mixture may be unfathomable, fashionable to the infant who may see father killing mother if the parent survives truly after all. However, we start thinking in threesome way which I've done described in our book to conclude the father cultivating mother, creating us. Thank you. Am I clear?

[Interviewer Ashish]

Anyway, yes. I think there's so much wisdom and also there's something so deeply profound in what you just shared. And I think that I will be going back to the book after this engagement and reading parts of it again. I must also share with our listeners that the book has a beautiful archive of images and it's a very, very deeply researched book. And I think if I'm not wrong, then perhaps this is the first collaboration between India and Japan. And I really hope that this creates a foundation because the work that both of you have done, and I'm much younger to say this, but it's, it's. It's. It's both profound and dense and it has so many layers for us to go into. So from the New Books Network, I really thank both of you for this engagement.

[Dr. Basak]

Thank you very much. Ashish, it has been an absolute pleasure and honor to talk with you along with Dr. Kita Yama. My privilege. Your questions have been so deep, so thought provoking and it makes me feel happy to see your engagement with our thoughts and work. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Dr. Kitayama.

[Dr. Kitayama]

Thank you very much both of you. And right now I feel very happy being able to introduce my father and my mother at the time and that is Joy. Thank you very much and I'm looking forward to seeing you again to follow this kind of discussion. And thank you very much. I'm awesome.

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