Table Of ContentRELIGION AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
IN INDIA
ReligionandPsychoanalysisinIndiaquestionstheassumptionsofanestablishedscientific,
evidence-based global mental health paradigm by examining the practices of faith-
based healing. It proposes that human beings demonstrate a dual loyalty: to science
as faith and faith as science, both of which get reconfigured in the process. In this
particularcontext,scienceandfaith aredeployedinwaysthatarenotonlydifferent
but at times contrary to mainstream discourses of science and religion, and faith
healing becomes a point where these two discourses collide head-on in negotiating
culturalvalues andpractices.Thebookaddresses keyquestions,suchas:
(cid:1) What is the value of ‘faith healing’ in understanding distress and treatment in
differentculturalcontexts?
(cid:1)
What isacritical psychological perspective onfaith andreligioussystems?
(cid:1)
What challengesdoalternative religiouspractices posetocritical psychology?
(cid:1)
How should we re-imagine clinical work in a context marked by science and
religion?
Situatedbetween‘West’and‘East’,betweentheglobalmentalhealthmovement
and local faith-based practices in India, the book addresses a wide audience that
includesstudents andresearchers,inpsychology, culturalandmedicalanthropology,
the sociology of religion, cultural theory, post-colonial theory and the sociology of
science. It will also appeal to policy-makers and practitioners interested in the work
ofNGOsandthelegalframeworks drivingmentalhealth movements inIndia.
SabahSiddiquiisafull-timefundeddoctoralresearcherintheSchoolofEnvironment,
EducationandDevelopment,UniversityofManchester,UK.
CONCEPTS FOR CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY:
DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES RE-THOUGHT
Series editor: Ian Parker
Developments inside psychology that question the history of the discipline
and the way it functions in society have led many psychologists to look
outside the discipline for new ideas. This series draws on cutting edge
critiquesfromjustoutsidepsychology inordertocomplementandquestion
critical arguments emerging inside. The authors provide new perspectives
on subjectivity from disciplinary debates and cultural phenomena adjacent
to traditional studies of the individual.
The books in the series are useful for advanced level undergraduate and
postgraduatestudents,researchersandlecturersinpsychologyandotherrelated
disciplines such as cultural studies, geography, literary theory, philosophy,
psychotherapy,socialworkandsociology.
Published Titles:
Surviving Identity Cultural Ecstasies
Vulnerability and the Psychology Drugs, Gender and the Social
of Recognition Imaginary
Kenneth McLaughlin Ilana Mountian
Decolonizing Global Mental
Psychologisation in Times of
Health
Globalisation
The psychiatrization of the
Jan De Vos
majority world
China Mills
Social Identity in
Question Self Research
Construction, Subjectivity and The Intersection of Therapy and
Critique Research
Parisa Dashtipour Ian Law
The Therapeutic Turn Religion and Psychoanalysis
How psychology altered Western in India
culture Critical Clinical Practice
Ole Jacob Madsen Sabah Siddiqui
Race, Gender, and the Ethics and Psychology
Activism of Black Feminist Beyond codes of practice
Theory Calum Neill
Working with Audre Lorde
Suryia Nayak The Psychopolitics of Food
Culinary Rites of Passage in the
Perverse Psychology Neoliberal Age
The pathologization of sexual Mihalis Mentinis
violence and transgenderism
Jemma Tosh
Radical Inclusive Education
Disability, teaching and struggles
for liberation
Anat Greenstein
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RELIGION AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS IN
INDIA
Critical Clinical Practice
Sabah Siddiqui
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2016S.Siddiqui
TherightofS.Siddiquitobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen
assertedbyhim/herinaccordancewithsections77and78ofthe
Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,
nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingand
recording,orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,without
permissioninwritingfromthepublishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor
registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand
explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Names:Siddiqui,Sabah,author.
Title:ReligionandpsychoanalysisinIndia:criticalclinicalpractice/
SabahSiddiqui.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2016.|
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2015034955|ISBN9781138942585
(hardback:alk.paper)|ISBN9781138942592(pbk.:alk.paper)|
ISBN9781315673066(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Mentalhealth--India.|Mentalhealth--Religious
aspects.|Spiritualhealing--India.|Psychoanalysisandreligion--India.
Classification:LCCRA790.7.I5S532016|DDC362.19689/
1700954--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttp://lccn.loc.gov/2015034955
ISBN:978-1-138-94258-5(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-94259-2(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-67306-6(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
State, science and superstition 3
Wraths of power 14
2 On method 22
Science 24
Cultural anthropology 26
Freudian psychoanalysis and its cultural variants 28
Post-colonial studies 32
3 Ghosts from the past 37
Return of the deceased as symptom of the diseased 42
Hiroshima and the psychoanalysis of forgetting 47
The trauma in remembering vs the horror of forgetting 53
4 Woman or goddess? 56
God does not go to everyone 57
Home and the world 63
Technologies of the self 66
viii Contents
5 Prayers, pills and politics 76
Situating the dargah 83
Esoterica 88
A fragment of a case of jinn possession 93
6 In lieu of a conclusion 98
Glossary 111
References 113
Index 119
PREFACE
Ian Parker
Thisbooktakesusintoplacesthatwillbeunfamiliartomostpsychologistsin
the ‘West’, unfamiliar even to most ‘critical’ psychologists. The journey
SabahSiddiquidescribesenablesherto‘defamiliarize’assumptionswemight
make about the relationship between psychiatric treatment and the State,
and to illuminate the role of subjectivity in alternative healing practices. In
this way, at the very moment that we enter into the place of the temple
sites in India, as we are drawn into adeeper understanding of that particular
context, we are forced to step back from what we think we know about
psychological,spiritualandtherapeuticworldviews.Thebookopensaspace
for religion as a resource for alternative conceptions of treatment – religion
that operates as a humanizing counterweight to the medical psychiatric
Westerntradition –butthenshows howthat spaceisbeinghemmedinand
colonized by the State. The particular focus on a Muslim shrine that is
besieged by the ascendant Hindu nationalist community in Gujarat –
Gujarat as the local state that was the testing-ground for many of the poli-
cies now being rolled out nationwide – serves to intensify the question of
what a progressive alternative to dominant conceptions of subjectivity,
normality and pathology might look like.
The opposition between so-called ‘scientific’ psychiatry endorsed by the
Indian government and faith-based healing practices is then given a political
charge assomereligions more thanothers– inthiscase itis Islamthat is the
target more than Hinduism – are accused of being ‘superstitious’. Psychology
