All the Mothers are One: Hindu India and the Cultural Reshaping of Psychoanalysis - Hardcover

Kurtz's meticulous scholarship and psychoanalytic interpretations are...presented in a lively style of writing that is very accessible and holds one's attention...an extremely interesting work as well as an original contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of Hinduism.

Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanalysis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple "mother goddesses" of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many "mothers" in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western models without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a brief comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America.