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Namah Sri Aurobindo’s Comments on Western Psychology

"I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts knew something about some of their ideas.
at all seriously when they try to scrutinise It was a time when the word `complex’ was
spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch- eulogised following the unravelling of the
lights…. They look from down up and explain Oedipal complex by Freud. Hill suggested that
the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict could
the foundation of these things is above and be tackled by resolving the `cow-complex’.
not below…. The superconscient, not the In a reported conversation on 30.08.1925, Sri
subconscient, is the true fountain of things. The Aurobindo had commented on Hill’s view
significance of the lotus is not to be found by and pointed out that though the phenomenon
analysing the secrets of the mud from which of repression existed which could be worked
it grows here; its secret is to be found in the through in therapy, a generalisation like
heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms resolving the cow-complex for communal
for ever in the Light above (6).” harmony would be too far-fetched. When
asked how it was that Freud who originated
the theory of complexes could have cured
people by his theory if it was based on
an imperfect foundation, Sri Aurobindo
reportedly answered in his characteristically
brain-teasing way:

“Theory can never cure anybody. Do you believe
that a theory cures? Curing people, or getting a
certain result, does not depend upon the theory
at all. A theory may be true or false and yet
Inspired by Freud, the Indian Psychoanalytic you may obtain results from it. A theory simply
Society was founded in Calcutta by Girindra puts you in a condition when something behind
Sekhar Bose in 1921 and one of its chief you can work through you. That is the whole
patrons was Owen A.R. Berkeley-Hill, stand of Bergson. Theory merely convinces you
Medical Superintendent of the Ranchi European and thereby produces the necessary inner
Mental Hospital. Both Bose and Hill were the condition. That is all. It may be true or it may
pioneers of the psychiatric and psychoanalytic be false. Freud may have cured people…. But
movement in India. Bose started the first ever does he cure them by his theory? Not at all; it
psychiatric out-patients’ department in any is because he has some power that people get
general hospital of India (outside of a mental cured by him (7).”
asylum) at the Carmichael College (now R. G.
Kar Medical College & Hospital) in Calcutta in
1933, while Hill was responsible for initiating
postgraduate studies in psychiatry for the first
time in India. Both Bose and Hill published
quite a number of research papers.

There is evidence to suggest that Sri Aurobindo

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