"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow India analysed is such a conversation between two wise men, Ramin Jahanbegloo, acclaimed Iranian philosopher and Sudhir Kakar, the renowned Indian psychoanalyst and writer. Kakar takes Jahanbegloo and the readers on a…
The Politics of the family
“Sometimes family weirdos just get a bad rap.” — Mirabel, Disney's Encanto (2021) "But between the impossible and the trivial, there may be a way that is both feasible and significant..." writes R.D.Laing, the daring explorer of human mind in his collection of thought provoking essays, The Politics of the Family, as he navigates through…
The Gift of Therapy
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl Gustav Jung In spite of being a very tough choice for most of us, therapy can turn out to be a gift. It can enrich a person's life with many gifts of understanding. But it…
Liberating Losses: When Death Brings Relief
Death is an awakening.Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace There are few things that is as life affirming as death. But this is often confounded by the confusing cocktail of emotions surrounding death. We are expected to be sad in the face of death for there is a loss. We are allowed to progress through the…
Maybe you should talk to someone
The more you welcome your vulnerability, the less afraid you'll feel.Wendell in Maybe you should talk to someone by Lori Gottlieb. Talking to someone is one of the most daring things that we all do on a regular basis. As we utter words, we lay our thoughts bare in front of another. It gets all…
The Second Kind of Loneliness
Where do we draw the line between solitude and loneliness? George R. R. Martin's The Second Kind of Loneliness meditates on the conflicting subjectivity that attempts to answer this question. Martin makes the distant vantage point intimate enough to be intimidating. https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8 The story is a few diary entries from a lonely astronaut at the…
The Amorous Cannibalism
Passionate longing, that is the libido, has two aspects: It is the power that beautifies everything and in certain cases, destroys everything. C.G.Jung The entanglement of sex and death is one of the fundamental manifestations of the divine rhythm of chaos and order. Though sex and death seemingly exist in opposite banks of life, both…
Self portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola
If dreams are the royal roads to the unconscious, portraits could be royal roads to our ideal selves. Self portraits, the artful ancestors of modern day selfies has been woven into the cultural psyche, as a means to explore and express ourselves. Our desire to capture eternity by freezing time reflects our little, dispersed revolts…
Much madness is Divinest Sense
This small poem puts forth an interesting question regarding abnormal behavior. The poem is a lament about how ab'normal', defined as anything 'away from normal' becomes problematic, when normality is often majoritarian. What is normal for the spider, might be chaos for the fly. Besides, "Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but…
The female body
Ever since Descartes, the mind-body dualism debate has been in vogue. But perhaps nevermore than in the case of a woman, whose body is presumed to have a mind of its own, incapable of thinking beyond the body. Margaret Atwood's poignant and hilarious satire The female body, first published as a response to a letter…
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