ward to the stage of infanr-mother symbiotic, merger states, if nor to other

forms of psychopathology. Even more disparaged than the spiritual has been
&c magic-cosmic world of personal destiny, in which patients from a varieey
of cultures are involved in numerous ways, such as astrology, palmistry, the
spirit world, psychics and mediums, and rituals. This is anathema to most
psychoanalysts. Those whose tradition posits =elf-contained, rational indi-
vidual simply d o not appreciate the fact that patients outside of the Norrh-
ern European/North American culture belt have a self that is far more en-
meshed and embedded in an cxtcnded larnily, group, and community
context---or what is now being referred to as sociocentric/organic societieslg-
but also often exists in a world of invisible influences and spirits as well as
sometimes in the spiritual. TO assume a denigrating attitude tuward these
psychological phenomena is to miss a major portion of the patient's psyche.
In conclusion, psychoanalytic universalism in the form of its categories is
here to stay, but in a Far more circumscribed role whereby the contents of
these categories have to be changed and the current norms of normality/psy-
chopathology attached to these coments have to be recognized as culmre-
bound. When comparing the self from India, Japan, and the United States
for a workable analysis, one must integrate the philosophical polarities of
Western universaiiizit-ig assumptions with cctntextualizing ones, whechcr one
is dealing with Asian modes regarding the social and cosmic worlds or
modes of a more recent Western vintage such as social constructionism or
feminist theory. A further integration must also be made of the spiritual self,
one that transcends and encompasses bofh tlrlivcrsalizing categories and
cvntextualized views of the self. This integration call then form a solid basis
for evolving a comparative psychoanalysis of persons from radically differ-
ent cultures.

Notes
I, Clifford Gcertz, The Interpreta~ianof G~ltzeres(New Ui~rk;Basic Books, 1973).
2. Ibid., p. 48.
3, A. K, Kamanujan, "1s Thcrc an Indian Way of Thinking? An Infcjrmat Essay," in
Indid "Through Hizufu G t e g o r k s , ed. McKirn Marriott (New Dclhi and London:
Sage Publicarions, 1490), pp. 4 1-58,
4%. I would argue tt~atin the progression of individualism from the reiigious tts the
philosophical, to the social and political, -to the economic, and to the cultural and tit-
erary theory of Romanticism (Louis Dumone, E s s ~ y son Individktdlisun [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986]), one can look upon psychoanalysis as the further
execnsic~nof individualism to elie realm of tlie psychoiogicaI. If individuals arc set on
their own in Nonhern EuroyeanlNcn American societies in a way never before
done, then psychaanatysis is the psychc,tt)gical theory and therapy par exccllcncc eliae
enables them to be on their own thrc>ugbresolving alt kinds of unconscious cunfiicts
and deficits.