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FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHODYNAMICS OF YOGA *
M. V. Baxi We are all concerned with freedom, creativity, joy, self actualization, relief from mental tensions and constructive expressions of human personality. The Psychoanalytic liberation of man in the 20th century was therefore an important event. Even an insight into one's own unconscious mind has a liberating effect on man. Man cannot get truth about himself without the cooperation of a therapeutic communication. This Psychoanalytic insight has made truth for an individual a social product. Cognitive sociodynamics was born with psychoanalysis.
Yogic withdrawal, on the other hand, arrives at truth for an individual through unaided individual enterprise. Truth is unmasked in therapeutic communication. In Yoga it is revealed through pratyäbāra and disengagement. The epistemology of disengagement voderlying Yogic withdrawal is different from the epistemology of cooperative therapeutic communication. Knowledge is not a relation between the subject and an object but between two subjects in therapeutic situation, In Yoga it is a relation between the subject and his innermost being.
With this difference in view, we now proceed to discuss some themes of Sharma's The Psychodynamics of Yoga. It is an intersting attempt to offer an Indian alternative to Freud. To treat Yoga as a therapy in modern sense would perhaps require a revision of Samkhya metaphysics underlying classical Yoga.
The distinction between classical Yoga and Yoga as a therapy should be constantly kept in view throughout this discussion 1 Modern Psychology
Sharma does not reject any of the glorious achievements of modern Psychology. He however accepts the ideal of creative self-actualization. He therefore opts for Yoga Psychodynamics. He is dissatisfied with Freudian or Skipnerian determinism, and endorses the concept of human freedom. Sharma rejects the operation of causality in Psychology. Compatibilism is not at all discussed by Sharma.
Sharma praises Freud for having introduced dynamic point of view in psychology but he does not endorse the reductionism of Freud ia tracing
Review Article reviewing The Psychodynamics of Yoga by Sharma H.L, published by GDK Publications, Delhi, 1981.
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