sonality as modally inferior to the individualism of Westerners.

Indians thus
emerge in Kakar"s analysis as having an underdeveloped ego-that is, as
lacking rhe independent, self-Aiant, self-directing ego of Wstcrn idividu-
alism; as lacking rational, logical, secondary-process thinking, another hail-
mark value of individualism; as exhibiting vague emotional boundaries be-
tween self and other with much less of thc self-other demarcation that is also
characteristic of individualism; and as having a weak conscience or superego
because they follow the highly contextual ethical norms of others rather
&an the caregorical imperative of Western male individualism. A few quota-
tions from Kakar's The Inner World will illustrate the problematic aspects of
his evolutionism:

No [Indian] group can sltmive for tong if its members are brought up to neglect
the development of those seconday processes through cvhicl-t we mediate and
connect outer and inncr expcricnec. An ifndian] "underdeveloped ego* in rela-
tion to the outer world is a risky tuxttry. ... Under these "modern" conditions,
an individual ego struceurc, weak in secondary and reality-oriented processes
md unsupported bp an adequate social organization, may fail to be adaptive
(pp. 107,108),

Kakar claims that "this same intense excfuslviry [with the mother in early
childhood] tends to hinder the growth of t k son's autonomy, therefore Ieav-
ing the psychic structure relatively undifferentiated, the boundaries of the
self vague" (p. 130). H e then concludes that in India "the categorical con-
science ... does not exist as a psychic structure sharply ditfererlrfated from
the id and the ego, nor are its parts 'idealized' as they tend to be in Western
cultures, ... n ] k e communal conscience is a social rather than an individual
formation, it. is not "insidehhe psyche, ... [Xlnstead of having one internal
sentinel an Indian relies on many external 'watcl~men-o patrol his activi-
ties" (p. 135). Although he protests to the contrary, Kakar findamentally ac-
cepts the Enlightenmerat demystification and secularization of religion in
psychoanalytic theory whereby spiritual experiences, so valued in Indian so-
ciety, are viewed as regression to the early mother-infant relationship: "The
blissful soothing and nursing associat-cd with the mother of earliest infancy
... has been consensually deemed the core of mystical morivation."j0
The second approach toward assessing the universality and variability of
the seif in different crrttrrral settings is essentially eo search for universals
only. Differences are seen as only superficially colored by culture. In univer-
salism, higher-order generalities predominate with specific, culture-rich,
thick descriptions of human nature bleached out from consideration.
An example of the pitfalls of psychological universalism is found in the
work of Catherine Ewing, an American psychoanalytic anthropologist who
has worked in Pakistan." l w i n g avoids the pitfalls of evolutionism in
Kakar's work, with its value-laden judgments of Indians, by combining the