Unfolding Power, Suffering and Desire: Exploring Psychoanalytical Confinement and Liberation of the Indian Women

Gunjan Chandak Khemka

(Indian Psychoanalytical Society)

“So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible”

Mushrooms, The Colossus, Sylvia Plath (1960)

The (Hi)Stories We Carry

History, largely a product of the structuralist view, is a his-sided story. It is a carrier of a singular narrative, transmitted inter-generationally and creating ways of being. Hence, India continues to be a patriarchal society and women in India face a general subordination common to women in patriarchal societies around the world (Kakar & Kakar, 2007).

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The feminine in India, however, is unique – her ordeal of subordination intersecting with her caste, class, religion, sexuality, educational background, the state she belongs to, and the urban-rural divide, amongst other variables. Arranged along these social parameters is the ‘Charmed Circle’ (Rubin,1984) - at the centre of which is the upper caste, upper class, Hindu, heterosexual male. The more entrenched a woman’s life is with this hierarchy, the more privileged her lived experience is.

The division between these haves and the have-nots, is also influenced by the modern-day politics of Globalisation which in turn, fosters a culture of capitalism. This neoliberal capitalism celebrates productivity, independence, and freedom – and encourages government deregulation. These principles only lead to an intensification of the gender divide which is already present across cultural and social categories, but now also along the possession of material wealth.

In a burgeoning populace, patriarchy, globalisation and the charmed circle come together to create multiple layers of oppression for the non-confirming individual. With its objectives of control, power, material inequities, and prestige-based inclusion, modern India is suffering from a colonial hangover. Principles of social justice, deep-rooted in the birth of this nation, are often callously disregarded, as if we are now our own plunderers.

As we continue to publicly vilify the colonizers, we unconsciously endorse the colonizer mentality of division, exclusion, narcissism, egotism and hoarding. The continued championing of a reductionist, masculine, aggressive, toxic nationalism, thrives on Id-like impulsive needs and demands. On the margins remain the women, children, differently-abled individuals, persons with psychosocial disabilities, queer folk, tribal communities and so on – each degree of separation expanding the distance from the charmed circle centre.

The many Indian women are scattered across from the centres to the margins. By association, she gains power, and legitimacy if she promotes this narrative. If she condones or challenges this account, then she is flung out, discarded, and forgotten. It is a hard lesson, learnt through the stories and silence of subjugated women across their history – owned by the native men and ruled over by colonizers.

Altman (1995) cited Homi Bhabha (1990, p.103-104) has written about individuals “identifying with a nation defined in a certain way, such that one can own certain psychic qualities and establish an “Other”….not-me.” The super-ego like nation, defined along the singular, charmed circle narrative, prescribes desirable qualities to its citizens. The not-me becomes anyone who rebels against said prescription - Another gender, another caste, another class and so on. From a Kleinian perspective, the not-me is the disowned parts of self, projected on to the other, often those whom we have labelled bad and unwanted.

For the Indian Woman, this identification is based on womanly ideals of self-sacrifice and self-denial (Kakar & Kakar, 2007). Both of these, produce a deprivation of pleasure that women carry in their inter-generational stories. She has to both deny her body, and her voice.

To survive then, is to suffer - a suffering the ‘good woman’ carries with a quiet pride. In turn, she projects those denied and sacrificed parts as aggression, violence, seduction, and desire onto the other. The nation-mother then becomes a chaotic tapestry of different me and not-me always competing with each other to be approved of – by those at top of the food chain.

Neoliberal economies never allow for hierarchies to dissipate, as they thrive on the sense of inadequacy it promotes, and the desires of possession it evokes in the people. At the same time, there is a control over accessibility and limited-inclusion to sustain this feeling of division, all the while masking it as freedom and agency. Perhaps, colonialism, in some sense is now transformed to capitalism.

In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, these partitions are now more deeply ingrained than ever. The pandemic only threw off the thin veil hiding these truths. In the face of religious blame-mongering, harsh policies which subjugated disadvantaged populations, the punitive load of domestic labour which women carried, prioritizing economic gain over safety and lives, and privilege-based access to healthcare, India continues to be besotted by its own righteousness and blind to its disdain for differences.

How does this interplay of a colonial history, cultural and social history, patriarchy, power, capitalism and (hu)man-made disasters come alive in the individual? How do these inner worlds embedded in the nation play out in the suffering, desire and survival of the Indian Woman?

Power, Suffering and Desire

“While globalisation has rearranged how power and privilege operate, this has not benefitted the majority of the people in the world; on the contrary, pernicious wounds occasioned by inequity, injustice, violence, continue to be inflicted, in new forms and intensities” (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 49).

Surviving adverse conditions of stress, loss and trauma makes one vulnerable to psychopathological states. Add to this the intricacies of the socioeconomic and political climate of the country – what we end up with, is an established hierarchy of suffering – with women often at the bottom of this chain.

A woman finds herself existing in a fragmented condition, with the idea of a solid identity becoming a wishful privilege. She survives this suffering by often changing locations in her many fragmented stories. With the young child, she holds the power as the mother, with the husband and in-laws, she is often submissive. At work, she may move between positions of authority and follower. Her psychic state moves between victim, perpetrator or bystander based on who holds the power.

To enumerate the complexities of this reality, I present a few vignettes -

In the confines of a government mental health institute, was a solitary cell – where the troublemaker-mad were locked up. A dank, dingy smell lingered in the air, in the female ward. Women moved haggardly about in shapeless gowns, with menstrual blood stains and sheared hair. No mirrors were allowed – it was a safety risk. A woman languished in this cell, alone in the darkness which was perhaps, both outside and inside her. When the female care staff went to open up her cell, and give her food, they realised that she had used her own shit as kohl (cosmetic makeup) on her eyes.

Was the kohl then a symptom of her madness or a revolt against her suffering? Was the kohl a symbol of her desire for her body? A desperate wish to find something that had been lost?

The women care staff, held power over every female patient in that ward. There was a violence in their language, in their shoves forcing the patients to move along faster, in the denial of their feminine desires. As if they were men-like women - controlling the patient’s every move, and their bodies.

A mother and daughter live in a tiny room in a slum in the city. The mother has cared for her daughter alone, all her life. The husband left the family when the daughter was 2 years old, and she was later diagnosed with psychosis in her adult life. The daughter could not comprehend what coronavirus is, why she needed to stay indoors, or wear a mask. During the lockdown to contain the spread of Covid19, her mother had lost her work, as a part-time cook in the neighbouring high-rise. After the lockdown was lifted, building rules did not allow for temporary domestic helper movement, and the uncertainty over resumption of the mother’s work prevailed. Tempers were always high, and the kitchen emptier than ever.

The mother, who feels she was abandoned because of her difficult daughter, hits her and verbally abuses her, while simultaneously scrambling to arrange the money for her medication. She sometimes identifies with her daughter over their shared loneliness, while at times rejects her as not-me. It was a constant cycle of projection and introjection. What really mortified the mother, was the daughter’s actions – amounting to touching herself, in clear masturbatory attempts, while making loud, frenzied noises. What if the neighbours heard? What would they think?

Was the daughter’s pleasure-seeking a stark reminder of the mother’s own desire-less life? Did that evoke a viciousness in her, to take from the daughter what was taken from her? The daughter’s play with her body, became dirty and shameful through the gaze of her mother.

In the streets of a city in India, wandered a dishevelled and dazed woman. She was wearing what would have been a kurta (a long, often, loose garment worn by both men and women with pants underneath) – it was now in tatters, barely covering her skin. She yelled profanities at the oncoming traffic, as some children laughed at her, and everyone dodged her path, not wanting to touch her. Men leered at the one naked breast, and the other barely covered one. They glanced down at her vagina, all muddled up in the dirt of the streets on her body. As if their bodies both desired her and were repulsed by her. Women passers-by avoided her gaze, turning away – simultaneously, perhaps, from both her and their own bodies.

This homeless woman soon found herself in a shelter run by a non-profit organization working with persons with psychosocial disabilities. She wolfed down the hot food, and stretched into the bedding provided to her to sleep in, but she continued to roam the rooms of the shelter mouthing profanities, and sometimes, discarding the clothes which were given to her. She had to be constantly monitored by the female caregivers – to cover up. The social workers in the organisation mirrored the ones on the street – the men stole a quick, hidden glance at her naked body, while the women rushed to cover her body. Ultimately, psychotropic medicines made her more compliant, but her body language continued to be viewed as tempestuous. She learnt how to bake, started a job, and expressed a wish to go back to her home, which had been re-found by the organisation.

When she wanted to marry, the female social workers and caregivers told her that it was not the best idea, perhaps it was not meant for her – because they believed they knew better. She went ahead and married anyway. She keeps coming back to organisation for a follow-up with her husband now.

Was her nakedness a revolt against the demure, Indian woman? A symbol of something deeper that she couldn’t touch, but could act out through her words and bodies? Were the caregivers distracted by this playful abandon – did it make them think shamefully of their own bodies – and to cover hers meant hiding their bodies too? Did the caregivers exert choices on her in ways choices had been exerted on them? Was she too mad to claim desire?

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Watkins & Shulman (2008) cite Peter Shabad (2000, p. 54) who propagates the idea of symptoms being memorials to something which cannot be immediately understood or seen. As if they are precarious bridges to understanding what remains unconscious, but sometimes manifested in the body. Additionally, Altman (1995) quotes Geertz (1973, p.99) who writes about people being “composed of different layers – biological, psychological and cultural, with each layer in some hierarchical relation with the other.”

Both ideas propagate a way of unfolding the historical in the individual. History is a woman’s body (Butalia, 1998, p.108). It is in our bodies that we carry this colonial past, and the culturally approved ways of being a woman. It is through these bodies that we are both the submissive and the dominator. It is through these bodies we suffer and desire, and yet continue to exist as if we are bodyless, sexless, and desireless.

The asymmetrical power between men and others, between different layers of being, creates a world where suffering becomes about power of the more privileged over the less privileged. It also creates a world where power can only be had if you are the right sex, caste, class and so on – leading to generation after generation of deprivation. Desire is the right of the centre, not the margins – a merging of colonial narrowmindedness, and oppression, with living cultural ideas of hierarchy and suppression.

One then has to unfold power, suffering and desire in what is now a continuing colonisation of the Indian Woman, but this time by her own mind and nation. This onslaught is suffered by making others suffer. The respectable woman’s lajja (shame) is used to slander what becomes the disreputable woman’s behaya (shamelessness).

In their own homes, the female care-staff are often victims, in the hospital, they were perpetrators. These patients were the disavowed parts of themselves – dirty, wild, angry, and mad. They were also a harsh reminder of the cost of rebellion – abandonment – under a cage like-roof. Each patient, a bystander in the clashes between the systematic oppression and othering – made to believe that the authority knows better, and that protest is useless.

In the slum, the mother moves between the positions of perpetrator and victim, while the daughter’s symptoms are located in the unconscious conflicts, as well as the result of growing up father-less, lineage-less, in a society which views with suspicion and threat a single woman. The larger world judges her moans, but dismisses her cries as an illness, as voyeuristic bystanders. The homeless woman becomes an object in the subjective world of the powerful female caregivers who demand a kind of servitude in return for attention, touch, and care.

Each woman in their own psychological distress, with the layers of hierarchy pitting them against each other.

Psychoanalysis, Subversion and Hope

“Welcome to my world
Won't you come on in
Miracles I guess
Still happen now and then”

Welcome to my world, Jim Reeves (1961)

Psychoanalytical thought provides a pathway into understanding not just the individual, but the cultural histories they carry, and the collectives they form through their multiple identities of self, caste, class, sex, race, nationhood and so on. In a world challenged by global turmoil, it provides a pathway to explore how othering becomes a survival mechanism, both in the individual and in the collective. The suffering of the individual, becomes desirable for the collective, for patriarchy, colonised capitalism and power-hierarchy to thrive. As a result, nation states risk suffering from a slow rot from within – and desire becomes capital in an oppressive, libidinal economy.

Hope lies in the healing of the individual, and through the individual, the community, and the nation. To unlearn repudiation in the favour of amalgamation – the psychoanalytic lens needs to expand to become necessarily intersectional in nature. By accessing our templates of not-me, we can explore the alienation our historical, cultural baggage and neoliberal capitalism carries - “At the heart of psychoanalysis, this most private of encounters, lies society, just as at the heart of public life lies the alienation psychoanalysis tries to cure. (Altman, 1995 cited Dimen, 1993, p.81).”

This segregation is acutely felt in the margins – as embodied in the above exploration of the Indian Woman’s psyche. Psychoanalysis provides a method of challenging this status quo, in the “ ‘containing’ functions of the recipient of the projection”, (p.59) to be able to detoxify the projected-psychic content, so that it can assimilated by the projector (Altman, 1995).

In the vignettes shared earlier, from an intrapsychic perspective, the woman’s use of her own shit as eye makeup, can be a psychotic breakdown, but by bringing in the social context, can one interpret it as a protest of authority? With the mother-daughter dyad, the daughter’s exploration of her desire could be seen as a perversion, a symptom – could it also be viewed as her establishing autonomy over her body’s craving – choosing voice, over silence? The mother’s violence, in this dyad, refutes the holding function of a good-enough mother, but could it also be that, this was her way of preparing her daughter to survive the harsh world, in the only way that she knew - as experienced by herself. That this violence was her love?

The shifting narrative – from a single story to multi-stories, becomes acts of subversion. It brings together the fragments of a woman’s changing position as perpetrator, victim or bystander, to create multiple frames – intrapsychic, relational and societal. This builds her sense of self hood, through the embracing of her internal diversity, and making space for external differences. These frames attempt to de-pathologize symptoms, and look at suffering and desire through the eye of an intersectional lens.

The cultural landscape of India has never been as conflicted as now – with its fragile balance between tradition, religion and liberalism, family and individual, and a singular history versus plurality and deconstruction. It is from the slow burning of this landscape, that the Indian Woman is breaking her silence, and leading a rebellion. From exploring lives outside home, rejecting motherhood and marriage, to navigating across multiple partners, and sexualities, from covert advertisements on menstrual hygiene, to overt ads on self-pleasure, from her choosing clothes to define her curves, and own her body, to creating communities of support. Perhaps, her ‘madness’ is the continued watering of her fantasy life that allows this transcendence to happen in the real life – from the position of a bystander, to a witness in her life.

This in turn, can help clinicians reflect on their own location with respect to the individual’s world, in order to determine how the socio-political-economic stances create additional hierarchies in the therapeutic processes. Allowing the psychoanalytical perspective to encompass the localised culture and the social world will only help to make the practice deeper, nuanced, and culturally relevant.

In the Indian woman, these disjointed narratives and multiplicity of locations have been a way to survive her suffering, oppression and the violence meted out on her desire. Mending these dissociations, by locating symptoms as not only pathological but also a protest, a negation or a mourning of the past can augment the psychic work and facilitate the working through. This in turn contributes to transgressing the ideas of culture, nation, caste, class, sex, gender and so on, to create richer, and integrated sense of selves. This re-imagined construction helps to restore and repair, by alleviating suffering and owning desires. In this way, psychoanalysis carries the potential to transform not just individuals, but groups, and nations itself.

References:

Altman, N. (1995). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class, and culture through a psychoanalytic lens. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press
Butalia, U. (1998). The Other Side of Silence. India: Penguin Books
Gayle, S. R. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In: Vance, C., Ed., Pleasure and Danger, Routledge & Kegan, Paul, London, 267-319
Kakar, S & Kakar, K. (2007). The Indians: Portrait of a people. India: Penguin Books
Plath, S. (1960). Mushrooms in The Coloussus. https://www.stmaryscalne.org/blogs/poem-of-the-week-mushrooms/#:~:text=This%20was%20published%20in%20Plath's,way%20up%20through%20to%20air. (accessed 10 September 2023)
Watkins, M & Shulman, H (2008). Towards psychologies of liberation. New York: Palgrave Macmillon.

Issue 23: Asia ConferenceOlivia CiokOctober 27, 2024Gunjan Chandak Khemka