Tracing the journey of the Psychoanalytic Therapy & Research Centre in Mumbai, in the week of Sigmund Freud’s birth anniversary

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic therapy, at his home office in Vienna. Pic/Getty Images

In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If both are not, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows,” said British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. 

A psychoanalyst describing such a challenging impasse, admits: “It’s two people being vulnerable together. I have seen a completely quiet patient stay uncommunicative for terrifyingly long. Gradually, he revealed to me the power of silence and we progressed.”

Making the unconscious conscious is central to psychoanalysis, introduced by the legendary Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856–September 23, 1939), who changed perceptions of mental health and human behaviour with revolutionary theories of the unconscious mind.  

Analysts Shailesh Kapadia, Aiveen Bharucha, Manek Bharucha, Minnie Dastur and Sarosh Forbes at a convocation. Pics courtesy/PTRC

The Indian Psychoanalytical Society (IPS) was established in Calcutta in 1922, three years after the British Psychoanalytical Society, and is affiliated to the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Helping to trace the history of the Psychoanalytic Therapy & Research Centre (PTRC), senior training and supervisory psychoanalyst Minnie Dastur explains that all training, academic and professional work is done by the Mumbai Chapter of the IPS. The PTRC runs its clinics, besides attending to administrative and accounting work.

The pioneer of psychoanalysis in the country, Girindrasekhar Bose, was a University of Calcutta psychology student. Subsequent to his 1917 doctoral thesis, “Repression”, he exchanged correspondence with Freud in Vienna, focusing on the Oedipus Complex. Though the two men never met, on Freud’s desk stood a Vishnu statue gifted by Bose. 

Dastur says, “While Freud may not have always agreed with Bose, he was impressed by his intuition and interest. He put Bose in touch with Emilio Servadio, an Italian analyst here during the War years. Bhupendra Desai from Bombay came to study in Calcutta with Bose.”

Girindrasekhar Bose established the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in Calcutta in 1922; (right) Bhupendra Desai, who studied with Bose,........

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