The Shaman
India’s best known psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar takes pleasure in describing himself as Mannheim’s best table tennis player. He studied mechanical engineering and business economics before having an epiphany that he wanted to follow psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s footsteps. Kakar went on to get a doctorate in economics and then trained at the Sigmund Freud Institut in Frankfurt.
Apart from a psychoanalysis practice in Delhi and his global, multi-disciplinary teaching work, he has authored 17 non-fiction titles and four novels. His analyses of personages include that of Swami Vivekananda in The Inner World, Mahatma Gandhi in Intimate Relations and Ramakrishna in The Analyst and the Mystic. He has also collaborated on a translation of the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana with University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger. It contains a complete translation of the third-century text, but also a historical introduction and excerpts from Sanskrit and Hindi commentaries. Today, he lives in Goa, India.
