Key Features Author, India's best-known psychoanalyst. Book acclaimed as the best application of psychoanalysis to Indian culture. New Prologue situates the book in contemporary scenario. About the Book: The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India Feelings, impulses, wishes, and fantasies - the dynamic content of the inner world - occupy the deepest recesses of the psyche. It is through introspection and empathy, essential to psychotherapy, that the outside observer can grasp the meaning of the inner world of an individual. First published in 1978, The Inner World is an inquiry into the development of Indian identity. It examines the network of social roles, traditional values, and customs with which the threads of Indian psychological development are interwoven and, in doing so, reveals important aspects of Indian society, myths, rituals, fables, and arts. Hailed by critics globally as the best application of psychoanalysis to Indian culture, this Oxford India Perennials edition of The Inner World includes a new Prologue situating the work in the contemporary scenario. About the Author: Sudhir Kakar Sudhir Kakar is a psychoanalyst and writer who lives in Goa, India. His seventeen books of non-fiction and five of fiction include The Inner World, Culture and Psyche, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, Tales of Love, Sex, and Danger (with John Munder Ross), The Analyst and the Mystic, The Colors of Violence, as also the novels The Ascetic of Desire, Ecstasy, and Mira and the Mahatma. His books have been translated into twenty languages around the world.