© Springer India 2015
Savita Malhotra and Subho Chakrabarti (eds.)Developments in Psychiatry in India10.1007/978-81-322-1674-2_44. Cultural Psychodynamics and the Indian Personality
(1)
Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India
Keywords
CulturePsychodynamicsPersonalityIndiaV.K. Varma, Former Professor and Head
1 Introduction: No One Was Moving Around on Foot
This was my first dispatch home on landing in the U.S. in the last days of 1960 from my home in India. I had just landed in the medium-sized city of Canton in the State of Ohio in the United States. Compared to the crowded city of my hometown, Patna, in Bihar, as I stepped out in Canton, everything seemed to be quite sparse. In my first letter home, I remarked how very few people one saw on the city streets. Almost all the people were going around in cars. One could find barely few people moving around or going on the streets on foot.
People have a natural curiosity for other places, other people and other cultures. They like to compare it with their own as the frame of reference. Places differ from one another in material culture; buildings, cars, bridges; in people, racially and otherwise; and in social relationships. In the same way, they differ in the overall, or the average or modal personality.
Kluckhohn (1962), the well-known cultural anthropologist, famously stated that every man is in certain aspects, (a) like all other men, (b) like some other men and (c) like no other man. The three ways of looking at men can be said to translate into the biological, the sociocultural and the individual, respectively. The first point is that we human beings are all similar as we are members of the same human race, of the species Homo sapiens, and share the same biology. The second point is that we all are similar to people of our cultural and social group. The final point is that, in the final analysis, we are all unique. Each one of us has one’s own biology, own DNA and own inheritance. Not only that each one of us has our own unique early life experience, nurture, which has shaped our personality.
The present paper deals mostly with the second variable of us as people. Some 10 years ago, there was a survey reported in Reader’s Digest, which listed (then) Bombay as the rudest city in the world. The rudeness was measured by such things as not saying ‘thank you’, and/or not picking up a piece of paper if someone accidently dropped it; not holding a door for someone. I circulated a commentary on this to our own group of Indian psychiatrists, which was deeply and hotly discussed. Most Indians rejected the Reader’s Digest conclusion. However, with my considerable travel experience, I have no doubt that ‘not lending a hand’ remains the hallmark of the Indian personality.
Dubois (1944), in her landmark study of the people of Alor, gave the concept of the modal personality, as the personality that is ‘modal’ among the adult members of a particular culture. Although apparently useful, this concept has been widely criticised. The opponents of this concept discredit it as it obscures variations within a particular culture, may lead to stereotypes and breed prejudice.
There are many ways of looking at trans-cultural or cross-cultural psychiatry. We all have a frame of reference in almost everything we deal with. If places can differ in material culture such as buildings and roads, parks, cities and people can differ in race, religion and belief system, why not in the personality?
As I have elaborated in Varma (2009a, b), a rather simple method of understanding the culture and personality issue could be as follows: many things differ across places, societies and cultures. There are geographic and social and cultural differences. To illustrate, when I travel from India to the United States and back, on my return, people ask me what America is like. ‘On my return, I tell them of the skyscrapers in New York City. I tell them that the people look different from us Indians. Most people are White or Caucasian, although a significant proportion of them are black. I tell them of the climate, how it differs from India, and varies across the U.S. I also tell them of the differences in certain social customs. For example, in the U.S., you do not just walk into someone’s house without a prior appointment, like you do in India’ (Varma 2009b).
However, none of these differences are absolute. ‘There are tall buildings in India also, as are tenements in America. There are the ‘pucca sahibs’ in India who ape the norms taught to us by the English. There are groups of affluent people in India whose lifestyle could approach that of Americans. There are people in India who copy the social lifestyle of the English and the Europeans. One of the first things I learnt about the English was not to use a loud voice when calling someone. Follow the appointment and the queue system. Any number of things’ (Varma 2009b).
One way that the differences can be explained is statistical. We can follow the statistical technique called the analysis of variance. This compares differences within a group with that across groups, if differences across groups are only just as much as within groups, or they are more than what is observed within groups. As per this method, in comparing groups, in so far as the differences across groups significantly exceed those within groups, the groups can be said to differ significantly from each other.
2 Culture and Personality
‘The study of culture and personality seeks to understand the growth and development personal and social identity as it relates to the surrounding social environment’ (Barnouw 1963). Through the examination of individual personalities, broader correlation and generalisations can be made about specific culture of its members. This has led to an examination of national characters, modal personality types and configurations of the personality.
The field of culture and personality draws on psychology and anthropology. Born out of Freud’s psychoanalysis, anthropologists began searching for common aspects that would characterise differing peoples by their cultures. In an attempt to avoid racist, hierarchical culture models, a new breed of anthropologists sought to describe cultures based on the individuals within a society and the similarities that they shared (McGhee-Snow and Lawrence, www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/cult&per.htm).
The culture and personality approach has to assume that there is an average personality in a culture. Within a culture, people will vary from one another, but there is a mean or average; what people are generally like. There are various ways of denoting the mean, from the ‘modal personality’ of Cora Dubois, to the ‘national character’ of Inkeles and Levinson (1969), to the ‘ethnic personality’ of Devereaux (Varma 2009a, b).
In spite of its critics, the concept of an average personality in a culture has deep roots, going back to Hippocrates (460–377 BC). As I have mentioned elsewhere (Varma and Gupta 2008), ‘C.P. Snow, the famous British intellectual, talking about a culturally determined personality pattern, put it simply as ‘without thinking about it, they respond alike. That is what culture means (Murphy and Leighton 1965)’.
A general question can be raised: Why would the personality differ from culture to culture, society to society and country to country? The culture and personality approach initially linked it to the differences in child rearing practices and produced a lot of research on it.
One way of looking at it could be that the personality develops in its attempt to deal with the attempts of the individual to deal with the demands of the environment so as to survive in a most optimal fashion. Societies and cultures differ in the material culture, demanding different coping mechanisms. There may be scarcity of something and abundance of another. Material things may be abundant and sex scarce.
A more seminal point may be that a culture may require differential quanta of autonomy versus dependence/inter-dependence at the level of the individual. To illustrate, in an agrarian society, people need to toil together to produce. On the other hand, in an industrial society, each person works at an assigned place in the assembly line. A society may be more or less dependent on the nature and may require different adaptive mechanisms; to deal with it, or even to explain it.
To start with, we humans were hunters and gatherers. We hunted and gathered and saved our food. The first major change occurred with the advent of agriculture. This gave us rootedness; to a piece of land. It also attuned us to seasons and a timetable, to the necessity to save the produce so as to last through all seasons. Many agricultural processes required people to work together in a team.
Generally speaking, the development of agriculture itself is taken to herald the beginning of human civilisation. The agricultural society continued for several millennia, till it was replaced, as recently as 300–400 years ago, by an industrial society. The industrial society capitalised on the industrial revolution, which harnessed energy and put it to use, in things such as manufacturing and innovation. The assembly line became the prototype of ‘work’. Every worker became ‘a cog in the wheel’. He became responsible only for his little piece of work. He was not responsible for the work of others in the line. It thus led to more of autonomy and less of dependence.
In reading historical novels, I am struck how they differentially depict dependence/inter-dependence in some societies and autonomy and fierce individualism in others. Although works of fiction and written centuries after the story depicted, perhaps there is something carried over from the epoch and locale that the story is about.
Whatever may be the reasons and explanations, the resultant personality, as it develops, differs across cultures. This is the whole idea of culture and personality (Varma and Gupta 2008).
3 Sociocultural Variables of Personality
The variables affecting the personality can be genetic and environmental—the nature versus nurture controversy. The environment can be viewed influencing the individual, varying across persons, or it can be viewed differing across societies and cultures. The latter can be called ‘sociocultural’. One such variable I have called the continuum of ‘dependence/autonomy,’ ranging across cultures.
3.1 Dependence Versus Autonomy
As opposed to other animals, including other mammals, the human being is born immature. Man is an altricial animal. I have explained it as follows (Varma 2009a, b):
‘On account of the disparity between the size of the birth canal and the projected size of the head, the human infant must be born immature, not fully developed, ‘partly baked’ so to say, and much of the development must occur after birth’ (Varma 1985a, 1986). To perform all the human functions, the brain must be of a particular size and must be housed in a cranium of sufficient dimensions. Such a cranium cannot be born through the dimensions of a birth canal. Accordingly, the human infant is born relatively immature.
This leads in humans a protracted period of dependence. This early dependence permeates and influences all inter-personal relationships throughout life. Cultures differ from each other in the quantity of dependence and autonomy (Varma 2009a).
Although born immature, the further development of the human infant progresses according to the genetic programme. The epigenetic theory explains that the development is already programmed in the genes; further development proceeds like the blossoming of a flower in a timely fashion.
Even compared with other mammals, the human infant is born less complete, less capable of looking after himself. Look at cows; soon after birth, the calf can stand up and can move around. In the human, all milestones are more protracted. We make a thorough analysis of developmental milestones in the human, standing unsupported, walking, saying words and talking a three-word sentence. The entire industry of infant and baby clothes and shoes, not to mention toys, depends on the developmental prerogatives.
In the beginning, the human infant is totally dependent on others for most functions. Some instincts help in the survival process. For example, the process by which he sucks milk from mother. One wonders what would have happened if the infant lacked this ability.
Although dependence can be called a universal hallmark of the human infant; for some reasons, it varies from society to society.
If we dichotomise the world into the technologically advanced societies of the West and the traditional, developing countries of the West, and compare them with one another, it has been pointed out that a greater amount of dependence develops in the East (Neki 1976a, b; Varma 1985a, b, 1988). Hoch (1990) has submitted that the Indian personality attaches importance to the development of a unique, distinctive personality and to individual ‘self-realisation’. Marriott (1976, 1979, The open Hindu person and humane sciences. Unpublished paper) has pointed out that in contrast to the generally closed, homogeneous and enduring mental integrations attributable to the adult persons in the West, Hindu adults are posited as persons ‘who are open, composed of exogenous elements, substantially fluid… and thus necessarily changing and inter-changing in their nature. …Given the vulnerability of open Hindu persons to a cosmos of inter-personal flow, persons as wholes cannot be thought of enduring or bounded ‘egos’ in any western sense’.
Comparing the industrialised societies of the West with the developing, traditional East, I have surmised as follows (Varma 2009a):
Traditional, developing, Eastern cultures can be said to exemplify dependence, and developed, industrialised societies of West, autonomy. In dependence-prone societies there is greater dependence, chronologically in that order, on parents, peer groups, spouse, and finally on one’s children. This leads to a beautiful system of inter-relationships, with everybody leaning on everybody else.
Why does this occur? It may be hypothesised that in traditional Eastern societies, there is less clear compartmentalisation of roles and responsibilities. In both personal and professional lives, a person is generally expected to be able to switch/modify his roles as per need of the situation. Another point could be that in traditional societies (like India), a child grows up in a family where co-existence and co-dependence of functioning (especially at personal levels) with other members is expected and probably the norm than otherwise. Hence, even on achieving cognitive maturity or adult functioning, the person is not able to fully demarcate his ‘self’ from others leading to possible lack of clear demarcation (and consequent blurring) of ego boundaries.
To illustrate, Indian patients have been observed to feel freer in terms of being dependent. Most patients will approach the doctor (therapist) with the expectation of getting advice and guidance from him and would expect it to be very similar to that which would be available from their parents and family elders (Roland 1995). It has been further mentioned that Indian patients are brought up with an attitude of being receptive to such advice and guidance as they expect a caring, concerned, and nurturing attitude that goes along with the advice in their familial hierarchical relationships (Varma 2009a).
After having mastered the nutritional needs, the human infant addresses to toilet training, requiring control over the sphincters. Control over the sphincters becomes the prototype of control over oneself—of autonomy. Compared the East with the West, I have commented as follows (Varma 2009a):
‘On the other hand, the control over one’s sphincters becomes the prototype of control over oneself—of autonomy’. ‘The social inter-relationship in the technological advanced countries of the West is more characterised by individual autonomy’. ‘This is me and this is my body bounded by my epidermis. Everything within the layer of epidermis is me; and I have, or I should have, complete control over it, over its needs, wishes and desires. I should assume full responsibility over my desires, emotions and actions. Just like I take full responsibility over myself, everybody should take full responsibility for himself or herself.’ An autonomous man is more cognisant of his rights and prerogatives, responsibilities and actions. ‘Both dependence and autonomy generate its own unique character traits in the members of a society’ (Varma 2009a).
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