The Courage of Truth: Psychoanalytic Resonances and Reflections on Mahatma Gandhi

Abstract

The paper attempts to establish an intimate and epistemic connection between the philosophy of Gandhi and Psychoanalysis. The paper seeks to understand ethico-affective connection between the ‘truth methods’ employed by Gandhi (Satyagraha) and psychoanalysis as a technique, both passionately devoted to the quest of conscious/ unconscious truths. Both have been based on honest explorations of primal feeling, fears, and ever pervading intra psychic conflicts that humans constantly grapple with. The ethical and political plane of Satyagraha will be explored to situate its psychological significance of truth, using the psychoanalytic insights on Gandhi, by some eminent psychoanalytic thinkers such as Erik Erikson, AshisNandy, SudhirKakar and many others. The paper, as an ode to Gandhi and his explorations of truth, will help us understand its psychological characteristics underlying Gandhian values and its power of greatest transformative potential. One such psychological components of Satyagraha, identified by Erikson, was the critical significance of self-analysis paired with an attempt to understand another man’s inner conflicts. Secondly,how for Gandhi, the methods of confrontation with the enemy ( internal and external) was purely non-violent based on the acceptance of oneself as a person who also shares other’ s inner mechanisms. Thus, we find an idea of psychological interconnected and oneness permeating the human consciousness. Lastly, the paper will highlight the non separation of personal and political realm, which is the marker of Gandhian life philosophy, unique as it has been so far.