I Love You, I Hate You: Toward a Psychology of the Hindu Deus Absconditus

Psychological studies of Hindu religion and culture routinely stress a difference between "East" and "West." Whether this difference reflects a certain Hindu pathology (Carstairs 1961; Spratt 1966; Masson 1980; Kakar 1981) or normative developments relative to each culture (Roland 1988; Kurtz 1992), the seemingly uncontested consensus is that Hindu India nurtures a "collective self." Though generally finding many of these studies quite fascinating and often persuasive, I wish to draw attention to a dimension that is routinely overlooked. In an effort to paint with broad strokes a culture preoccupied with psychological mergers and integrations, many authors fail to take note of particular forms of bhakti, or devotion, that appear to contest such a preoccupation. The structural features of viraha bhakti (love-in-separation) and virodha bhakti (love-manifest-asenmity) in particular reflect and influence a psychological construction of self that is not merged in or integrated with the other: viraha bhakti and virodha bhakti present Hindu god images that model a separated-individuated self.