Symbolic Remove in Devotion: Learning With Sudhir Kakar

Sudhir Kakar leaves cultural psychology with the challenge to understand deep psychological complexity within cultural histories. A scrutiny of Kakar’s contributions leads to highlighting the general mechanisms of symbolic remove and its ways of regulating two seemingly opposite human domains—love and violence. These opposite domains are generated through the same semiotic mechanism-- the hyper-generalization process of the symbolic remove resulting in extended affective sign-fields, and its parallel translation into regulation of actions. This mechanism makes both deep devotion ( Bhakti ) and extreme aggressive acts possible. Kakar’s contributions leads to new allegorical bases for the study high-level affective processes for cultural psychology that in Indian cultural history is represented by the Kali/Durga myth story that makes the dynamic unity of opposites the axiomatic basis of the human sciences.