Revisiting the Indian Oedipus: The Phallus is (Also) Female

Abstract

This paper revisits the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex through the lens of Indian psychoanalytic theory, Hindu goddess traditions, and clinical material drawn from work with Indian and diasporic patients. Challenging Eurocentric models that center paternal interdiction and the production of lack, the paper argues that the Indian Oedipal field is organized around the regulation of maternal omnipotence rather than its renunciation. Drawing on the work of Girindrasekhar Bose, Sudhir Kakar, A. K. Ramanujan, and feminist and anthropological scholarship, the paper highlights a persistent analytic blind spot: the under-theorization of mother–daughter Oedipal dynamics. Through mythological analysis of figures such as Kali and Durga and a detailed clinical case, the paper proposes that the central developmental task for Indian girls involves learning to inhabit and transmit maternal power without becoming devouring or annihilated. The paper concludes by suggesting that psychoanalytic institutions themselves may reproduce engulfing maternal configurations when cultural difference is misrecognized as pathology, underscoring the need for culturally attuned models of containment, aggression, and refusal.