India: A Wounded Civilization - pg. 107

Meditation and stillness can be a form of therapy. But it may be that the true Hindu bliss - the losing of the self - is more easily accessible to Hindus. According to Dr. Sudhir Kakar, a psychotherapist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who is himself Indian and has practised both in Europe and in India, the Indian ego is "underdeveloped," "the world of magic and animistic ways of thinking lie close to the surface," and the Indian grasp of reality "relatively tenuous." "Generally among Indians" - Kakar is working on a book - but this is from a letter - "there seems to be a different relationship to outside reality, compared to one met with in the West. In India it is close to a certain stage in childhood when outer objects did not have a separate, independent existence but were intimately related to the self and its affective states. There were not something in their own right, but were good or bad, threatening or rewarding, helpful or cruel, all depending on the person's feelings of the moment."