Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence [Paperback]

Erik H. Erikson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1993

In this study of Mahatma Gandhi, psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson explores how Gandhi succeeded in mobilizing the Indian people both spiritually and politically as he became the revolutionary innovator of militant non-violence and India became the motherland of large-scale civil disobedience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Profound and enlightening. . . . Expands our grasp of some of the ultimate questions of our time. (Robert Jay Lifton - The American Scholar )

It is the triumph of Erikson's book that in uncovering the inner sources of Gandhi's power it does not dissolve but deepens his inherent moral ambiguity. . . . [This] penetrating book . . . deepens out understanding not only of the inward sources of personal greatness but those, as well, of its self-defeat. (Clifford Geertz - New York Review of Books )

Gandhi's Truth, even more brilliantly than its predecessor, Young Man Luther, shows that psychoanalytic theory, in the hands of an interpreter both resourceful and wise, can immeasurably enrich the study of 'great lives' and of much else besides. . . . [The book's] richness and almost inexhaustible suggestiveness . . . cannot be conveyed in a summary. (Christopher Lasch - New York Times Book Review )

About the Author

A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Erik H. Erikson was renowned worldwide as teacher, clinician, and theorist in the field of psychoanalysis and human development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393310345
• ISBN-13: 978-0393310344
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( G ) > Gandhi, Mahatma

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pscyho-history but not psycho-babble, January 6, 2009

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (Paperback)

As a young lawyer working on Civil Rights matters in New York and in Mississippi during the 1960's, we often discussed Martin Luther King's and Ghandi's approaches to achieving our objectives. One passage from Ghandi's autobiography came up several times, primarily to be rejected -- black people had certainly proved their worth in both World Wars, but racial distinctions had not become a thing of the past:

"If I could make my countrymen retrace their steps, I would make them withdraw all the Congress resolutions, and not whisper "Home Rule" or " Responsible Government " during the pendency of the War. I would make India offer all her ablebodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment; and I know that India by this very act would become the most favoured partner in the Empire and racial distinctions would become a thing of the past." 1916

Erik H. Erikson was struck by the difference between Ghandi's views in 1916 and his actions two years later:

"For mark the year: it was on the Ides of March of 1918, the year of massive mechanized slaughter on the front in France, the year when empires collapsed and new world alliances were formed, the year of Wilson and above all of Lenin. And here in Ahmedabad one of the great charismatic figures of the postwar world was concentrating on a strictly local labor dispute, putting his very life on the line by fasting -- an event scarecely noticed even in India at the time. That Mr. M. K. Gandhi chose to fast as part of a new method of civic and political leadership meant as yet nothing to anyone but a few friends, andthe immediate consequence did not call for national or world attention.... I became fascinated with those months in Gandhi's middle years. I decided to reconstruct what in this book we will call the Event as a focus for some extensive reflections on the origins, in Gandhi's early life and work, of the method he came to call 'truth force'."

Erikson describes his book as a psycoanalyst's search for Gandhi and the meaning of what Gandhi called "Truth". Erikson describes his and his friends's initial involvement with Gandhi given his clinical training. Erikson spends a chapter describing how Gandhi made the Event "his own" in his autobiography, something that occurs whenever a person witnesses and records an event, even if it involve the writer is a key player in the event.

Ghandi recognized that his social experiments began in his youth, and Erikson spends a great deal of time reviewing with "a mixture of clinical and historical hindsight why what led up to the Event had to happen the way it did." Finally, Erikson reviews the Event in great detail against that hindsight, arguing that that the Event was not a minor affair, but fundamental "to the fact that Gandhi was to emerge exactly a year later as the leader of the first nationwide act of civil disobedience."

I was initially concerned that Erikson's approach would constitute psycho-babble, not psycho-history, but in the event Erikson's approach was fascinating to me and I remember reading many of the passages several times over the years.

2009 Addendum.
From time to time over the years I've read other articles and books by Erikson, including Young Luther, but none of his accomplishments matched the intellectual excitement I felt as I read this important book.

Robert C. Ross 1970 2009

Note: One of twelve NY Times "Editors' Choice" books for 1969; see first Comment.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An unbalanced diatribe, May 30, 2008

By 

Jeffrey Burke Thomas - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (Paperback)

This harangue, which won the 1970 Pulitzer, attempts to use nearly every faculty of subterfuge to deride and criticize Mahatma Gandhi, while offering little support or suggestions for the life of a man who, despite his several faults, is almost universally revered. The practice of psychoanalysis at that time was believed to unravel the secrets of the mind, and many scholars were following in Freud's tradition of applying the new science to historical figures. Erikson, the noted academic, offers no redemption in a scathing criticism whose evidence heavily rests on Erikson's own incredulity that such a man as Gandhi could actually have existed as one mind and action.

The relevant criticism is well known: Gandhi was a shoddy family man and a very occasional demagogue, whose admirable service of fifty years is generally acknowledged to overshadow these significant personal flaws. Gandhi's Oedipal complex can be easily traced, as admitted by the author himself, but he subsequently fails to offer any other insight. As an academic exercise it is worthwhile to criticize in the generous spirit of improvement, but when Gandhi is most directly compared to Freud, Erikson's own idol, perhaps his argument is askew. Naming someone as a clandestine homosexual, while not inappropriate in itself, is certainly so because Gandhi was a religious ascetic, a married man for more than sixty years - and celibate for more than thirty. In a section discussing the pitfalls of autobiography in revealing an objective truth, a rather mundane point, he notes the phenomenon in one other example: Adolf Hitler; and did you know, by the way, that Gandhi and Hitler were both vegetarians? It is difficult for me to glimpse how this was considered scholarship, and I maintain that the awarding of the Pulitzer is anachronistic due to a conflation of the author's prestige, the zeitgeist regarding psychology as the key to unlocking the mind, and the Pulitzer's reactionary tendency to reflect current events (the book was dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr.).

Gandhi is not beyond psychoanalysis: but where is the balance? Why does his capacity for love, Gandhi's self-described reason for living, merit no consideration?

A great title, subject, and award bespeak a masterpiece; I'm sorry to say that I found this book to be very bad; however, I could have completely misunderstood it.

To read an excellent biography, I highly recommend Louis Fischer's Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World, which is sublime, poetic, and precise. An interested learner could also find solace in Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition), which won Best Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematography, and four other Academy Awards in 1982.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gandhi's Truth . . . plus 300 pages of other stuff, August 21, 2000

By 

"mnery" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (Paperback)

Gandhi's Truth is a psychoanalysis on Gandhi performed by the famed psychologist Erik Erikson. Although the psychoanalysis is done after Gandhi's death by a man who's never met him, I still think it could've been done effectively.

Unfortunately, Mr. Erikson spends half of the book going over himself. Why he wants to analyze Gandhi, how Gandhi is really very similar to Freud, and various ruminations on the inherent problems of getting to know the "other." Another quarter of the book is simply wasted on senseless words. Mr. Erikson seems to have real trouble using one word when thirty will do. The portion of the book that actually talks about Gandhi is solid and enjoyable. Too bad it makes up such a small portion of the book.

I have not read other books about Gandhi. Specifically, I haven't read his autobiography. Maybe it's just really dificult to get solid information on this incredibly famous man. Maybe Erikson included the sum of what was known about Gandhi in his work. Somehow, I doubt it.

I find Gandhi to be fascinating and I'm very interested in learning more about this impressive man. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong book to start with.