Customer Reviews

The Hindus: An Alternative History

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

As someone who has grown up in an academic environment, I would like to think of myself as catholic in my outlook; but this book by Wendy Doniger was just off.

To start with I maintain two gold standards of writers from the west
writing on India. The first is Heinrich Zimmer who wrote 'Myths and
Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization' which I have gone back to
repeatedly over the past 20 years. The other is the works of William
Dalrymple and the work of his that I cherish the most is one titled
'White Mughals'.

The former is a scholar who has sought to deeply understand Indian culture and the myths it has evolved and the latter is a fine writer first and foremost with a keen eye and love for all things Indian.

But what really makes their writings classic that wants me to go back
to them repeatedly is their generosity of spirit and largeness of
heart. They do not shy away from the warts, but you know what is
driving them to research and write their material is a genuine desire
to understand and the joy of discovery.

That brings me to Ms Doniger. When I came upon the book after reading a review of it in the NY Times, I rubbed my hands in glee. Ah, here is a book I thought to myself, that is going to present new and important insights, from a seasoned philologist, that is going to enhance
one's knowledge of Indian culture in new and important ways (good or bad - no matter).

What Wendy Doniger does do is that she applies all the tools and techniques and filters of 20th and 21st century social and cultural analysis to bear upon circa 500 BC India and then proceeds to sit in judgment. But it turns out that no wart is unworthy of examination and it is warts that are examined!

As an example, I opened the chapter on the Upanishads with a degree of anticipation hoping that a sociological context to the content of the Upanishads is going to present new insights. To one's great disappointment there is nothing on the sheer poetry of the verse or the metaphysics therein. Rather the good professor takes one or two of the Upanishads and
proceeds to see male chauvinism and cruelty at every turn.

Really, that's what she got out of the Upanishads? For example how about the Ananda Valli Kanda of the Taittiriya Upanishad - which defines
happiness. Not a word on that. How about the psychological complexity unveiled in the Mandukya Upanishad? Not a word on that. As someone who has lapped up all sorts of commentaries on the Upanishads for many years now (all takes welcome), this one was astonishing primarily for its wholly missing the point!

Doniger's pettiness contrasts with the generosity of spirit I have
mentioned above. Two examples here. She has comments to make on the
Ramayana and the Mahabharatha. She writes, introducing them,
'considered by some as epics'. Really? Only some people consider these epics? I am all open and eager for scholarly analysis of any subject matter - but throw us a bone here (more on dogs later...!) - give the Indians their epics!

Another example in the same vein. She reference Shankara later in the
book and while describing him as the founder of the Shankara Matts
/Schools. She in paretheses writes 'is said to have founded'. Again,
really? If the Professor doubts that Shankara founded the Matts, I am
very interested in knowing about this! Even if it is vague conjecture, tell me more - I fully agree that Indian history can be vague, so please throw some light. But instead of exploring the justifiable debate or controversy that exists, she just has a throw away line, for apparently no reason.

The attitude that comes through is one of hostility, contempt and
shoddy writing. And the dogs. There are several hundred references to Indian
view of dogs. Whats with that? I am a pet owner myself and
love my dog. But this was so discordant that I was just not getting it.

There is also a chapter on Hindus in America. This section is so superficial that it is laughable. It feels like the author has browsed a couple of websites and found that enough to channel her points of view.

A final note on sex. A three thousand year old mature civilization has seen a lot in its ebbs and flows and the land of the Kama Sutra is
going to have its share of views. But Doniger sees hostile,
vituperative sexual mores at every turn, even when such an
interpretation is not warranted.

A metaphor I want to use for Wendy Doniger is the following. When I
was a kid, visiting my grandmother in Hyderabad, India, I would love
going to the 'sugar cane stand'. There the sugar cane wallah would
take the sugar cane stems and crush them through two rollers and
collect the juice into a cup. On a sunny summer day it was the best
drink ever. Then all the crushed pith would go into a rubbish pile on
the ground.

Heinrich Zimmer and William Dalrymple get to the sugar cane juice.
Wendy Doniger rakes about in the sugar cane pith with no concept of
what the juice is all about.

Does this mean that I do not recommend you read this book. Not at all. I am not one to shy away from a variety of perspectives or debate. So please do pick it up from the library and give it a glance. Just don't expect to walk away from it with new insights other than the fact that the author has an agenda and Indian culture happens to serve it in this case.

I have read the book from cover to cover, and am afraid
that it has literally hundreds of factual errors that will
be noticed by anyone who has even a mediocre knowledge of
Indian history. Just to give a FEW examples:

I. In the Map titled "India From 600 CE to 1600 CE" at the
beginning of the book, at least four sites (Janakpur,
Nagarkot, Mandu, Haldighati) are marked literally hundreds
of miles from their correct geographical location.

II. In the chapter XIX titled "Dialogue and Tolerance Under
the Mughals", the errors would shame even a Graduate student
of Medieval Indian history. E.g.

1) Doniger (on the title page of the chapter) says that Emperor Humayun ruled from 1530 - 1556
AD. Actually, he ruled from 1530-1540 and for a few months
in 1556 AD. He lived in exile in the intervening years as he
was deposed by Emperor Sher Shah Suri (who in turn was followed by several rulers before Humayun returned from Iran).

2) On page 532, she claims that Emperor Akbar moved his
capital from Fatehpur Sikri to Delhi in 1586. In reality, he moved it to Lahore and then to Agra. And she has got the year wrong too!

3)On page 534, she claims that Emperor Akbar was saved by
Hindus from a Muslim rival. In reality, it was his father
Humayun who was saved by the Hindu King of Umerkot. Unless, she wants to term every instance of Hindus fighting in the Moghul army as a life saving event for Akbar.

4) On page 536, she claims that Mumtaz Mahal (whose tomb is
the famous Taj Mahal) died during the birth of her 13th
child. The correct fact is that she died during the birth of her 14th child.

5) On page 537, she claims that Emperor Aurangzeb started
persecuting Hindus, Sikhs and Shiite Muslims in 1687.
Actually, he started doing this several decades earlier,
destroying numerous Hindu temples while he was the Governor
of South India (even when he was a Prince, and before he became the ruler in 1658 AD) and
getting the Sikh teacher Guru Tegh Bahadur beheaded (for his
refusal to convert to Islam) more than a decade earlier.

6) On pages 537-538, she claims that the Sikh teacher
Govind Singh was assassinated in 1708 while 'attending
Emperor Aurangzeb'. In reality, Emperor Aurangzeb had died a
year earlier in 1707 and Govind Singh was assassinated
during the reign of his successor Emperor Bahadur Shah I.

7) On page 539, the author implies that 'Jahandah Shah'
(sic!) became the ruler after Emperor Aurangzeb. In reality,
Aurangzeb was succeeded by his son (and the father of
Jahandar Shah, not Jahandah Shah) Emperor Bahadur Shah I.

You can find such historically untenable statements page
after page in her book. I have given a few examples from just
1 chapter because this review to you is not the appropriate
medium to point out the errors in all chapters and pages of the book.

To cap it all, she claims on page 446 that there is a
controversy as to whether Mahatma Gandhi uttered 'Ram Ram'
or 'Ram Rahim' when he fell to his assassin's bullets. In
reality, the controversy is totally artificial (and largely
non-existent) and is mainly encountered in agenda driven
atheist or crackpot websites. His last words are said to have been "Hey
Ram" and the same are inscribed on his 'Samadhi' (his
memorial) in New Delhi. His followers sometimes say that he
uttered 'Ram Ram'. Or her laughable claim (page 194n) that
Gandhi's commentary on the Gita (a sacred Hindu scripture)
was titled 'Asakti Yoga' (=The Science of Deep attachment -
she even explains the word ungrammatically!) when in fact
the title of Gandhi's work was 'Anasakti Yoga' (= Science of
Non-Attachment). Surely this cannot pass for an 'alternative
history' because this is just bogus fiction.

Let me not even go into the racist and hateful tone of her chapters when she actually deals with Hinduism. Her claims that she loves the Hindu culture is like a Pedophile claiming that he 'loves' children.

If you are drawn to read Wendy Doniger's The Hindus - as I was - because you see in Hinduism an example of a cultural-spiritual tradition that has managed to keep alive - right into modern times - a view of a sacred universe (sacred time, sacred geography, sacred cosmology, sacred social customs and social roles, sacred geometry and architecture, rites, rituals, and celebrations, etc.) and a robust set of experiential spiritual practices (puja, kirtan, yoga, meditation, etc.) then you are likely to be disappointed by this book. It is written, as far as I can tell, entirely from within the same western, modern, secular-academic point of view that has largely rejected a sacred vision of the cosmos and that has largely dismissed whatever tried-and-tested systems of spiritual practice we may once have had. Doniger conveys almost none of the spiritual vitality and seems not to recognize any of the practical spiritual knowledge that other writers and teachers show to be embedded in Hindu scriptures. If anything, she belittles these aspects of Hinduism in just that sort of way that modernized people as a group tend, unfortunately, to do, believing themselves to "know better" and to be more "sophisticated" than people who maintain their ancient traditions. So if you are looking for a view of Hinduism that will lead you beyond the limitations of the modern materialistic-mechanistic worldview, this is not the book for you.

Here is just one example: On page 176, Doniger quotes, from the Kaushitaki Upanishad, a description of the sort of experience one might encounter after bodily death that determines the trajectory of one's soul. This upanishad says that upon dying, one goes to the moon and must answer its question, and that answering correctly or incorrectly is what determines the soul's next steps. Now, obviously, from a modern, materialistic, rationalistic point of view, this is all silly, superstitious nonsense and so it would be very easy to dismiss it as such. But we should expect more than this kind of knee-jerk, superficial response from a person who holds herself up as a serious scholar. But rather than exploring what these strange (to modern, western ears) ideas and images might refer to in metaphysical terms (for example, I happen to know that there is a strong connection between the moon and the mental faculty in Hindu metaphysics; so this passage from the unpanishad could be a way of saying that the trajectory of the soul after death is dependent on the level of mental development one has attained during bodily life), Doniger takes the easy way out - the way that will find easy acceptance among her readers who hold modern, mechanistic rationalism to be the only valid viewpoint - and treats as silly the idea that "just one final postmortem exam...determines everything" (and then, in a telling footnote, likens this to a British school exam, clearly demonstrating how Doniger misconstrues and minimizes what may be another culture's rich spiritual wisdom by filtering it though her own referents while maintaining a distant, scholarly, and disdainful stance.) If it ever occurred to Doniger that the people who authored Hindu scriptures were simply far more open to a broader range of (non-physical) experiences than herself (and, by extension, most westernized, modernized people) she never hints at this possibility in her writing. In my opinion, this is a major fault.

For similar reasons, if you are drawn to this book primarily because of its subtitle "An Alternative History," and are hoping for insight into more primal forms of Hindu spirituality - before the sanitized, homogenized, overly rationalized form of "Hinduism" as so many of us know it today emerged under the influence of Christianity and western colonialism - then you too are likely to be disappointed. True, Doniger does bring out various strands of the Hindu tradition that are often overlooked, but again, not in a way that demonstrates their spiritual vitality. Her aim seems to be to support the modernist agenda that wants to say, "Look - since there are so many seemingly contradictory strands within this religious system, it's all obviously just a bunch of made-up hooey and has no real truth." In other words, Doniger presents the "alternative" Hindu tradition as mainly a complicated tangle of "myths" - in the negative sense of that word - that are best left to scholars like herself to figure out and that have no value other than providing a historical record of various peoples' literary imaginings. I got the feeling that to Doniger, Hinduism is nothing but a huge body of literature waiting to be analyzed.

Really, what this book is about, more than anything else, is Wendy Doniger and her particular interests. Hinduism almost recedes into the background, seemingly serving merely as a stimulus for her to talk about what matters most to her (mainly: women, oppressed groups of people, and animals). Nothing wrong with those interests at all; but the way in which Doniger talks about Hinduism does not seem to come from Hinduism itself. I feel that she has imposed her interests upon Hinduism in an unnatural - and therefore misleading - way. (Also, if you do not share her strong interest in these things, you may find her continual focus on them tedious.)

On the positive side, I did get out of this book an even stronger sense of just how diverse a tradition Hinduism is and how it evolved over time. Many people will present Hinduism from one particular point of view (polytheistic, monotheistic, dualistic, non-dualistic, Vedic, Vedantic, yogic, tantric, philosophical, ritualistic, brahminical, populist, Shaiva, Vaishnava, etc.) as if any one of these points of view is the "true," "authentic," "original," or most comprehensive form of Hinduism. But while Doniger does present a fairly broad spectrum of Hinduism, she does so, as stated above, while missing the inner heart of it all: the spirituality.

In other words, in my opinion, she misses the point.

Anyone out there have any recommendations for an overview of Hinduism?

review of one chapter:Dialogue and tolerance under the Mughals (p 527-573): Apart from many factual errors in this history Doniger presents, I must say, it is simply a `whitewash of the Muslim period'. Doniger would have done shown some scholarship if she quoted the great American historian William Durant's The Story of Civilization: "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Or that of French historian Alain Danielou's statement, in his Histoire de l' Inde : "From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races." Doniger had a chance at least to go to the source, the Islamic chroniclers who accompanied these barbaric marauders. e.g., Al Beruni, who chronicled the destruction of Takshasila university and the sky-high fire of the treasure of its books by Mahmud Gazni in the name of wiping out the infidels' civilization and to install the Islamic one. The `Alternate history `, Doniger presents, is a stink of bald lies to fit her Hinduphobic Indology.

This book is 800 pages long. That seems reasonable given the length and complexity of Hindu history. At least half of the words are irrelevant, redundant, or unnecessary, however. Let's take the first page of Chapter I. One third of the page is recounting a Sufi (Muslim) parable about a mullah who looks for his house key somewhere other than where he dropped it, because the light is better where he is looking. She then talks about "what photographers call available light" (misusing the term says this reviewer, who happens to have been a camera nerd since 1973). An entire page is thus spent to say what could be said in one sentence: previous scholars (with inferior educations to the author's own, presumably) have spent too much time looking at the most readily available sources. Doniger never gives a specific example of a scholar who came up short in this manner and the entire point could be dropped. If she is doing a better job than previous authors, could she not simply do her job and let the reader compare her towering intellectual achievement with the flawed narrow views of the mediocrities who went before her?

The average Facebook page is much more tightly edited than this $35 book. Exactly what value did Penguin add to justify abusing readers first with the cover price and then with wasting several days of their time?

It is books like these that make television so popular.

Bound with a colorful and magnificent cover, "The Hindus: An Alternative History", is an impressive looking book indeed. But the adage: Do not judge a book by its cover is most apt in this case.

This book is presented to the world by Penguin, the publisher, as scholarly opinion on Hinduism from a prolific scholar. It is quite likely that it is written mainly for readers in the West, and it's certainly not for the novice. And if the reader has a lot more than mere rudimentary knowledge about Hinduism, it certainly helps. However, if one is not endowed with sufficient knowledge about Hinduism, often it would be impossible to comprehend what the author has written:
"The marginalized people in the lowest social levels of the Veda--Dasas, Shudras--may have included people who were Other not, or not only, in their social class but in their religious practices, such as the wandering bands of warrior ascetics the Vedas refer to as the Vratyas ("People Who Have Taken Vows"), who practiced flagellation and other forms of self-mortification and traveled from place to place in bullock carts."

Parts of the book are well written, but there are many parts that I found quite troubling also. I was impressed, too, with the occasional display of her wit and word-play; but, alas, a streak of bias flows through her witticisms, too. Her interpretations and opinions about some events depicted in Hindu scriptures and epics remain as distorted, askew, and perverted as ever (as in her other books about Hindus); and she sees things that simply do not exist. For example, she states that Sita, the heroine of Ramayana, was more sexual than she appears to be and insinuates that Sita's feelings for her brother-in-law, Lakshmana, might well be more than sisterly. Doniger often sees a hidden sexual meaning behind every episode.

This book wonderfully illustrates the fact that merely possessing two Ph.D. degrees, from prestigious universities though they may be, doesn't necessarily free one's mind from deep rooted biases and prejudices. I am not the only one who has ventured to criticize Dr. Doniger's views on Hinduism; she has been criticized by scholars from academia, scholars such as Nicholas Kazanas, Antonio De Nicolas, and Michael Witzel, and several others, for her negative portrayals of Hinduism. It is not out of place to mention here that her article on Hinduism for Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia was criticized and shown to be so biased that Microsoft removed it and replaced it with an article by Aravind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University.

The publisher has stated that this book "offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions." I beg to differ; in this book Dr. Doniger has offered her same old jaundiced view of Hinduism, but much more elaborately than ever before. I gave this book two and a half stars (rounded off to three), because I found it as delectable as a half-baked potato.

Why did this already controversial author bother to make this amateur attempt? So that she can vent herself and express some misplaced anger?

She is a professor at a reputable university? How did that happen?

Obviously, she has no concept of time and space. She wants to judge an ancient culture and civilization with her narrow-minded values and 21st century standards. If all she wants to do is throw mud at time-honored ancient accomplishments, there are plenty of old civilizations that she can attack and bad-mouth. I wonder who/what is her next target. Her prejudice knows no bounds.

Totally misinformed and sadly mistaken about the essence of the Vedas, Upanishads, epics, traditions and lineages, the author keeps on making arrogant statements throughout her work. She has no respect for the authenticity of traditions and lineages, and does not seem to understand what makes an epic, tradition or lineage. She has completely omitted not only the major Upanishads but other important scriptures. Some of her criticisms are as silly as, for example, if explorer Columbus is put down because he could not drive an automobile!

If the author has so much doubt such as if Mahabharata is an epic or if Sankaracharya is the head of the tradition, why did she even spend her precious time writing this fat book? She certainly has wasted the reader's time.

What is her source? She has not substantiated any claim she has made. The chapter on Hinduism in America should never have been published. Here she shows that she has not done her homework and that she is an outsider, a frog in the well (a common Indian expression) who has not seen the world outside of the well but writing a book about that world. She has proved that she is just an outsider who has no clue on Hinduism in America or ancient and modern Hinduism.

The author's ignorance, lack of direct experience with the culture, scorn, pettiness, convenient omissions, and oblivion to the times of her subject come through very well. What does not come through is the subject itself.

There are many huge factual errors in this book, Wendy owes an apology to her readers.

Do not waste your money on this book. If you are curious, borrow it from a library.

Wendy needs to find another hobby.

One of the worst books on Hinduism ever written, period. Starting from Introduction ("Most of India lies in the Northern Hemisphere" ...really? As a scholar, has the author ever looked at the map of India. All of India lies in Northern Hemisphere) till the end, this book is littered with factual errors and opinionated historical revisionism bordering on a personal vendetta against Hindus.
We are entitled to our opinions, but we cannot attempt to pass on our opinions as historical facts or first hand research. That is precisely what this book attempts to do.
All in all, might make a good paperweight (albeit an expensive one).

I personally feel the author is prejudiced.

For instance in the Chapter 15. Sects and Sex in Tantric puranas and the tantras , pg 417, she has given a title "Chandika seduces and kills Mahisha". Actual purana goes like this - The Mahisha tries to lure Devi/Goddess, for which she replies, 'she is brought into the world to preserve righteousness'. She further commands him either to go back to lower worlds or stand up and fight her instead of talking lowly. After which the great battle began and ultimately Goddess kills him. For which Mrs.Wendy says, "Most Sanskrit texts play down the eroctic relationship between the Goddess and Buffalo[read Mahisha]. She has referenced her own book "Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts" for this paragraph.

Devi's victory is one of the biggest Hindu festivals celebrated as "Vijayadashami" in south India or "Dushera" in rest of the country. I stopped reading the book here.

There are lot of such instances. I just mentioned this here, because, am sure any one (or at-least pious Hindu) after reading this can understand to what extent the author has gone to ridicule Hindu gods.

Save your money and be thankful!

I remind you the authors statement in the beginning of the book. She says "This is 'a History', not 'the History'...".But this aint one, this is BS. And she has also acknowledged that most of them are her own interpretations. I am sorry to say that, her interpretations are hurting the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people.

This book is not for someone who would like to know real history of Hinduism!!


Pardon my French, she's put words from her *ss.

First off I am a Hindu. I was born into one. I also love a nice prime rib medium rare and a hamburger once in a while. Now, do I fear that I would be excommunicated for that? Nope. Cause there is no authority that can excommunicate me in the first place. I am very much a Hindu. I am free to believe what the Bhagwat Gita says or not believe a good portion of what the Gita says and I would still be a Hindu. I may even cherry pick what I want to believe from the Bible and the Koran. But does it mean there is no structure of any kind in Hinduism? Are Christians and Muslims Hindus?. Well! let me bring a different context (Political) and see if that would help explain.

Context 1:

Western concept of liberty as a political system: e.g. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It's a very broad framework. It does not go into the minutia or stipulate what it is that would make you happy etc.. Does it mean, that you can bring in a rigid system of communism or fascism ideology under that framework of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Obviously not since those political ideologies would violate the basic framework of liberty in the political context. However, you can still have socialism as normative values within the frame work of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Now apply the same concept when it comes to Hindu religion vs a vis other religions. There is no set ideology that Hindus should adhere to, to be a Hindu.. Hinduism is freedom of spiritual quest for an individual as long as the framework is not violated. if you insist that your belief or ideology is the only true one and the rest are false or that every other faith except yours is in violation, then you are violating the basic freedom of spiritual quest and most Hindus would not accept that as being Hindu.

Context 2:

Another illustration is how western liberal ideology is pilloried by some conservative societies of the world by pointing out to the worst in western civilization as an excuse for they not adopting a free society. e.g. They often point to pornography in the west as failure of a free society "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". They conveniently do not realize that westerners do not necessarily celebrate pornography instead consider that a price they have to pay for living in a free society.

Let me apply that to Hinduism. Because there are no rigid rules nor any Institution to enforce any in a "libertarian" faith called Hinduism, naturally you would find some odd and strange practices within Hinduism including some bizarre Tantric rituals. Missionaries and religious supremacists and leftists like Wendy often highlight these sects/practices to point to the failure of Hinduism just like countries that have a tyrannical political system who point to pornography as the central tenet of free society to rationalize the supremacy of their tyrannical ideology/belief system. Most Hindus would tolerate these bizarre tantric practices (within the context of a law and order) but not necessarily celebrate them as Hindu rituals/customs.


Context 3.

Process of scientific quest: Scientists and the process of scientific quest is about the pursuit of that never reaching wall of absolute knowledge. Its the pursuit and not necessarily about finding all the answers there is to know. They constantly keep pushing that wall of ignorance a little further and the constant debate to fine tune. Yet, you would find some individuals (Creationists) who would use this as a weakness to deride scientists and what they do for they claim their Green Goblin up in the heavens has created it all.

In Hinduism, its not about a set of revealed set of truth given to 1 or 2 individual that has adjudicated all questions and that subsequent generation would just have to accept this "adjudicated revealed truth" into perpetuity and that they would be punished if they challenge these "truths" (Its really hearsay packaged as Truths). Instead, Hindu beliefs are really musings of individuals over 4000 years. Its intuitive perceptions of seers while introspecting and meditating deeply without guarantees to what they say is the absolute truth (They are opinions). Its devoid of compulsion by way of intrinsic threats for one to follow and believe what they sayy. These musings still continue and will never end just like scientific musings are a never ending pursuit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember this axiom. "A person has a right to be wrong in their opinions but no one has a right to be wrong in their facts".

Unfortunately, The Indian "secular" constitution prohibits religious studies in Indian universities. So you would not find Indian academicians from India challenging Wendy and her Ganga Dins. Its left to us amateurs to challenge her but then we are quickly branded as "right wing Hindutvas". How convenient these people from the Abrahmaic faiths are all experts and authority and "know it alls" on Hinduism..eh? Sheesh!

This author has missed the forest from the trees. She is looking through a micro Freudian lens at the chlorophyll in the leaves and all she sees are placid Penises. I wonder what one would find if you decide to psychoanalyze her with a Freudian lens.