Freitag, 23. Oktober 2026

Vortragszyklus: «Ohnmacht, Allmacht und Grenzerleben»

Triadic Tryst in Enthralled Parental Bed: Indian Cultural Context

Basak’s concept of the ‘triadic tryst’ explores the psychoanalytic complexities of childhood intimacy, bodily boundaries, familial triangulation within the Indian cultural context, tracing their origin to the culturally familiar child-rearing practice of it occupying the middle position between parents in the parental bed. The concept designates the child with highly charged affective and embodied entanglement within the primal parental matrix. In cultural contexts where proximity and interdependence are highly valued, the child’s affective world may often feel overwhelmed with demands of complex negotiations of bodily and relational boundaries. The ‘enthralled parental bed’ is thus approached as a symbolic space saturated with triadic attachment, desire, conflict, identification, and intergenerational fantasy where three different subjectivities navigate their intimacy and differentiation alongside the dyadic engagement. The transition from dyadic enthralment to triadic intersubjectivity may then be considerably fraught, leaving the paternal or third position psychically attenuated, inconsistently represented, or often recruited into the maternal configuration – echoing culturally mediated bisexual leaning – rather than functioning as a differentiating presence. Drawing on clinical case illustration, it explores the strain between culturally integral forms of intimacy and vulnerability to body-ego diffusion, alongside the interplay of tripartite oedipal constellation embedded in the triadic sleeping arrangement. Distinct from the universalised western model of developmental, the ‘triadic tryst’ offers psychoanalytic framework for understanding the emergence of subjectivity where relational contextualities of proximity, interdependence, and individuation, coexist. It invites an attentive engagement with diverse psychic organization and different oedipal constellations.

 Jhuma Basak, Dr., is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society (IPS), Kolkata, and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She holds a PhD in Psychology from Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, and is currently Chair of the Training Committee of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society.

Her psychoanalytic work focuses particularly on the intersections of culture, gender and psychosocial experience. She has presented her work internationally, including at the 53rd IPA Congress in Cartagena in 2023, papers in different international Journals, and lectures at institutions including the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, the Japan Psychoanalytic Association, Hakuoh University and the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt. She is a former Asia Co-Chair of the IPA Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis (COWAP) and former editor of Samiksa, the journal of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society.

Basak teaches regularly at the Indian Psychoanalytical Society and is a visiting professor at Christ University, Bangalore. Her books include Psychoanalytic & Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Women in India (co-editor, 2021), Sculpting Psychoanalysis in India—Sudhir Kakar (editor, 2025), and Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India (co-author with Osamu Kitayama, 2025).

• jeweils von 20.00 – 21.30 Uhr
• im Freud-Institut Zürich
• vor Ort: unentgeltlich
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• Einheit 8 gemäss Rahmenplan

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