Opposite Wishes

The first of the book’s next three chapters that deal with concepts of Bose by which he sought to challenge Freud in their letters, chapter 4 addresses Bose’s signature theory of opposite wishes and his aggressive advocacy of it. It is a subject Freud encouraged him to write about while stating his own tentative but firm and consistent disagreement with it. In his longest article, “A New Theory of the Mental Life,” Bose’s stock example of an opposite wish to be beaten suggests that he promoted his theory as an answer to Freud’s explanations for sexuality and aggression. Upaniṣadic, Vedāntic, and Sāṃkhya-Yogic ideas also seem to lie within these Bosean formulations, including his views on psycho-physical parallelism, a “theoretical ego” in which waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states are unified, which operates like a jīvātman, or “living self,” and opposite wishes as a karmic coincientia oppositorum.