Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanylsis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple "mother goddesses" of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many "mothers" in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western models (...) without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a briefr comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America. _All the Mothers Are One_ makes a significant contribution to the growing debate concerning the role of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of culture and the study of cross-cultural human development. (shrink)

This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resource for sex researchers as well as undergraduate courses in the philosophy of sex.

This topically organized, interdisciplinary anthology provides competing perspective on the claim that western culture faces a moral crisis. Using clearly written, accessible essays by well-known authors in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities, the book introduces students to a variety of perspectives on the current cultural debate about values that percolates beneath the surface of most of our social and political controversies.