"The Psychic Life of the Poor": A City Unseen in Mumbai, London, and New York

"The Psychic Life of the Poor: A City Unseen in Mumbai, London, and New York," will examine neoliberal society's inadequate engagements with urban poverty, race, and migrancy, as seen in the specific context of global cities. The proposed work examines literary and cultural representations of poverty in relation to each city's mental health culture (psychoanalytic and psychiatric), and how that culture is reflected in public and private attitudes towards the psychic life of the poor. Looking across to cognate fields in the history of medicine, urban studies, anthropology, and human geography, this literary critical project is richly interdisciplinary and has exceptional policy reach. It will involve extensive collaborations and knowledge-sharing with academic and non-academic partners. I will work with prominent figures in clinical psychology and psychiatry in each country. The project will also entail extensive engagement with local and global initiatives working in the interface of urbanism, poverty, and mental illness.

The chapters will draw on a range of literary and cultural productions to explore representations of the outcast poor of metropolitan centres: fiction, narrative non-fiction, cinema, image archives. They will introduce, in the process, novel forms of literature (such as the humanitarian or ecocritical novel) that defy the common perception of literature as unworldly and esoteric. The function of literary criticism in a project that revolves around the ground reality of mental health care for the urban poor is three-fold. First, literature, like psychoanalysis, can allow a radical rethinking of affective life outside the determinations of neoliberal governments and free market discourse. Secondly, it is timely to examine the renewed influence of the discourse of humanitarianism on humanities education and the creative arts. Problems of environmental health and social justice have, for instance, seen writer-activists in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries develop humanitarian critiques addressing vulnerable lives and habitations. Finally, literary forms such as the novel and narrative non-fiction not only make legible the culture of human rights that supports much humanitarian work now but also actively extend its remit to subaltern communities traditionally overlooked in human rights discourse.

A unique and original feature of this project is that it highlights the mutually influential relationship between the cultural imaginary around urban poverty and (state) policy on the mental health needs of the poor. A truncated (but influential nevertheless) socialist phase in the historical method of psychoanalysis is brought into dialogue with literary and cultural interventions on matters of social inequality and universal justice. I focus particularly on Freudian psychoanalysis in an international frame and the multiple forms in which psychoanalysis, as a pioneering non-pharmaceutical intervention, is transmitted: psychotherapy, counselling, group psychology, trauma-based cognitive behavioural therapy. Sigmund Freud's pathbreaking work of the 1920s and 30s on the social conscience of psychoanalysis, leading to the foundation of "free clinics" in Vienna and other European cities, provides the historical framework for this undertaking. Freud's clinical practice in this era embraced the social-democratic ideology of post WW1 Vienna and his pronouncements between 1918 and 1938 helped create a dozen cooperative mental health clinics from Zaghreb to London. This project traces the afterlife of the "free clinic" phenomenon, as seen in the operations of a number of free or low-fee psychotherapy clinics in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, London, and New York.

The outcomes of this project include: a monograph; a volume of essays; two graduate workshops; an international conference; a project webpage maintained by TORCH; an article in "The Conversation," a global knowledge project.

The proposed study establishes a causal link between damning socio-cultural perceptions of the mental capacity of poor populations and the lack of state-funded mental health care provision for the same. It brings into existence a narrative in which literary and cultural representation of the outcast poor of metropolitan centres is related to the provision of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy for poor populations in different global cities. The project has exceptional policy reach, enabled by the colloborations and research networks I have cultivated over the years. To give an example, one of my collaborators, Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre of Global Health Histories at York, has introduced me to two prominent WHO officials, Dr Nils Fietje and Dr Carlos Dora, both of whom work at the interface of knowledge and practice and have an established record of collaborating with scholars from the humanities and social sciences.

In its sustained interdisciplinarity, my work will facilitate dialogue between the humanities, arts, social sciences, medicine, and global health programmes. This project will lead by example by fostering extensive collaborations and knowledge-sharing with academic and non-academic partners. I will work with an advisory team comprised of prominent figures in clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry in each country: the psychiatrist Vikram Patel (London); the psychoanalysts Micky Bhatia (Mumbai) and Honey Oberoi (Delhi); the psychoanalyst Patricia Gherovici and the psychiatrist Jimmy Holland (New York). These health practitioners will help me reach policy makers and non-academic stakeholders: I will, in exchange, introduce them to the networks of academic researchers I am a part of, such as the Oxford-India Health Research Network (George Institute, Oxford), the WHO Colloborating Centre (York), and the MIT Poverty Action Lab (a source of data on poverty evaluations, which I have used in my introduction).

A rigorous engagement with local and global initiatives working at the interface of urbanism, poverty, and mental illness has been vital to developing this study. My collaborators to date include the following non-profit organizations in Mumbai: URBZ and PUKAR, leading urban research collectives; SNEHA, which works on domestic violence in slums; and "Ummeed," which treats children with developmental disabilities. I have worked with "Samadhana," a free (psychotherapy) clinic in Bangalore and two mental health rights organizations in Kolkata, namely "Anjali" and "Iswar Sankalpa." In the UK, I will be engaging with the George Institute (Oxford) and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories. In New York, I will work with four free (psychotherapy) clinics, with institutional support from the Department of Psychiatry at the Sloan-Kettering Center and the William Alanson White Clinic, among others. My engagement with these internationally renowned state-funded and non-governmental organisations will be mutually beneficial: my scholarship will promote concerted efforts to affect policy change on critical health issues, while the NGOs and other global health organisations will provide opportunities for making instrumental my findings.

Despite ongoing social work on the manifestations of urban poverty in areas such as neonatal health and infant nutrition, domestic violence, housing, and human rights, the psychological toll of extreme disenfranchisement is addressed inadequately by governments and NGOs alike. My collaborators in the third sector and policy-makers at national and international levels will benefit from my scrupulously prepared case studies and the historical documenting of serviceable models of mental health care interventions. Non-academic beneficiaries who have been lined up already for possible collaboration include the Brocher Foundation chapter at York and the European regional office of the WHO.