International Journal of Indian Psychology — Bag & Dash (2024), "Abhiman: A Complex Emotional Reaction Associated with Being Hurt"
- Author: Guru Prasad Bag (M.Phil. trainee in Clinical Psychology, Mental Health Institute (COE), SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack, Odisha) & Dr. Manaswini Dash (Department of Psychology, Utkal University, Odisha)
- Publication: The International Journal of Indian Psychology, Vol. 12, Issue 2 (April–June 2024), pp. 180–195. Open access. DOI: 10.25215/1202.019
- Date: 2024 (received 2 April 2024; published as DIP:18.01.019.20241202)
- URL: https://ijip.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/18.01.019.20241202.pdf (PDF, fetched directly and converted with
pdftotext -layoutper the standing project fence on PDFs that don't yield text to a direct fetch) - Type: primary — an original qualitative interview study. Stance: neutral/academic, explicitly framing itself as a rare piece of Indian-psychology research on a topic otherwise left to literature and folklore.
- Accessed: 2026-09-06
Extract
- Word and scope: the paper studies abhiman, explicitly identified as an Odia word ("Since 'abhiman' is an Odia word and we could not find its exact English equivalent, we used the Odia word as it is") also used in "several other Indian languages, such as Hindi" — but with the paper's own informants stating the Hindi sense differs ("in Hindi, it means pride"), matching the historical/original sense independently documented for Bengali by Mukherjee & Das (2018).
- Method: 13 purposively sampled "literature experts" (Odia and English language teachers, writers, and folklore researchers, ages 30–80) in unstructured, individually conducted telephone interviews, analyzed by inductive thematic analysis (Glaser & Strauss 1967 grounded-theory approach).
- Core finding: abhiman is "a mixture of a wide range of emotions like anger, sadness, pride and a sense of self-respect," experienced specifically after being hurt by a loved one with whom the person holds unmet expectations, and expressed behaviorally through sulking ("rushiba" in Odia) — withdrawal, reduced eye contact, silence, changed facial expression — rather than direct confrontation. There is a strong implicit hope that the person who caused the hurt will apologize; if they do, the relationship often becomes closer than before ("there is no meaning in light without darkness").
- Seven themes identified: (1) abhiman arises only toward a loved one with unmet expectations; (2) reasons for showing it (perceived low controllability, insecurity about the relationship, a wish to assess or assert one's own value to the other person, an indirect expression of love, a form of protest/disagreement); (3) the intention behind it (never to harm, but to prompt understanding); (4) its behavioral expression (sulking, silence, withdrawal, avoided eye contact); (5) the emotions blended within it (anger — described by one informant as "soft anger," madhura krodha — sadness, and eventually happiness once resolved); (6) consequences if unaddressed (deepening sadness, anger, loss of trust, possible relationship breakdown); (7) consequences if well addressed (increased intimacy and trust).
- Illustrative example given by the paper itself: the Radha–Krishna story from Indian mythology — Krishna breaks a promise to meet Radha, and Radha responds not with open anger but by withdrawing (not dressing up, refusing to see him) until he apologizes — offered as a canonical instance of abhiman in action.
- Direct informant quotes (a sample; all quoted from the paper's own interview transcripts): "Abhiman is a soft weapon" (Biswanath Sahoo); "Abhiman and sulking are two sides of a coin. Without abhiman, there is no sulking" (Manorama Mishra); "Abhiman keeps alive all kinds of love. There cannot be a definition of love without Abhiman" (Manorama Mishra); "If someone is not responding to abhiman properly, it is an insult to abhiman" (Siddharth Baral).
- Dictionary note given by the paper itself: "In Odia dictionaries, there are several meanings of 'abhiman', such as arrogance, pride, self-conceit, discontent, egotism, sensitiveness, and vanity" — but the paper argues the word's actual literary and everyday usage does not map cleanly onto any single one of these dictionary senses, motivating the qualitative study.
- Positioning within psychology: situates abhiman within the Western psychological literature on "hurt feelings" (Leary & Springer 2001; Feeney 2005; Hardecker & Haun 2020 on children's sulking behavior) as a culturally specific elaboration of a documented, cross-culturally studied phenomenon rather than a wholly novel category.
Gaps
- All 13 informants are literature/folklore experts, not a general population sample, and all interviews were conducted in one Indian state (Odisha) — the paper does not claim its findings generalize beyond educated Odia speakers.
- The paper does not itself address translation practice (how abhiman is rendered by published translators) — for that, see Mukherjee & Das (2018), which studies the closely related Bengali usage specifically.
- No primary Odia dictionary is quoted directly (only characterized secondhand, in the paper's own words, as listing "arrogance, pride, self-conceit," etc.) — this project has not independently verified that characterization against a named Odia dictionary.