Indrajit Hazra's book on Kolkata: Grand Delusions....
Some Observations, starting with his description of Sri Ramakrishna's relationship with Kali

Indrajit says on page 98,

'Ramakrishna's Ma Kali was a mother-child-sister-wife-lover-goddess all rolled into one, ready fo the picking'...

I wonder if Hazra ever read the Kathamrita or even the Lilaprasanga. Yes, I too agree that his relationship with Kali may be read as 'filial as well as eroticized'. The second because there are many references to Tantra and how the ascent of the devotee takes place through chakras where sexual imagery exists or may exist.

We all know that Freud's deep readings into the human pyshce, especially the male psyche, uncovered how mothers were the primary love objects of all men. Actually of all women too. It is primal love and also primary love. A reading of Toni Morrisons' Beloved will establish how a girl child may feel this love for her mother. The ghost child who comes back to Sethe, is obsessed with the mother in a semi erotic way....

Going back to Hazra. I have been reading the Kathamrita for years. I did not come to it naturally, in that it was not part of my family tradition. I have been raised more or less an Anglophile, which has given me some of my strengths, but also given me a vast ignorance about my own traditions, which I have had the chance to rectify, somewhat. Experiences that have given me the utmost joy..the discoveries, rediscoveries, new alignments and politics of culture..

I have never found any reference so far in the Kathamrita where Sri Ramakrishna talks about Kali as his 'sister'. Surely the incestuous categories may have been toned down a bit? And again, where is the reference to Kali as 'wife and lover'? Sri Ramakrishna would not have known the difference between the two!!

May be, Hazra is confusing Sri Ramakrishna's many references to Radha, who felt a deep sensuous delight even on seeing the Tamal tree, which reminded her of Krishna!

I can see why Hazra would see the relationship of Sri Ramakrishna and Kali from the 'erotic' angle of lover. Because Thakur has said that 'Brahmananda' is a million times more blissful and ecstatic than the erotic experiences that human beings know. And in the experience of 'Brahmananda', there is reference to both Kali and Krishna as the source of this 'ananda'.