Indian Psychology – Perceptions and Perspectives of Psychologists

Indian psychology is the system of psychology rooted in the Indian indigenous tradition of thought. Indian indigenous psychology is a contemporary phenomenon. However, psychology as a discipline in India is not a recent field and has a long history. Psychology has recently gained significant popularity as both an academic discipline and a profession. However, from its inception in India as an academic discipline in the early 20th century until now; psychological theories and practices has seen a predominance of the western theories and conceptualizations. Added to this, Indian psychology has several connotations attached to it such as – being philosophical or highly abstract, dominance of yoga, scope of Indian psychology being restricted to a certain sub-community – and so on. Hence, in this paper, an attempt is made to understand through research the different perceptions of psychologists about Indian psychology. An online semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 113 psychologists across India. The obtained results are analysed and discussed thematically