Psychology in the “Backyards of the World”: Experiences From India

Abstract

The mind has been the subject of fascination since ancient times, and every cultural tradition has folk theories related to meaning-making, attributions, and explanations about being human. In this sense, the subject of Psychology is as old as humanity, although its rise as a global, scientific discipline is relatively recent, emerging from 20th-century Europe and America. Theoretical ideas and methods generated during the growth of the discipline were aligned with beliefs about human nature and scientific methods specific to Euro-American cultures. Although “preached” and practiced universally as a science, this culturally circumscribed and ideologically bound history of the discipline needs further examination. Rather than “thinking globally” and “acting locally,” the agenda of Psychology has been the reverse; “think locally and act globally,” as critics of mainstream Psychology have pointed out. The predominance of individual, intra-mental, laboratory-tested, quantifiable dimensions of human conduct are based subliminally on Western ideology. The alternative methods of approaching real-life experiences, literature, art, inter-mental phenomena, and other qualitative dimensions of human interactions remain relatively under-explored. The dominant mainstream Psychology is seen as an objective, measurable, and universal science that has had far-reaching consequences for ordinary people around the world. This somewhat sinister side of conventional Psychology is the subject of this article, where we argue that despite significant exceptions and scholarly dissent, the popularity and prevalence of experimental Psychology has marginalized “others” at the expense of its own progress. We use illustrations primarily from teaching, research and practice in Psychology in Indian Universities.