Branches of the Psychology

Branches of the Psychology Tree

            There are many different ways to compartmentalize the same thing. A group of people can be categorized into male-female, or tall and short, or by their ethnicity, or by their IQ, which can create very dissimilar groups of the same people. Similarly, the mind has many different aspects that can be approached from different disciplines.

In Western science, there are three main area (skandha) of practice: neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Neurology studies the nervous system, brain disorders like strokes, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease, and cognitive and behavioral abnormalities due to brain physiology. Psychiatrists treat mood and thought disorders with no known physiological basis, such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety or personality disorders. A psychiatrist is an MD and will often treat with pharmaceuticals and spend more focus on medication management. Psychology focuses on treating the mental suffering of the client through various talk, behavioral or somatic therapies. Within psychology, there is a psychologist who has a PhD and can give therapy as well as psychological testing. A psychotherapist has a master’s degree and primarily focuses on therapy.

            These various areas overlap in that a patient with Parkinson’s disease or a stroke will often develop depression. A psychologist will work alongside a psychiatrist to prescribe medication. In some places they overlap in less distinguishing ways, such as neurology’s metabolic encephalopathy with delirium and psychiatry’s toxic psychosis.[i]

In India, with a lack of Cartesian mind-body dichotomy, the various aspects of what is called psychology were grouped into different areas. The etiology of various mental disease also altered its grouping. Neurological diseases were a division of Ayurveda's mental disease (manasa roga) treatment. This included depression and anxiety which were seen to have strong physiological components requiring efficient treatment. Humanistic psychologies expansion of the healthy individual was an aspect of yoga's self-development of a healthy mental being. Character analysis and comprehension as well as ego development fell into the realm of Jyotish (Vedic astrology and consulting). Relationship development was discussed in the rati Shastra, while emotional regulation was discussed in the realm of the arts and tantra. These all have aspects which overlap into each other’s realms and complement. This work will delineate the aspects of mind in each of these areas, look at their overlaps and develop them in a format that contains all parts of the Vedic system studied under the name of Psychology.

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[i] Baker, M. G., Kale, R., & Menken, M. (2002). The wall between neurology and psychiatry : Advances in neuroscience indicate it’s time to tear it down. BMJ : British Medical Journal, 324(7352), 1468–1469. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123428/