This was originally part of an introduction to my article “Indo-centric history of Psychology,” but it needed to be cut as it veered too much from the main topic, and so it has become a blog post.
There are two primary perspectives in western psychology. Is the mind just neurochemical reactions in the brain? Or, is there a mind that is more than just the physiology. Various schools of thought will fall somewhere along this spectrum or it’s extreme, and will often write with the assumption that their belief is superior. I trace the split in these two views back to the 1600’s.
In the West, René Descarte's writing in the 1600’s influenced the rationalist movement of the 1700’s. The Cartesian view of the world separated the mind (as a control mechanism) and the body (as a machine), which eventually led to the need for a science of mind (psychology) separate from the science of the physical body. Counter to this, the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke believed that all sensations, feelings, images, and thoughts were physiological processes.[i] Their views have led to the completely physiological approach to psychology, which created the two main approaches we have today: mind as brain (physiological psychology) and mind as a non-local aspect of self (psychology).
The separation between mind and body did not happen in India, as the mind and body are seen as an intricately woven together interacting phenomena. The Sanskrit view sees that physical states influence mental function (dehamānasa) and that mental states influence physiology (manodaihika), and so they were never studied out of context. In this way, Indian medicine is implicitly a mind-body medicine that respects both mind and body as complete entities but which cannot be studied separately.
There was no formal psychology in Europe or America before the 1800’s. Early psychological writings were called metaphysics: that which is beyond (meta) the physical.[ii] During the early 1800’s there was debate in the writings of Kant and Reid about whether psychology was something to study scientifically or whether it was meant to be philosophized about. These philosophers deepened the discussion between the two developing psychological views, one in alignment with materialistic science based on Locke (mind as brain) and the other seeing the mind as different from the body and philosophizing about its nature. During the 1800’s, the physiological view looked at phrenology and electrical theories of the nervous system. The physiological view led to Electro-Convulsive Therapy where the patient was electrocuted to help cure them (and in modern times has led to the psychopharmaceuticals industry). The philosophical approach was dominated by mesmerists, spiritualists and philosophers. During the 17-1800’s, most scientists worked within a protestant framework and made sure their theories supported church doctrine in order to be published.[iii]
In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, European and American psychological thought struggled to stay in alignment with church doctrine, as it tried to understand the mind’s relationship to the machine of the body. Descartes made the statement that “I think therefore I am (je pense, donc je suis), which some attempt to call metacognition. But the statement indicates that he identifies his self or his beingness with the fluctuating thinking of the mind, which is a relatively low level of mental awareness.
In general, self-reflective thought (vicāra), being aware of the consciousness being aware of the thought process (vimarśa), differentiating the conscious perceiver from the affects, emotions and thoughts that arise in the mind (viveka) in order to study them, awareness of the shadow self (pāpa puruṣa), the relationship between affects (bhāva) and emotions (rasa), and other psychological concepts developed in Europe only in the last 150 years. Many have failed to distinguish and acknowledge the transition of European thought as it integrated Sanskrit ideas.
Therefore there is a need for an Indo-centric history of Psychology to discuss the history of Eastern thought and Western interaction.
[i] Boundless. “Early Roots of Psychology.” Boundless Psychology Boundless, 20 Sep. 2016. Retrieved 26 Mar. 2017 from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/introduction-to-psychology-1/introduction-to-the-field-of-psychology-22/early-roots-of-psychology-110-12647
[ii] Edward Reed, From Soul to Mind (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997), 22.
[iii] Ibid., 10.
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