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A Case For Psychology Of The Indian: Contributing A Non-Linear Indigenous Approach To A Linear Universalist Discipline

The current science of Psychology and its language and methods are primarily linear and study causal relationships between independent entities. It is the western method. The question that I have taken up for this article is “Is it possible to create an indigenous, non-linear Indian method?”

My hypothesis is that the results that we get out of implementing this new Indian method to psychological testing will be Indian enough to address the indigenous issues that our population is facing today.

If we take the example of experimental Psychology or lab-based psychology, in the year 1879 Wilhelm Wundt, a German physiologist started the first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig. Many psychologists all around the globe started setting up their own Laboratories.

Psychologists in Austria, Denmark, Japan, and the United States set up their own Laboratories. G Stanley Hall was the first psychologist to set up his laboratory in the United States at Johns Hopkins University. Later he trained, Japanese psychologist Yūjirō Motora in experimental psychology who later on went to set up a similar lab at the University of Tokyo.

Even Indians like Narendra Nath Sen Gupta who studied experimental psychology under Hugo Münsterberg, an assistant of Wundt established a Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Calcutta in January of 1916.

This journey of modern psychology to India proves to us that modern psychology as a discipline is predominantly western. With this, it carries all the biases and prejudices of the Western world.

Now, fortunately all around the globe, there is a movement to correct many of these biases that do exist in the current research. There is now a great need to determine if the norms and behavior that happen across Europe and North America are somehow not tainting the research being done all across the globe by accepting the euro-centric and western approach to the discipline of modern psychology as the parameter.

Different cultures have different norms and different ideas about how the world that surrounds them functions. The validity of these different ideas should be taken into consideration by researchers who are working in the field of experimental psychology.

Especially in a diverse nation like India, with so many different cultures coexisting, with many different languages that in turn affect these different cultures, which are all strongly rooted in a history that spans millennia, and is rooted in its national ethos, it is even more important to create a separate identity of Indian psychology.

This effort has been actively happening in the past decade. But Indian psychology rooted in Yoga and the Vedas is being studied rather than the psychology of Indians. Without studying the psychology of Indians it is hard to indigenize a western subject like psychology.

To do this, Indians must focus on a relatively modern discipline called cross-cultural psychology. The efforts towards psychology rooted in Yoga and the Vedas must be continued. It should not be stopped.

But efforts towards studying the psychology of Indians by using cross-cultural psychology as the medium must be at the core of indigenizing and Indianizing this Western subject called psychology.

Introducing the concept of cross-cultural psychology

There are five essential building blocks of cross-cultural psychology that an Indian psychologist should be concerned about. These are:

  1. What is Culture?
  2. What is Cultural Psychology?
  3. What is Cross-cultural Psychology?
  4. What is the difference between Cultural Psychology and Cross-cultural Psychology?
  5. What is the need for indigenizing psychology in the Indian context?

1. What is culture?

Simply put, Culture is that which is not natural. Trees are nature and wooden products are culture. Culture can also be defined as giving meaning to nature and the modifications of nature. Culture can be broadly divided into two types.

The collective culture of a group of people and Universal culture. Collective culture refers to the differences in different cultures, while universal culture refers to the similarities between different cultures.

For example, all humans express various emotions like being happy, being sad, and being angry. This is a universal phenomenon. But how we choose to express these emotions differs from one culture to the other.

By realizing that certain populations do or do not show the same behaviors under different cultural and social conditions is very illuminating if we want to study how the mind works.

Many times, these behaviors are understood as instinctive, controlling our practices, shaping our institutions, and generally imbuing themselves into the everyday business of our lives.

People keep engaging with cultural artifacts and establishments which in turn get reflected in their opinions, emotions, and actions which come to reflect a culture’s ideas and views.

Culture affects individual thoughts and behaviors as much as the thoughts and behaviors affect the culture. According to social psychologist Chi-Yue Chiu, the University of Illinois “People are active cultural agents, rather than passive recipients of cultural influences as they create, apply, reproduce, transform, and transmit their cultural routines in their daily social interactions.”

Culture also plays a great role in studying the history of a group of people as it is passed from one generation to the next generation. It is important when studying the people of a historically rich nation like India.

According to Developmental psychologist Joan Miller of New School University, “it is problematic to understand mental events as occurring independently of cultural experiences.”

According to Hazel Rose Markus, a Social Psychologist, “psychologists can scan the sociocultural environment for the sources of the structure of behavior, just as we currently scan the brain for those sources.”

That brings us to our next question.

2. What is Cultural Psychology?

According to Canadian Social Psychologist, Steven J. Heine of the University of British Columbia Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members.

As this discipline closely interacts with the discipline of cultural Anthropology, anthropologists like Richard Allan Shweder have also given definitions of cultural psychology. According to Richard Shweder of Chicago University, Cultural psychology is the study of the way cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche, resulting in less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion.

Cultural psychology has become an emerging discipline as the practical evidence that many psychological processes once believed universal are in reality culturally variable. The psychology research that Western researchers produce does not sit well with the personal experiences of a multicultural consumer of this knowledge.

According to social psychologist Virginia Kwan of Princeton University, the current cultural context in which psychology is being studied is the middle-class, college-educated, predominantly Protestant European-American milieu from which the huge majority of psychology researchers and research contributors come.

As the world keeps getting smaller and the world within our educational institutions and their lecture rooms keep getting bigger, a cultural approach to scientific disciplines that deal with people becomes the need of the hour.

According to Cultural anthropologist Rick Shweder, as the world globalizes, we will have to negotiate the ground rules for the production and distribution of cultural practices and beliefs. This creates a big niche for cultural psychologists who understand the structures and functions of culture.

3. What is Cross-cultural Psychology?

I would like to define Cross-cultural Psychology as the study of human behavior and mental processes in a scientific manner that includes the specific study of differences and similarities between different cultural groups under different cultural conditions.

Cross-cultural psychology developed in the late 1960s as a discipline, distinct from both psychology and anthropology but still closely working with both. A major turning point for the discipline was when concerns about “intellectual colonialism” were expressed at the Ibadan conference (1966-67), by E Stambouli of Tunisia at a relevant time in history when psychology was ready for the emergence of a new parallel field.

He reasoned that gathering data in Africa and then taking that same data to North America or even Europe and publishing the results without any collaborative effort of indigenous scientists was morally an unacceptable practice that needs to be consciously rooted out and replaced with a more culturally sensitive method.

A lot of cross-cultural psychologists who are also trained in cross-cultural studies choose to concentrate on one of two approaches:

Researchers that take an etic approach study cultures by applying a “common” set of ideas to all cultures. The emic approach always uses an “insider” perspective, observing and measuring concepts within the precise context of the observed culture.

For example, a researcher using the etic approach who belongs to the northern part of India when studying people from the southern part of India may try to explain ideas such as wearing a bindi or applying Kumkum to the forehead as part of a broad common idea that is within the Hindu set of principles while the same researcher if using the emic approach might try to learn the local language and try to find the differences in the material being used, the different processes in which it is prepared and if it is worn in specific styles for specific rituals, etc.

But there are quite a few cross-cultural psychologists who also take a combined emic-etic approach for a more wholesome picture and understanding of a culture.

Meanwhile, some cross-cultural psychologists also study something termed as ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism refers to the use of your own culture as the standard by which to critique and assess other cultures. In other words, taking an ethnocentric point of view you generally end up using your limited understanding of your native culture to gauge what is “standard”.

This will lead to biases and causes an inclination to view culturally diverse practices and variances as abnormal. It will make it difficult for a researcher to see how their native cultural background influences their behavior.

For example, early European researchers who traveled to India often brought with them what they considered universal values which were rooted in Christianity and viewed Hinduism through that lens often describing Hindus as barbaric and uncivilized people who worship bloodthirsty demons and such.

A more traditional approach to Cross-cultural Psychology research can be seen in a concept often used by anthropologists called Ethnography. Ethnography is an elucidative account of social life and culture in a specific social setting based on many different, detailed observations of the actions of the people in that specific social setting that is being observed.

Psychological anthropologist Alan Fiske from UCLA recommends a lengthy stint of fieldwork, that is complete with language learning and what he calls “true participant-observation” where the ethnographer is not videotaping nor interviewing but is genuinely becoming a participant in observation.

According to Professor Fiske, culture consists mainly of practices, actions, and motives whose representation cognitively is not explicit semantic knowledge but primarily participant understanding wherein there is a mutual exchange of ideas about each of our cultures. He goes on to say that we can understand culture only by participating in it and not by asking about it.

But, psychologists often have to settle for way less than proper immersive ethnography, because the current psychological training does not include time to train people to do such extensive fieldwork. Another obstacle to cross-cultural research today is the speed with which a psychologist is expected to churn out research.

According to Iranian psychologist Fathali M. Moghaddam of Georgetown University, the greatest obstacle to cross-cultural psychology research is the publish-or-perish culture of academic psychology.

Theoretically sound, culturally appropriate, and fine-tuned research with samples from at least two populations takes a long time. When you’re doing that kind of research, it’s very difficult to churn out the number of articles necessary to survive in the system.

4. What is the difference between Cultural Psychology and Cross-cultural Psychology?

The main difference between cultural psychology and cross-cultural psychology is the selectivity of detail in both sub-disciplines of psychology. In other words, cultural psychology takes a more universal approach to culture, rituals, and the emotions attached to these rituals.

Cultural psychologists usually research patterns in attitudes, actions, and how culture overall affects those attitudes and actions while cross-cultural psychologists study the similarities and differences among various cultural groups, and how those patterns of differences and similarities affect the actions of the individual and the group.

A cross-cultural researcher draws their verdict from two or more samples of two or more different cultures and analyses the contrast between them in order to explore the fundamental reasons for the diversity between cultures, as well as the commonalities that cultures share with one another.

Cultural psychology tries to locate the significant connections between culture and the psychology of the people living inside that culture.

Cultural psychology’s primary message is that the study of human attitudes only becomes relevant when you are examining the behavior of the people inside the specific cultural setting, or in the way of life where these attitudes are displayed.

5. What is the need for indigenizing psychology in the Indian context?

As previously discussed psychology has been a linear discipline with little to no scope for introducing concepts from anthropology and cross-cultural studies into it.

Therefore cross-cultural psychology has brought about new terms such as bi-culture and cultural priming into the whole narrative of psychology as new terminology is required and is currently unavailable to a student who wants to pursue cross-cultural psychology.

Individuals who are exposed to or acculturated into 2 cultures simultaneously from birth are said to be in a condition of bi-culture. For example, a person living in any of the metro cities in India, says Mumbai is exposed to maybe both Maharashtrian and Gujarati culture from birth. They are said to be in bi-culture.

According to the researcher Gary Reyes, presenting individuals with an idea to make them act or feel or even think like people from a certain culture is called cultural priming.

During colonial times many colonially educated Indians got acculturated into the British culture and hence developed a bias in favor of the British rather than their own motherland. This is a prime example of cultural priming.

Harry Charalambos Triandis from the University of Illinois, defined this phenomenon arising out of cultural priming as “overshooting” where people of one culture become more extreme users of elements of the culture that has been introduced to them, than even the native members of that particular culture.

We can see that such concepts are useful in studying a diverse nation like India with a rich and exclusive heritage of its own. But some of these exclusively cross-cultural components are predominantly western. More shockingly, more than 90% of the people that participate in psychology experiments all around the world are from the western world. Ref. Link 1

One example of a concept that is western in cross-cultural psychology is the fourth life space concept. It is about a space that would allow the troubled youngsters to explore identity problems, develop an improved sense of self-efficacy, practice new styles of interpersonal communication, and confront difficult issues such as drug use, high-risk sexual behavior, single-parent family issues and ethnic discrimination and oppression due to their skin color.

It is called the fourth life space as it is a space that is different from their home, school, and the streets. Issues such as drug use, high-risk sexual behavior, single-parent family issues, and ethnic discrimination and oppression due to their skin color are more prevalent in western societies rather in a country like India.

Programs such as fourth life space are not designed to be used all across the globe. They target youngsters from a particular culture and the issues that they face.

Taking the route of culture fair testing is not the answer to this. Although culture fair testing tries to be not biased in interpreting the results, it fails to address the psychological issues of an individual that arise out of their cultural background.

A cross-cultural Psychologist attempts to not only study diverse cultures but design tests that are culture-specific and more importantly relevant to the time period that they are living in.

For example, let us take the Indian youngster today, who is troubled by a completely different set of problems when compared with their western counterpart. Tests that a cross-cultural psychologist would develop or help develop, might have to take into account issues like educational stress or the stress arising out of living in a joint family, etc which are more Indian issues rather than western issues.

When I was in the rural area of Maharashtra recently, I did a few trips of fieldwork in the rural parts of Pune. There I saw that the rural teens, youngsters, and adolescents are troubled by a vastly different set of problems when compared with their counterparts living in the urban fabric of India.

This shows us that even more nuanced research is required in a country like India where most of its population is predominantly rural or sometimes even tribal.

Dealing with gender in the Indian context – Making one more case for the indigenization of cross-cultural psychology

The western ideas about sex and gender are foundationally based on the puritanical beliefs of the Christian church and what the bible says about homosexuality. Here, again there are 2 ways that this discussion went as far as westerners are concerned.

The more “rational” minded and “scientific” researchers, who wanted to “go against the tide” went against the church and even today, to date are trying very hard to prove that our sexuality is not something we choose, but something that we are born with 100 percent of the time.

The western psychology community, on the other hand, was a little late to the party and had actually categorized homosexuality as a mental disorder in DSM II.

Some psychologists even used aversion therapy, a barbaric and cruel practice to cure “the gays” of their homosexual ways. It was as recently as 1987, when they released DSM–III–R, that homosexuality was dismissed from the manual.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has something called ICD. Homosexuality was removed from ICD classification only when the WHO published ICD-10 in 1992.

In comparison Ayurveda which is considered the 5th Veda discusses openly many types of genders. The 2 most prominent books of Ayurveda are Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita. Both books contain a wealth of knowledge about different types of genders, sexualities, and sexual arousal. Both books contain a chapter called Sharira Sthana.

This is the chapter in which both the books use similar words such as tritiya prakriti, nampusakatvam, nastriyatvam, kilba, svarini, panda, shanda, stripumsa to describe the diversity of human sexual behavior.

According to Caraka Samhita’s 4th Unit “Sharira Sthaana,” Chapter 2 “Atulyagotriya Sharira,” Verses 17 – 21 cover “Dwireta or Hermaphroditism.” According to the Translation and Commentary on Caraka Samhita written by P.V. Sharma, Volume III, Critical Notes, p. 358, Cakrapani Datta, an important eleventh-century A.D. commentator on the Caraka Samhita, equates the samskaravahi described in these verses to the homosexual kliba described by Maharshi Sushruta.

According to the book Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex written by Amara Das Wilhelm, if we go into further classification, bisexuals (kami or paksha), transgenders (shandha) and intersex types (nisarga, vakri, trnaputrika, etc.) are all mentioned and described in the voluminous Hindu scriptures of India.

According to Amara Das, Maharshi Sushruta takes it to a whole new level with a mind-boggling number of combinations that are possible by describing 8 types of Napumsa, 5 types of Kilba, 17 types of Shanda, 12 types of Panda, 10 types of Nastriyatwam.

These are:

The 7 Types of Napumsa

  1. Dviretas—he has both male and female “seed.”
  2. Pavanendriya—he has no discharge of semen.
  3. Samskaravahi—he is aroused according to previous life impressions.
  4. Narashandha—his manhood is non-existent for various reasons.
  5. Narishandha—her womanhood is non-existent for various reasons.
  6. Vakri—his penis is severely curved or deformed.
  7. Irshyabhirati—he is aroused only by the jealous feelings of seeing other men in the act of sexual union.
  8. Vatika—he is born without testicles.

The 5 Types of Kliba

  1. Asekya—he is aroused only by swallowing a man’s semen.
  2. Saugandhika—he is aroused only by smelling the genitals of other men.
  3. Kumbhika—he takes the passive role.
  4. Irshyaka—he is aroused only by the jealous feelings of seeing other men in the act of sexual union.
  5. Shandha—he has the qualities and behavior of a woman.

The 17 Types of Shandha (he behaves and talks as woman do and may go through castration)

  1. Nisarga—he is born without proper genitals.
  2. Baddha—he has no testicles.
  3. Paksha—he is periodically impotent with women (every other fortnight, month, etc.).
  4. Kilaka—he is aroused by making the woman lie with another man or penetrates her with something other than his penis.
  5. Sapadi—he is unable to enjoy sex due to the power of a curse.
  6. Stabdha—his penis is paralyzed, with no sperm.
  7. Irshyaka—he is aroused only by the jealous feelings of seeing other men in the act of sexual union.
  8. Sevyaka—he is like Kumbhika, but much more docile.
  9. Aksipta—his semen is deficient or does not discharge properly.
  10. Moghabija—his attempts to unite with the woman are fruitless.
  11. Salina—he is too shy or inhibited to even approach women.
  12. Anyapati—he copulates with things or beings other than women.
  13. Mukhebhaga—he performs fellatio on men.
  14. Vataretas—he has no discharge of semen.
  15. Nasta—he is without sperm due to disease.
  16. Asekya—he is aroused only by swallowing a man’s semen.
  17. Panda—his penis does not respond to (the woman’s) touch.

The 12 Types of Panda

  1. Nisarga—he is born without proper genitals.
  2. Vadhri—his testicles have been cut out.
  3. Paksha—he is periodically impotent with women (every other fortnight, month, etc.).
  4. Abhisapad-guroh—he is impotent due to the guru’s curse.
  5. Rogat—he is diseased (which may pass).
  6. Deva-krodhat—he is impotent due to a god’s anger.
  7. Irshyaka—he is aroused only by the jealous feelings of seeing other men in the act of sexual union.
  8. Sevyaka—he is like Shandha Sevyaka but is only aroused if he sees that other men are sexually enjoying him performing sexual acts on them.
  9. Vataretas—he has no discharge of semen.
  10. Mukhebhaga—he performs oral sex on men.
  11. Aksipta—his semen is deficient or does not discharge properly.
  12. Moghabija—his attempts to unite with the woman are fruitless.

The 10 Types of Nastriya

  1. Svairini—she engages in lovemaking with other women.
  2. Kamini—she engages in lovemaking with both men and women.
  3. Stripumsa—she is masculine in behavior and form.
  4. Shandhi—she is averse to men and has no menstruation or breasts.
  5. Narishandha—her womanhood is non-existent.
  6. Varta—her female “seed” is afflicted in utero.
  7. Sucivaktra or Sucimukhi—she has an extremely small, undeveloped vagina.
  8. Vandhya—her menstruation is absent or suppressed.
  9. Moghapuspa—her attempts to unite with the man are fruitless.
  10. Putraghni—she has repeated miscarriages.

This clearly proves the kind of sex-positive attitudes and discussions that Indians had and still have to this day and how we look at the sexual nature of human beings as something to be celebrated.

Rishi Vatsayana who wrote the Kama-sutra, gave detailed descriptions of how homosexuals enjoyed “paraspara anyonya” with each other. Kama Sutra 2.9.2 states: “Those with a feminine appearance show it by their dress, speech, laughter, behavior, gentleness, lack of courage, silliness, patience, and modesty.”

Then again, Kama Sutra 2.9.6 states: “Those who like men but dissimulate the fact and maintain a manly appearance and earn their living as barbers and masseurs.”

In its discussion of oral sex between men, the Kama Sutra uses the term tritiya-prakriti (third sex or nature) to define men with homosexual desire and describes their practices in great detail. It divides such men into two types: those with a feminine appearance and demeanor, and those having a manly appearance with beards, mustaches, muscular builds, etc.

According to The Complete Kama Sutra by Alain Danielou; Jayamangala commentary by Yashodhara, p. 183, “The Jayamangala (a twelfth-century A.D. commentary on the Kama Sutra) equates the term tritiya-prakriti to napumsa (impotent).”

The 2nd chapter of Kamasutra also talks about Virile Behavior in Women. There, Rishi Vatsayana describes the svairini (independent woman) who engages in aggressive lovemaking with other women, a type of lesbian. In the same chapter in various verses he talks about women who are either masculine or impotent with men for a variety of reasons under terms such as nastriya, stripumsa, shandhi, etc.

Mindfulness-based parenting approach in Psychology: An example of how we can move away from a linear to a non-linear approach

According to Parenting Adolescents in India: A Cultural Perspective written by Roshni Sondhi, the conceptualization of mindfulness-based methodologies come from Eastern societies, which have huge impacts on parenting of teenagers.

The segments of careful parenting have demonstrated relevance inside the dynamic setting of parental-young adult relationship designs, particularly considering the way of life explicit idea of reliance in a collectivistic culture like India.

Such discoveries have possible ramifications for the definition of parenting systems toward the fate of juvenile psychological wellness in the nation.

There has been a lessening in self-sufficiency being given by the parents to the opportunity of development and a postponed acknowledgment of significant duties. The customarily tyrant style of parenting, including an unchallenged submission, is presently practically out of date, rather being snubbed by an inclination for a feeling of parental control.

Such advances have been seen through a subjective investigation of parental guidance sections, with discoveries recommending that parents, toward the start of the earlier century, needed mindfulness in regards to the posterity’s whereabouts, and underlined culmination of errands and acquiescence as a parental objective; yet changing occasions have prompted an inversion in the level of significance connected to these equivalent objectives, with more accentuation on the opportunity of articulation inside the home, more prominent limitations on their autonomy outside the home, and accentuation on tasks being supplanted by esteem being given to scholastics.

Subsequently, developments in the parenting styles, particularly among metropolitan instructed parents, have prompted a direction toward a feeling of connectedness, self-sufficiency just as control, with parenting, works on getting more lenient, youngster focused, and responsive; and in this manner, appearing to fit in additional with Baumrind’s definitive parenting style, when contrasted with a customary dictator approach.

Actually, there is proof to propose a rationalistic blend of both material autonomy and mental association as an attribute of contemporary models of parenting inside metropolitan settings of India.

Likewise, there have been changes inside the family size and structures, for instance, increment in double salary families (with working parents), or increment in the number of single parents, among others, are additionally fundamental critical changes in parenting patterns.

Simultaneously, contemporary parents appear to be responsive toward investigating their parenting approach in an exertion toward building a superior relationship with their youngster or juvenile. With the beginning of globalization, better instruction, and expanded presentation toward Western societies, the two parents and young people have come to perceive the significance of freedom and confidence in the contemporary world.

An examination of the previous examination implies that most relationship psychologists have zeroed in on universals, with their measures being founded on Western qualities like individuation and investigation; subsequently, the part of cultural contrasts appears to have been ignored.

Cultural varieties inside the advancement of connection could remember contrasts for the emotional importance of parental affectability, view of parental acknowledgment or control, and in the implications joined to different parenting practices.

Research has distinguished that changes in parental connections vary widely because of contrasts in the formative pathways, which are described by culture-explicit ideas of autonomy or reliance. This recommends individualistic societies will, in general, have a more prominent accentuation on the formative pathway of autonomy when contrasted with the build of relationship winning in collectivistic societies.

Culturally critical contrasts in the parental-young adult relations have likewise been proven, for example, a cooperative agreement describes their relationship in Asian societies like Japan, keeping up a steady relationship with the two parents and companions; then again, in Western societies like in the USA, the parental-juvenile relationship is portrayed by a generative strain, with moving of cozy connections from parents to peers, thus prompting a difficulty of parental qualities, and clashes between the youths and their parents.

Expounding on the way of life explicit practical part of the connection, it very well may be perceived that such a cooperative and associated relationship satisfies a requirement for confirmation and further fills in as an office to accommodate the generally hidden requirement for ability in such societies; this is against the making progress toward freedom and separateness prompting fitness inside a Western culture.

In this way, a parental-young adult connection could be seen as being reliant on the cultural observations and translations of their needs, including skill, independence, and relatedness, which are viewed as three essential mental needs of a person.

An investigation of the cultural factors affecting Indian parenting would be fragmented without a comprehension of the idea of cooperation describing Indian culture. Yet, the differentiation rises with regards to individualistic societies accentuating self-governance moderately more than collectivistic societies, which underline parental control and family commitments.

Mindfulness-based parenting can fill in as an establishment for upgrading essential parent-juvenile connections. The usage of a mindfulness-based model of parenting can help in the production of family settings that are more favorable for a delightful parental relationship with the youngster.

Such a model has monstrous potential toward a preventive way to deal with young people’s parenting. Youths’ discernment and perspectives toward their parents can generally be affected by this model, thus improving the nature of the parent-young adult connections.

Consolidating a mindfulness-based methodology inside our parenting styles can be instrumental in modifying the idea of responsiveness toward the young adult’s feelings. It is additionally prone to lessen the declaration of negative effect inside the parent-young adult relationship.

Likewise, careful parents will, in general, grow more versatile methods for dealing with stress, in this way outfitting them to manage their parental worries too. Accordingly, this model carries with it a two-overlap advantage for teenagers’ just as parents’ prosperity.

The accomplishment of such a mindfulness-based methodology is relied upon to have a more prominent receptivity, given the idea of spirituality established inside the Indian culture. It is basic that future exploration investigating the adequacy of such a model can expand this discussion, and may just as well define the more culturally touchy parenting practices inside the cultural domain of India.

Conclusion

Nearly all societies have their own naturally developed folk and philosophical psychologies, but only some Western societies have endogenous scientific psychology according to Yang Kuo-shu a Taiwanese Psychologist.

Whether it is Edward Bradford Titchener’s Structuralism based on introspection or Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis all that is being taught today to future psychologists is what western people have written who were affected by western, modern, urban problems.

Whether it is psychologically affected people from India, Africa or other parts of the world have often been ignored. By the use and indigenization of cross-cultural psychology, we need to work with the Psychology of the Indian issues and propose the solutions thereof as I have established in the mindfulness parenting section of this article.

Through the indigenization and the use of cross-cultural psychology, Indians should use indigenous methods such as Tantra Yukti that can replace the western research methodology to examine the Psychology of Indians and counter the narrative that only western societies are somehow bringing out the “science” in Psychology.

I hope with everything that I have written in this article I was able to prove my hypothesis that the results that we get out of implementing the “Indian method to psychological testing are Indian enough to address the indigenous issues that our population is facing today” successfully.

References

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  14. SJ Heine (2017) “Cultural psychology: third international student edition” WW Norton & company
  15.  Shweder R.A., Bourne E.J. (1982) Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally? In: Marsella A.J., White G.M. (eds) Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Culture, Illness, and Healing (Studies in Comparative Cross-Cultural Research), vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9220-3_4 ISBN: 978-94-010-9220-3 (Online), 978-90-277-1757-3 (Print)
  16. Ibadan conference (1966-67), by E Stambouli of Tunisia
  17. McCornack, Steven; Ortiz, Joseph (2017). Choices and Connections: An Introduction to Communication. Boston, New York: Bedford/St.Martin’s. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-319-20116-6. OCLC 1102471079.
  18. LeVine, R.A. (2017). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition. ELSEVIER. p. 166
  19. AP Fiske (1994) “Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures. MICHAEL JACKSON and IVAN KARP” American Ethnologist 21 (4), 950-951
  20. Gary Reyes (2014) “https://prezi.com/6mrzznd1tk-d/cultural-priming/” Cultural Priming, Slide 4
  21.  Uwe P. Gielen, Juris G. Draguns, Jefferson M. Fish (2008) Principles of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy p. 27
  22. Ronald Bayer Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (1981) Princeton University Press. p. 105
  23. McCommon, B. (2006) Antipsychiatry and the Gay Rights Movement Psychiatr Serv 57:1809, December doi:10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809
  24. Rissmiller, DJ, D.O., Rissmiller, J. (2006) Letter in reply Psychiatr Serv 57:1809-a-1810, December 2006 doi:10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809-a
  25. Spitzer, R.L. (1981). “The diagnostic status of homosexuality in DSM-III: a reformulation of the issues”. Am J Psychiatry. 138 (2): 210–215. doi:10.1176/ajp.138.2.210. PMID 7457641
  26. Mayes, R.; Horwitz, AV. (2005). “DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness”. J Hist Behav Sci. 41 (3): 249–67. doi:10.1002/jhbs.20103. PMID 15981242.
  27. Spiegel, Alix; Glass, Ira (18 January 2002). “81 Words”. This American Life. Chicago: WBEZ Chicago Public Radio.
  28.  P.V. Sharma (2006) “Susruta-Samhita with Critical Notes” Volume III, p. 358
  29. Amara Das Wilhelm (2008) “Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex: Understanding Homosexuality, Transgender Identity, and Intersex Conditions Through Hinduism”
  30. Alain Daniélou (1993) “The Complete Kama Sutra; Jayamangala commentary by Yashodhara”, p. 183
  31. Roshni Sondhi (2017) “Parenting Adolescents in India: A Cultural Perspective”
  32. Kordi A., Baharudin R. (2010) Parenting Attitude and Style and Its Effect on Children’s School Achievements. 2010;2(2):217–222. ISSN(Print): 1918-7211, ISSN(Online): 1918-722X

 Alphabetical order

  1. Alain Daniélou (1993) “The Complete Kama Sutra; Jayamangala commentary by Yashodhara”, p. 183
  2. Amara Das Wilhelm (2008) “Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex: Understanding Homosexuality, Transgender Identity, and Intersex Conditions Through Hinduism”
  3. AP Fiske (1994) “Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures. MICHAEL JACKSON and IVAN KARP” American Ethnologist 21 (4), 950-951
  4. Chinese values and the search for culture-free dimensions of culture”. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 18 (2): 143–164. 1987. doi:10.1177/0022002187018002002.
  5. Gary Reyes (2014) “https://prezi.com/6mrzznd1tk-d/cultural-priming/” Cultural Priming, Slide 4
  6. Ho, D. Y. F., & Wu, M. (2001). Introduction to cross-cultural psychology. In L. L. Adler & U. P. Gielen (Eds.), Cross-cultural topics in psychology (pp. 3–13). Westport, CT: Praeger.
  7. Hobson, John (2012). The Eurocentric conception of world politics: western international theory, 1760-2010. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 185. ISBN 978-1107020207.
  8. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  9. Ibadan conference (1966-67), by E Stambouli of Tunisia
  10. J Henrich, SJ Heine, A Norenzayan (2010) “Most people are not WEIRD” Nature 466 (7302), 29-29
  11. J Henrich, SJ Heine, A Norenzayan (2010). “The weirdest people in the world?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3), 1-75
  12. JG Miller (2003). “Culture and agency: Implications for psychological theories of motivation and social development”, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 49, 59-100
  13. Kordi A., Baharudin R. (2010) Parenting Attitude and Style and Its Effect on Children’s School Achievements. 2010;2(2):217–222. ISSN(Print): 1918-7211, ISSN(Online): 1918-722X
  14. LeVine, R.A. (2017). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition. ELSEVIER. p. 166.
  15. Lonner, W. J. (2000). “On the growth and continuing importance of cross-cultural psychology”. Eye on Psi Chi. 4 (3): 22–26. doi:10.24839/1092-0803.eye4.3.22.
  16. Mayes, R.; Horwitz, AV. (2005). “DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness”. J Hist Behav Sci. 41 (3): 249–67. doi:10.1002/jhbs.20103. PMID 15981242.
  17. McCommon, B. (2006) Antipsychiatry and the Gay Rights Movement Psychiatr Serv 57:1809, December doi:10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809
  18. McCornack, Steven; Ortiz, Joseph (2017). Choices and Connections: An Introduction to Communication. Boston, New York: Bedford/St.Martin’s. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-319-20116-6. OCLC 1102471079
  19. P.V. Sharma (2006) “Susruta-Samhita with Critical Notes” Volume III, p. 358
  20. Quijano, Aníbal (29 June 2016). “Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America”. International Sociology
  21. RA Shweder, JJ Goodnow, G Hatano, RA LeVine, HR Markus, PJ Miller (2007). “The cultural psychology of development: One mind, many mentalities”, Handbook of child psychology 1
  22. Rissmiller, DJ, D.O., Rissmiller, J. (2006) Letter in reply Psychiatr Serv 57:1809-a-1810, December 2006 doi:10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809-a
  23. Ronald Bayer Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (1981) Princeton University Press. p. 105
  24. Roshni Sondhi (2017) “Parenting Adolescents in India: A Cultural Perspective”
  25. Schwarz, K. A.; Pfister, R. (2016). “Scientific psychology in the 18th century: a historical rediscovery”. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 11 (3): 399–407. doi:10.1177/1745691616635601. PMID 27217252.
  26. Shweder R.A., Bourne E.J. (1982) Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally? In: Marsella A.J., White G.M. (eds) Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Culture, Illness, and Healing (Studies in Comparative Cross-Cultural Research), vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9220-3_4 ISBN: 978-94-010-9220-3 (Online), 978-90-277-1757-3 (Print)
  27. SJ Heine (2017) “Cultural psychology: third international student edition” WW Norton & company
  28. Spiegel, Alix; Glass, Ira (18 January 2002). “81 Words”. This American Life. Chicago: WBEZ Chicago Public Radio.
  29. Spitzer, R.L. (1981). “The diagnostic status of homosexuality in DSM-III: a reformulation of the issues”. Am J Psychiatry. 138 (2): 210–215. doi:10.1176/ajp.138.2.210. PMID 7457641
  30. Thong, Tezenlo. “‘To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level:’ The Westernization of Nagas and Their Culture,” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 4 (July 2012): 893–918
  31. Uwe P. Gielen, Juris G. Draguns, Jefferson M. Fish (2008) Principles of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy p. 27
  32. Velkley, Richard L (2002). “The Tension in the Beautiful: On Culture and Civilization in Rousseau and German Philosophy”. Being after Rousseau: philosophy and culture in question. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 11–30. ISBN 978-0-226-85256-0. OCLC 47930775.

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