Theoretical Psychology : The Meeting of East and West

This book is an outcome of my bicultural experience as a student and teacher of psychology in India and North America. As a student in India, the psychology I learned in the classroom was totally Western in its perspective. A book on Indian economics, called Bharatfya Arthasastra, written by the late Pal)Q.it Dindayal Upadhyaya, inspired me to look into the sources of the Indian intellectual tradition for an indigenous perspective within the discipline of my training and research. The late Balsastri Hardas suggested K. K. Kolhatkar's Bharatfya Manasasastra, a book that translates and comments on Patanjali's Yoga sutras in Marathi, as a sourcebook of psychological concepts of Indian origin. My response to this initial exposure to Yoga as a system of psychology was one of bewilderment. Having been trained in psychology with Woodworth and Schlosberg's Experimental Psychology as the textbook of psychology, I could not comprehend how ideas so diverse as those of Patanjali and Woodworth and Schlosberg could be designated by a common labelpsychology! Obviously, it was necessary to sort out psychology's meaning in different sociocultural contexts, beginning with the most fundamental notions on which psychological concepts are based. This book represents an attempt to understand psychological concepts, especially those relating to consciousness and the self, as they developed in the different intellectual traditions and cultural contexts of India and the West. More than two decades have passed since I began the intellectual journey that brought me to the set of ideas presented here. Many teachers, friends, and well-wishers have encouraged me at various stages of this enterprise. Foremost among them are Professors Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-53 Search for Common Ground....Pages 55-115 Consciousness: Some Western Views....Pages 117-173 Consciousness: Two Indian Views....Pages 175-230 Self and Identity....Pages 231-274 Overview and Prospect....Pages 275-322 Back Matter....Pages 323-353