Therapeutic Counseling in India

Glimpses of Therapeutic Counselling - SPARKLES

The book talks about Therapeutic Counselling  as it is understood, practised, the difficulties and the many issues and problems faced by therapists.
It also talks about few models of counselling, suitable for Indian population. 

It also views Indian Psychology as it is understood today. 

ISBN: 9781981243723

Indian psychology as it is understood today is an antiquated blend of philosophy, theology, cosmology, and mythology of ancient Indian civilization. This is similar to the Western psychology in the pre-Wundt era. Western psychology has its origin and linkage to the ancient Greek philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and in the medieval period adjusted and modified by various other European philosophies and the Christian theology of Aquinas. By establishing the world’s first experimental psychology laboratory at Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt gave a scientific outlook to psychology in 1879 and liberated it from the clutches of metaphysical assumptions and abstract philosophical speculations. The Russians too had their share with similar scientific endeavors highlighted by the experiments of Ivan Pavlov. These initiatives produced serious, systematic and radical changes in the scope, outlook and the nature of Western psychology which elevated the human behavioural study on par with other empirical sciences. Unfortunately, this has not taken place to this point in the Indian subcontinent.

The problem with many scholars who exert their efforts in defining Indian Psychology today is that they magnify the ancient mystical, mythological and puranic cosmological thoughts and the assorted religio-philosophical systems as glorified psychological thinking rather than giving practical and pragmatic principles guiding to comprehensive theories of human behaviour in accordance with the emerging worldview in the changing society. Therefore, Indian psychology remains today as a primordial, intuitive and unscientific thought pattern of bundled subjective assumptions and metaphysical assertions, eluding concrete empirical investigation.