This article from the New York review although a bit dated (1981) I find fascinating, not only because its includes a perspective in Indian Psychology that is located in the work of Sri Aurobindo, but because of its continuing relevance for cross cultural studies, ethnography, psychology, especially in the work of Matthijs and the Indian Psychology Institute in Pondicherry.

Some facts stated by the author in the article have surely changed for instance:
“When India gained independence, there were about fifty psychiatrists in the country, many of them army doctors; now the number is estimated at only about 500 for India's 640 million people; others—perhaps too many—leave India to practice abroad. “

“ a seminar led in India by Erik Erikson presents a picture of increasingly prevalent anomie, Eastern-style. In it the associate director of the BM Institute argues that there is an "identity vacuum" for Indians at the present time: values that are appropriate in an uncompetitive agrarian society break down under modern pressures; traditions and established roles are threatened by the mass media.”

No doubt India has changed and the outsourcing of IT jobs makes it no longer so dependent on agrarian economics. It is also certainly much more infiltrated by western medicine and practices of psycho-therapy, but aside for such obvious changes in the society I find much of the article still relevant for the current day.

For example, I would think much of the critique of the article regards the questionable appropriation of Western psychotherapy to Indian society is still valid -although as India accepts many of the urban values of the West, along with its neurosis perhaps that is changing a bit as well-. But it also speaks to such intellectual imperialism of its spiritual tradition by folks like Jeff Kripal who reduce complex Indian spiritual practices and questions of alterity to concerns of Freudian analysis

As an example of just how different psychology is treated in Indian spirituality I will also post a paper from Vladamir in which he considers and quotes extensively from one of my favorite chapters of Sri Aurobino namely, chapter 8 of his commentary on the Kena Upanishads, that demonstrates a radical discontinuity with Western theorizing of the phenomena of Mind. No matter how many times I read this chapter I take away something new. In this reading its last sentence sheds some light on the ontology of the imagination In researching this I also came across a correspondence between Mathiis to a sponsor of his project for a renaissance of Indian psychology in which he draws some interesting conclusions. I will post these as well with some comment I find applicable. rc...

Going to India from the West is like stepping onto another planet; but is having a mental illness in India any different from having it in Manhattan? Is treatment similar—if it is available? Do you get ill as often there, or less, or more? Do poverty and overwork leave any time for mental illness, is it a side effect of affluence—or do the hardships of a poor country provide all the more cause for disintegration? Are there differences in the Indian character structure itself that make mental illness and its treatment take different forms from those in the West? And does a third world country, obviously so much less well equipped with psychiatric and psychotherapeutic services than affluent societies, need more mental health care—or does greater provision for illness conjure up the illness to meet it, as new roads bring out more traffic?....

South to Pondicherry, ceded to India by the French in 1954, home of the Aurobindo ashram. It was here that the distinguished psychiatrist N.C. Surya came when he threw up his job as director of the National Institute of Mental Health at Bangalore. Trained in Europe and the US, formerly a Marxist, he was following an Indian tradition of abandoning the world for spiritual concerns when the moment is right; Aurobindo, founder of the ashram, did the same when he gave up his fight for Indian independence and retreated to Pondicherry. While outside Pondicherry steams in the sun, the ashram library is all greenery, coolness, and hush. Dr. Surya comes out of the library carrying the rolled umbrella (against the sun) that, like an Englishman, he seldom opens.   more »