Abstract
Lest we feel tempted to regard the development of psychology in India as a recent phenomenon, it is important to look at the contributions of early workers in the field. A generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessor. Against this brief backdrop, this survey examines the contributions of early Indian psychologists. They were drawn chiefly from philosophy and education. However, it may be interesting to see how scholars from almost all parts of the country, who moved places contributing in varying measures, promoted the growth of the discipline. There was no narrow specialization as obtains today; they worked and researched in various fields of psychology at different times. The discipline followed generally the course it took in the West emphases on “behavior” did provide objective subject matter but by banishing consciousness and mental life the Anglo-American psychology has become impoverished. Recent efforts to retrieve the study of consciousness and indigenization hold potential for non-positivistic mode of understanding.
Editorial Note: This article was originally published with the same title in Psychological Studies, 2008(53). 1–6. It is reproduced here with the permission from National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India.
Written at the suggestion of the Editor of the Journal. Author was asked to write because the author spent five years with the founder of modern psychology in India N. N. Sen Gupta, Ph.D. (Harvard) prior to the demise of the founder in June 1944, and the author started his study of psychology early (1937), one of his instructors teaching in Lockean (tabula rasa) tradition when the country was under British rule, the other a missionary trained under EL. Thorndike (connectionism).
This brief survey is in the nature of going down the memory lane, covers only the non-living pioneers, with most of whom the author had met and those associated with generally institutions of higher learning.
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Notes
- 1.
A note by S. C. Mitra, the only Indian to earn D.Phil. from Leipzig puts a different date. He attended the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the laboratory on Nov. 21, 1925 at Leipzig. Accordingly, the date would be 1875 (Psychological Research Journal (1991), 15(1.2)).
- 2.
Even in nature of sciences the experimental method was introduced in the postHellenic period. While delivering his address on the occasion of the inauguration of the newly built independent laboratory of experimental psychology at Lucknow University in 1951 Gardner Murphy said “it was in the late afternoon of Greek civilization at Syracuse and at Alexandria, that the experimental method could be discovered. Unknown to them the disciples of Patanjali experimented upon the physiology and psychology of the states of trance, relaxation and ecstasy Both in the east and the west, conditions become less favourable until after more than a thousand years social stability and the development of travel between West and East assisted in the revival of mathematics, of experimental physics, of alchemy, of astronomy and of medicine. By the time of Galileo the coalescence of mathematical and empirical thinking was complete … (The Meaning of Experimental Psychology, Manasi (1954), 1(1), 7–14 (Mimeo.)
- 3.
The contention that G. D. Fechner was the founder of experimental psychology (Elemente der Psychophysik (1860) has been recognized by Edwin Boring (A history of Experimental Psychology. ‘Preface’ to 1st Edition in Second Edition, (1957) page ix, para 3. New York: Appleton Century. Boring once told the author at Harvard in 1965 that he regarded Fechner as the greatest psychologist and that he was busy translating the Elemente into English.
- 4.
Psychology Research Journal (1991), 15 (1,2), p. l.
- 5.
Ibid. pp. 31–37.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Deb, M. Heritage papers of early Indian psychologists. 2. vols. Asiatic Society, Kolkata (in press).
- 8.
Introduction to Social Psychology, London: Heath (1929). II.
- 9.
Psychology Research Journal (1998), 22 (1,2).
- 10.
Boaz had a great sense of humour and repartee. Once when Vice-Chancellor Mudaliar visited him, he formed Boaz tending to roses in his garden appreciating the roses, Mudaliar remarked: “Professor, you have an excellent hobby;” To which Boaz replied: “This is my profession, teaching is just a hobby”!
- 11.
He was an excellent flute player.
- 12.
Sen Gupta’s method of training his students was to pose a problem and let the student struggle, helping him improvise. He subscribed to Willem Stern’s dictum: “Methods do not exist for their own sake, they grow out of the exigencies of the situation and the possibility of material” (Personalities). Unlike the current methodological imperialism, he believed in the primacy of the problem. As an illustration, Sen Gupta read and translated Wertheimer’s papers on apparent motion to the author and demanded the phenomenon to he demonstrated by improvising (no apparatus had been made in India at the time). Assigning the problem of testing an aspect of Ribot’s theory of ideomotor action to the author, he expected a few hundred work-curves to be recorded on an improvised ergograph and sand-motor! (Owing to WW II, apparatuses were not imported, nor were they manufactured in the country).
- 13.
Sen Gupta was an accomplished student of Shaivism, Vaishnavaism, and of Pali language which gave him access to original literature on Buddhism As a psychologist, he believed that “Sadhana” could be experimentally studied. Prior to his death had written his mgnum opus: Mechanism of Ecstasy, unfortunately, the manuscript got lost in the confusion following his fatal stroke.
- 14.
As a successor to Sen Gupta’s chair, Kali Prasad instituted a psychology-oriented course for teachers (B.Ed. Sc.), developed a library of psychological tests, got an independent laboratory of Experimental Psychology building, equipping it with apparatuses, set up an animal laboratory, established a psychology clinic (a testing and counseling center) and as Hony. Librarian of the University; enriched the psychology collection by subscribing to most APA journals.
- 15.
Controversy over teleology and mechanism was fuelled with William McDougall’s work on instincts. Hormic psychology was in the air and was included by E. C. Tolman in his “purposive behaviourism.”
- 16.
From structuralism, functionalism behaviourism (neo-behaviorism and neo-neo behaviorism), hormic, Gestalt, field-theoretical, Verstehen psychologies, cross-cultural, cognitive science and more fascination, with mental health (Including well-being and, happiness).
- 17.
ICSSR Survey.
- 18.
Around 1970s psychology fractured into psychology of “mind” and psychology of “mentality.” The former concerned with mental life the latter with application of psychology in various fields, or basic and applied.
- 19.
J. B. Watson’s Classics: Psychology from the Standpoint of Behaviourist and Behaviorism.
- 20.
Basic mental makeup and the process operating. It may be noted that even after the debut of behaviorism B. S. Woodworth published his book entitled. “Psychology: Study of mental life,” London: Methuen in 1999.
- 21.
E. C. Tolman called the subsuming of introspective data as “verbal report” under the rubric of “behavior,” a semantic summersault’!
- 22.
Consider, for example, in this context M. Posner: Chronometric study of mind. A positivistic approach where “time” and “errors” are “treated as indices of mental and discrimination reaction times” (R. S. Woodworth: Experimental Psychology).
- 23.
Refer to various issues of Journal of Indian Psychology.
- 24.
Unfortunately, the term “indigenization” has been variously conceived ranging “import substitution.” through psychology by Indian psychologists and data on Indians to romantic revivalism of classical philosophical psychology as available in Sanskrit and Pali literature. So after indigenous concepts have been forced into English (Based upon Greco-Latin terminology) “equivalents” to make them comprehensible to the English-speaking reader. But this robs the original terms of richness and connotation when divorced from their context for all terms are embedded in a culture.
- 25.
Popper, K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) New York: Basic Books; Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1960), Feyerebend, P. Against Method (1975). London: NLB Press, Van Leenwan, M. S. The Person in Psychology (1985) England, Inter-University Press.
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Asthana, H.S. (2021). Modern Psychology in India: Reminiscences and Reflections. In: Misra, G., Sanyal, N., De, S. (eds) Psychology in Modern India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4705-5_2
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