Counselling psychology in India: At the confluence of two traditions

Counselling needs in the Indian context emerge against the background of tremendous social change. In addition, the last ten years of economic reform have enhanced the pace of these changes and further transformed life styles. Counselling services are poorly defined and presently anyone at all with little or no training can offer these services. Available counselling services are largely based on Western approaches to psychology. These approaches have been widely criticised as not being relevant to the Indian cultural context. A relevant and culturally valid counselling psychology therefore has remained a fledgling discipline. Psychological thought is not new to India, and ancient traditions present ideas and constructs that are rich in possibilities for application. This paper examines the Western and the traditional Indian approaches and proposes that these approaches could together inform the development of a psychology of counselling that is empirically sound and culturally relevant to the Indian context.