When Western Psychology Meets an Eastern Mind: Reflections Across Cultures
An attempt to explore how our theories of the mind carry assumptions about the self. And what happens when those assumptions meet a very different world.
Modern Psychology teaches us universal principles about the mind, mood, and behaviour. But how universal are they really?
In the next 6-7 minutes, we explore the foundational concepts of mental health - which are deeply influenced by cultural context, and why applying them without understanding a person’s cultural world can sometimes miss the essence of their experience.
Over the years, one observation has become unavoidable: much of modern psychology and psychiatry, though presented as universal, is deeply shaped by Western ways of thinking. And when these ideas travel to Eastern contexts, they often feel incomplete, sometimes even slightly off.
This is not a critique of Western science. It is an attempt to explore how our theories of the mind carry assumptions about self, duty, and meaning. And what happens when those assumptions meet a very different world.
A very common story.
Mr R was a 32 year old Indian Software Engineer working in England.
He had a stable job and a comfortable life, until he faced some difficulties - in work relationships. His colleague had stolen the credits for his long-worked project, and eventually he lost his much awaited promotion. He was looking forward to it as it is associated with pride for his family, and would also enable him to support his parents financially. This made Mr R feel very low - “I have failed my family duties”.
He would feel down and tired everyday to a point that he lost interest in activities he used to enjoy. He would love to play cricket but he rarely had any motivation to come out to the club.
He eventually saw his doctor (as his employer asked), fitted perfectly into the tick boxes of the diagnostic criteria, got diagnosed with Depression. He was prescribed medications and was referred to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
But he did not take the medications (“too much chemicals”). And the waiting list for CBT was for a couple of weeks.
Then one evening, his uncle from the village called. He was a simple farmer, but someone who’d been like a second father, sharing tea and life lessons during his childhood summers. He hasn’t been in touch for a while due to work pressures.
For a full hour, he poured out his troubles. His uncle listened, then offered plain advice : “Go to the temple Saturday, light a lamp to clear your head. Call your old cricket mates, they need you too. And remember God gives challenges to the good for testing them, but He never leaves them alone. This is a phase of life and this too shall pass. Remember all the achievements you have done from childhood and how far you have progressed - we are always proud of you my boy!”
Mr R followed his advice. Energy returned slowly, like rain after a long drought. He resumed visiting a local place of worship. Slowly he reconnected with his friends, and came back to his track.
By the time he went to CBT, he was already feeling much better and was subsequently discharged soon.
Now what actually happened here? Did his uncle who only finished high school ‘actually’ gave him CBT?
Two Ways of Seeing the Self
At the heart of the difference is a simple question: How do you imagine the self?
In many Western contexts, the self is autonomous and bounded from the external world. Identity comes mainly from the inside: from personal choices, values, abilities, and ambitions. Psychological distress is located within the individual, and well-being is tied to self-expression and autonomy. The mind is analysed as if it were a discrete object, separate from its context. Markus and Kitayama (1991) call this an “independent self-construal.”1
In many Asian settings, including Indian, the self is often seen as deeply connected to family and community, rather than as a separate, stand‑alone individual. Identity grows out of relationships and roles : whether being a son or daughter, a parent, a neighbour, a member of a village or religious community.
These are not opposites; they are different orientations to life, each adaptive in its own environment.
History and Evolution Have Shaped the Mind
Why are these orientations so different? History and evolution provide clues.
Western societies, especially from the Enlightenment onward, increasingly organised social and political life around individual rights, mobility, and personal autonomy. Conditions rewarded independence, resulting in (or resulting from) individualism, leading to nuclear families etc.
In such contexts, it became common to understand psychological distress as located within the individual mind and to treat psychotherapy as a practice of exploring and transforming the self. However, critical thinkers like Foucault (1965) have shown how these practices are also shaped by broader power relations2.
Indian and many Asian societies evolved under very different pressures. Extended families, agrarian economies, and long-term social continuity meant survival often depended on cooperation and attunement. This was the case in majority of pre-modern Asia.
Relational harmony (e.g., via rituals, family roles) and endurance are indeed central to mental equanimity in many Asian traditions, complementing any introspection.
Western psychological models often individualise distress as a cognitive or intrapsychic defect. Whereas, many Asian traditions frame it more holistically as relational imbalance or misalignment with social / consciousness order.
Evolutionarily, these tendencies make sense. Where survival depended on the group, attunement and relational sensitivity were adaptive. Where mobility and competition mattered more, self-optimisation was favoured. Both are valid solutions to different challenges; modern psychology tends to universalise the logic of its own context.3
Philosophy Shapes Psychology
The philosophical roots of these differences are illuminating.
Greek philosophy, foundational to Western thought, emphasised logic, classification, and analysis. Aristotle’s method in works like Categories and Metaphysics stressed precise definition, essential properties, and taxonomic organisation, which profoundly shaped Western science. This underpins modern medicine’s diagnostic approach: identify the problem, locate it, and intervene. The observer is separate from what is observed.
Many Eastern traditions, including Indian (e.g., Vedanta) and Chinese (e.g., Taoism), emphasise three things, very broadly speaking :
Process (Action devoid of expectations - Nishkama Karma)
Impermanence (Anicca/Anitya in Buddhism)
Balance (homeostasis via yin-yang or The Three Gunas equilibrium).
Knowledge in these systems is experiential and embodied. It is realised through practice (listening, reflection, meditative contemplation) rather than abstract analysis alone. Eventually, the observer merges with the observed (non-duality in Advaita Vedanta, no-mind mushin in Zen).
Mental distress is framed holistically as a signal of disharmony or misalignment (e.g., dukkha from karmic imbalance or ego-clinging), not just individual pathology.
Therefore, one way of describing is that Eastern mind models are systemic/holistic. Here suffering embeds meaning in relational, moral, or cosmic contexts beyond isolated individualism45
Language, Globalisation, and Misalignment
A common misconception is that learning English or working in global institutions automatically creates Western-style cognition. It might be true to some extent, but very widely variable and cannot be generalised.
Language can shape thought, but it does not erase early socialisation, family expectations, or moral frameworks6 . For instance, South Asian professional may think fluently in English, work in an American hospital, and yet may interpret distress through moral, relational, or bodily lenses rather than psychological labels.
The surface globalises faster than the psyche.
The Risk of Overgeneralisation
It is important to be cautious. Neither “the West” nor “East”, “Asia” or “India” is uniform. India itself is a subcontinent of immense linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity - and there are numerous countries and cultures in the East.
Western societies also contain rich and numerous relational subcultures.
Any discussion of “Asian” or “Western” thinking is about tendencies, not absolutes.
Implications for Psychology / Psychiatry
These differences are not merely academic, they shape clinical practice. Relational suffering may be mislabelled as individual pathology. Family involvement may be pathologised as enmeshment. Endurance may be mistaken for repression. Patients often comply with medication but quietly resist the explanatory narrative offered to them. This is not denial; it is a mismatch of epistemologies.
A mature, culturally aware psychiatry recognises this. Western models are powerful tools, but they are most effective when adapted to the lived realities of patients. Pluralism : biology where biology matters, psychology where meaning matters, and cultural context throughout, is not optional. It is essential.
A Practical Example - CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
Standard CBT, as developed by Beck (1976), treats emotional distress as stemming from cognitive distortions, i.e, faulty individual thought patterns like catastrophising or black-and-white thinking.
It uses a five-areas model to explain distress: Event → Thoughts → Emotions → Bodily Sensations → Actions.
For example : A work conflict (Event) triggers thoughts like "I'm a failure" (Thoughts), creating sadness or anxiety (Emotions), fatigue or tension (Bodily Sensations), and withdrawal like skipping cricket (Actions).
CBT then targets the Thoughts box : challenge "distortions" through worksheets, replacing them with rational alternatives. This assumes problems originate in individual cognition, fitting the independent self-construal where agency lies within personal control.
Coming back to Mr. R
Mr R’s cycle reveals the cultural mismatch. His thoughts : ”I’ve failed my family duties” - weren’t irrational distortions but valid reflections of interdependent reality. Promotion loss threatened his role as provider, signaling relational imbalance. Labelling this “all-or-nothing thinking” ignores the moral weight of dharma and family honour in his world.
CBT’s introspective homework would feel isolating when his distress screamed for reconnection, not deconstruction. Medications could have addressed symptoms without touching the relational rupture at the event level.
By CBT time, the uncle had already fixed the upstream social context : temple rituals restored his mood, friends revived community ties, bypassing the need for cognitive restructuring entirely.
Towards Pluralism and Humility
Psychology does not merely study minds; it reflects the kind of life a society values, and the way it organises meaning, responsibility, and suffering. When societies differ, their psychologies differ. The task for psychiatry is not to impose a universal model, but to understand when and where each model is appropriate, and when restraint, adaptation, or reflection is wiser.
Listening to the mind, to culture, and to life itself, is not a weakness. It is psychiatry at its most ethical and intellectually honest.
References
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253.
Foucault, M. (1965). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the Age of Reason (R. Howard, Trans.). New York: Random House.
Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press.
Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Conze, E. (1956). Buddhist Meditation: Collected Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Boroditsky L. How language shapes thought. Sci Am. 2011 Feb;304(2):62-5. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0211-62. PMID: 21319543.