INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
Rise of Indigenous psychology was the response to the customary and conventional
description of Psychology. Superannuated psychology made an attempt to seek out the reflection of
individual's cultural, societal and political characteristics across the world. People's feedback
to conventional psychology was very incompetent as they believed that it was not that
proficient to solve their societal complexities confronted at their personal level. It
was one of the maJor concerns for the emergence of indigenous psychology. (Allwood &
Berry, 2006)
Western psychology mainly laidemphasis on the 'self' and on 'individual'.In order to
have better understanding about the background of human beings, differences in their
traits depending on their respective cultures gave rise to the indigenous psychology.
Many researchers have attempted to describe the concept of 'indigenous psychology'. There
have been numbers of definitions on indigenous psychology.
Indigenouspsychology is defined as "the scientific study of human behavior or mind that is native,
that is not transported from other regions, and that is designed for its people". (Kim, Indigneous,
Cultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology: A theoretical, conceptual and epistemological analysis,
2000)
Another researchers of Chinese Psychology movement, reviewed the variety of
definitions of indigenous psychology and concluded that "no matter how these
psychologists define indigenous psychology, the definitions all express the same basic
goal of developing scientific knowledge system that effectively reflects, describes,
explains, or understands the psychological and behavioral activities in their native
contexts in terms of culturally relevant frame of reference and culturally derived
categories and theories". (Kim, Yang, & Hwang K.K, 2006)
Indigenous psychology can be explained in three distinctive aspects, first aspect is, all the
cognitive processes like emotions, thinking and perceptions should be structured
depending upon the respective traditions of different groups or societies. Second facet is
individual's own perception towards their emotional states and mental health related,
