Open AccessHistoricizing Indian psychiatry
Author(s) -
Amit Basu
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
indian journal of psychiatry/indian journal of psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.485
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1998-3794
pISSN - 0019-5545
DOI - 10.4103/0019-5545.55963
Subject(s) - positivism , historicism , colonialism , history of psychiatry , victory , history , psychiatry , sociology , psychology , psychoanalysis , epistemology , philosophy , political science , politics , law , archaeology
Our historical endeavour to map Indian psychiatry has largely remained linear, positivistic and evolutionary. Whether it starts from the ancient times or modern, it shows our past as a tale of victory for the western science, without questioning the borrowed paradigm. The use of historical methods for serious enquiry of psychiatry has been ignored. Emergence of a new genre of historicism that is critical of both colonialism and psychiatry as a universal science, has raised hopes to critically review the emergence of psychiatric knowledge.