is viewed as culturally constructed through joint interaction between adults and children. In other words, while for Piaget children actively construct their own minds, Vygotsky took a view that mind is a joint cultural construction and emerges as a result of interaction between children and adults. D EVELOPMENT OF P SYCHOLOGY IN I NDIA The Indian philosophical tradition is rich in its focus on mental processes and reflections on human consciousness, self, mind-body relations, and a variety of mental functions such as cognition, perception, illusion, attention and reasoning, etc. Unfortunately, philosophical roots in the Indian tradition have not influenced the development of modern psychology in India.
The development of the discipline in India continues to be dominated by western psychology, although some attempts have been made to find points of departure both within the country and abroad. These attempts have tried to establish the truth value of various assertions in Indian philosophical traditions through scientific studies. The modern era of Indian psychology began in the Department of Philosophy at Calcutta University where the first syllabus of experimental psychology was introduced and the first psychology laboratory was established in . Calcutta University started the first Department of Psychology in the year and another Department of Applied Psychology in .
The beginning of modern experimental psychology at Calcutta University was greatly influenced by the Indian psychologist Dr. N.N. Sengupta who was trained in USA in the experimental tradition of Wundt. Professor G.
Bose was trained in Freudian psychoanalysis, another area which influenced the early development of psychology in India. Professor Bose established Indian Psychoanalytical Association in . Departments of Psychology in the Universities of Mysore and Patna were other early centres of teaching and research in psychology. From these modest beginnings, modern psychology has grown as a strong discipline in India with a large number of centres of teaching, research and applications.
There are two centers of excellence in psychology supported by the UGC at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and at the University of Allahabad. About universities offer courses in psychology. Durganand Sinha in his book Psychology in a Third World