For the first 17 years of his life, former Yale professor George Lindbeck lived with his missionary parents in China before leaving for college during WWII. Growing up in Loyang, he was fascinated with the contrast between the depressing present and the glorious past of this city, China’s imperial capital in the millennium and half before 700 a.d. He narrates how he learned to love the Chinese and how he absorbed Chinese culture through his highly Sinicized parents, their conversations with Chinese visitors, the local pastor, and Chinese literature. He discovered it was possible to be warmly Christian and in manners be Confucian to the core (Wood 2006; Lindbeck and Buckley 2002).

It was this experience of living in China, he reports, that was the impetus for his cultural-linguistic view of religion and his grammatical-rule theory of doctrine, an approach profoundly shaped by Wittgenstein (1953), Kuhn (1962), Berger (1966) and Geertz (1973). Learning theology, he suggests is like learning the grammar and vocabulary of a language. He includes in the nonverbal vocabulary ritual, moral, and other behaviors that constellate a form of life. This language, like a mother tongue, interprets and enacts the story of a community.

In this essay we build on Lindbeck’s indigenous theory of the nature of religion in our understanding of cultural indigeneity in psychology. The emergence of a literature in indigenous psychology parallels the appearance of more cultural understandings of religion. In both cases there is a significant movement away from individualism and abstract generalization toward what is the contextual, toward what is culturally particular. Lindbeck states:

In a cultural-linguistic outlook, in contrast, it is just as hard to think of religions as it is to think of cultures or languages as having a single generic or universal experiential essence of which particular religions—or cultures or languages—are varied manifestations or modifications. One can in this outlook no more be religious in general than one can speak language in general. Thus the focus is on particular religions rather than on religious universals and their combinations and permutations. (Lindbeck 1984, p. 23)

Like religion, an indigenous psychology with religious sensibilities would be deeply embedded in local cultures with a local, regulative grammar of cognition, affect, behavior, and relationships. Implicit and explicit psychologies, like religion, are comprehensive, interpretive schemes embodied in myths and ritualized in performative events. When the implicit psychology organizes everyday life, it functions as a religion. Thus indigenous psychologies and religions are less an array of beliefs and more an a priori set of acquired skills in living. Indigenous psychologies and religions shape the sensibilities from which descriptions of reality, beliefs, and emotions emerge. Just as doctrines, cosmic stories, and ethical directives are integrally related in ways that resemble a grammar, so also indigenous psychology involves a distinctive grammar that generates a way of life for an individual and his/her communities. Becoming religious or human involves the acquisition of a language that shapes how one lives in the world. Lindbeck again:

A comprehensive scheme or story used to structure all dimensions of existence is not primarily a set of propositions to be believed, but is rather the medium in which one moves, a set of skills that one employs in living one’s life. Its vocabulary of symbols and its syntax may be used for many purposes, only one of which is the formulation of statements about reality. Thus while a religion’s truth claims are often of the utmost importance to it (as in the case of Christianity), it is, nevertheless, the conceptual vocabulary and the syntax or inner logic which determine the kinds of truth claims the religion can make. The cognitive aspect, while often important, is not primary. (Lindbeck 1984, p. 35)

Further, the cultural-linguistic understanding of religion helps us understand the incommensurability between different religious traditions. So also, indigenous psychologies within different traditions may be radically different making a universal psychology virtually impossible. So then, following Geertz (1973), we suggest that how one views religion and indigenous culture is correlative.

In this essay we will argue that just as there has been Constantinian Christianity, there is also the possibility of a Constantinian psychology, a psychology imposed on others without regard to their implicit religious or psychological sensibilities. Constantinianism occurs when the power of the state is used to homogenize culture in religious ways. The imposition of a presumably universal psychology on local peoples has striking similarities.

Moreover, a universal psychology is as arrogant as that of the architects of the Tower of Babel who thought that they could storm heaven if only they were unified in their language and political projects. Instead of a drive toward homogeneity evidenced in the Babylonian narrative (Genesis 11), we affirm the radical particularity of Pentecost where each individual heard the Gospel in their own cultural tongue (Acts 2). With the decline of medieval Christianity and the ensuing religions wars (1618–1648), European philosophers like Descartes (1960) hoped for a new foundation that would enable them to communicate in spite of religious and linguistic differences. None the less, the search for a perfect language to construct unity across cultures has been relentless (Eco 1995). To that end, in the nineteenth century, a universal language called Esperanto was created. In the modern world others have hoped that generalizable scientific knowledge, a common economic market, or political establishments like the United Nations could provide a foundation on which order and civility could be built. However, it is apparent given the raging conflicts of our time that we have found no universal language.

International psychologists like Gulerce, Lock, and Misra (Gergen et al. 1996), wonder whether there should be a universally acceptable conception of psychology. These psychologists note that the journals in their respective countries (Turkey, New Zealand, and India) seem to differ little from American psychological publications in the methodologies utilized, the issues addressed, or the paradigms adopted. The discipline of psychology is practiced almost exclusively in the Euro–American tradition. Failure to appreciate cultural particularity tends to result in local contexts where minority psychologists imitate American models of psychological research. Mohanty (1988) has referred to the replication of Western psychology by Indian psychologists as “Yankee Doodling!”

Since the publication of Kim and Berry’s (1993) book more than a decade ago, indigenous psychology as a discipline is growing. They defined indigenous psychology 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” (p. 2). Kim, Yang, and Hwang in the opening chapter of their recent publication Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context (ICP hereafter) begin with this definition:

Indigenous psychology is an emerging field in psychology. It attempts to extend the boundary and substance of general psychology. Although both indigenous and general psychology seeks to discover universal facts, principles, and laws of human behavior, the starting point of research is different. General psychology seeks to discover decontextualized, mechanical, and universal principles and it assumes that current psychological theories are universal. Indigenous psychology, however, questions the universality of existing psychological theories and attempts to discover psychological universals in social, cultural and ecological context. (2006, p. 3)

Indigenous psychology emphasizes obtaining a descriptive understanding of human functioning in a cultural context.

In response to ICP, we suggest the following features of an indigenous, religiously sensitive, psychology. We will ask, Who decides the substance of a psychology? Whose indigeneity is honored? Our response to ICP will address the following issues related to the contours of an indigenous psychology: the nature of culture, the role of language, the plurality of epistemologies, the location of power and control, and the awareness of the West of its own indigeneity.

First, we would agree with Kim, Yang, and Hwang that an indigenous psychology would emphasize examining of psychological phenomena in their native context whether those contexts are familial, social, political, historical, religious, cultural, or ecological (chap. 1). However, we think that the implicit models of culture used in the text favor a modernist perspective and we suggest that a postmodern perspective be considered as well (Dueck and Parsons 2004). In the past, culture has been construed as monolithic and insufficiently pluralistic. Indigenous psychology can be a discipline that embraces multiple voices. Like the arts and sciences, which are plural and diverse, indigenous psychology does not need to find a unified voice to validate its existence. We suggest that since cultures and their religions are pluralistic, indigenous psychologies must include local understandings that are mystical, animist, and religious instead of uprooting the tradition and replacing it with secular Western ideology.

Second, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of language in mediating the relationship of culture and cognition. Consequently, we have assumed too quickly the universality of our findings. Culturally, since language appears to be implicated in the way we think, an indigenous psychology might best be articulated in local dialects.

Third, we address the issue of epistemology. Although some authors of ICP advocate for a new methodology for indigenous psychology, such as constructive realism and Confucian relationalism (chap. 4), or pakapa-kapa (chap. 5), the hegemony of scientific empiricism is still evident in the majority of the ICP text. Why not consider a methodological pluralism as suggested by Lakatos and Musgrave (1970) or even the radical epistemological pluralism of Feyerabend (1975)? Is the privileged epistemology locally selected (Gabrenya 2004)? Epistemologically, we feel strongly that local leaders and their communities would decide what constitutes knowledge, what is relevant to the local setting, and how it is best augmented, as suggested by Enriquez and his student Rogelia Pe-Pua. Methodologies are determined by local researchers and may be plural and nonscientific. Indigenous psychology may well include non-local wisdom (e.g., scientific and Western) but members of the host culture decide what should be imported or contextualized in the local culture. Indigenous psychology might build not only on the collaboration between anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and sociologists, but is also constructed on relationships of mutual respect and empowerment between the researchers and the lay leaders of local communities.

Fourth, we raise the issue of what kind of psychology can emerge in a post-colonial context. This is the issue of power and local autonomy. We would propose that an indigenous psychology begins with the articulations of local practitioners, whether formally trained psychologists or local community leaders, about the nature of their implicit or explicit “psychology” and “culture.” By our estimation, approximately 90 percent of the contributors to ICP were trained in Western universities. Hence the idea of founding the discipline of indigenous psychology which is recognized by global psychology is most meaningful and urgent to them. However, indigenous psychology as an international discipline is not a model to be imposed on a local culture. The input of an exogenous psychologist would be given when requested. In terms of the guild, an indigenous psychologist would be empowered to research matters most relevant to the local people rather than what matters to the international professional association or editors of publications. Indigenous psychology is a political movement since it reflects and shapes the political, economic, and environmental shifts in relationships between cultures.

Finally, we find lacking in ICP an articulation of indigenous American psychologies in order to appreciate implicit non-Western psychologies. There is little question that Western psychology has in Constantinian fashion imposed its scientific, naturalistic psychology on inhabitants of the west and then on other cultures as well. Now minority religious groups in the West may feel the imposition of scientific ideology on their view of creation, for example, and non-Western psychologists feel duty bound to study human behavior the way we do in order to be accepted as bona fide psychologists. Our first response might be one of recognizing our culpability. One would hope that American psychology would discover how indigenous it is to American soil but whether that has happened is open to question (Cushman 1995; Herman 1995).

Following Lindbeck’s lead, practitioners of Christianity wed knowledge of the faith language with enactment. And so we begin with a concrete example of an indigenous psychologist. Filipino psychologist, Virgilio Enriquez will illustrate the concerns already raised and will be developed later in the essay.

Virgilio Enriquez: a paradigmatic indigenous psychologist

The Philippines has had a long history of colonization under the Spaniards (1565–1898) to the Americans in the twentieth century. After the Spanish American War, Americans pursued a war against the Philippines when they refused to submit immediately to the USA. More than 100,000 Filipinos were killed by the USA in pursuit of the Philippines. The USA then established a governmental and educational system that reflected American values and culture. Children under the American rule learned to sing the American national anthem before their own. The first psychologists in the country were trained in American universities and hoped to transfer knowledge from the USA to the Philippines. These psychologists returned to the country armed with Western models and theories (Pe-Pua 1982). They lectured in English and used American textbooks. In the 1960s and 1970s Filipino intellectuals became frustrated with the hegemony of Western models. In 1971, Virgilio G. Enriquez came home from the USA with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and in 1971 established a movement he called Filipino Psychology (Enriquez 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994).

Enriquez began teaching psychology at the University of the Philippines in 1963. As early as 1965, he was teaching psychology in Filipino which was unheard of and even looked down upon. He left for the USA in 1966 to pursue a Masters and then a Doctorate at Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois. However, back home there was considerable unrest because of what came to be called the First Quarter Storm. Student activists denounced the deteriorating political and social situation of the country. A wave of nationalism swept through the campus at the University of the Philippines and professors debated the merits of teaching in the national language (Dueck et al. 2006).

Enriquez returned to the Philippines in 1971 and immediately established what later came to be called the Philippine Psychology Research and Training House (PPRTH). In 1975, he chaired the first National Conference on Filipino Psychology where he first articulated the ideas and concepts of Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology). Pe-Pua and Marcelino (2000) indicate that Filipino Psychology is the legacy of Enriquez. “Doc E,” as he was affectionately called by his students, started a movement that did not affect only the practice of psychology in the Philippines but also the social sciences in general (Covar 1994). He established a psychology that was “born out of the experience, thought and orientation of the Filipinos, based on the full use of Filipino culture and language” (Pe-Pua and Marcelino 2000, p. 49).

Enriquez used various metaphors to depict the way western psychology has been imposed on the Filipino: malapustisong paglalapat ng teorya at metodolohiya, which literally means “the denture-like imposition of theory and method”—pustiso means dentures. Western psychologies, like dentures, come after the teeth have been removed, may be ill fitting, and make speaking and eating more difficult. He has also likened the cultural imposition to the wearing of the “Americana” which is the way Filipinos refer to a formal American jacket. Again, ill fitting and uncomfortable considering the warm weather in the tropics, but still considered fashionable and desirable because it is from America or what Filipinos refer to as “stateside.” Yet another term that he liked using to refer to this cultural imposition is angat-patong (literally “lift and place or thrust”) which he defined as “uncritical acceptance of methodologies and theories developed in impersonal and industrialized countries” (Enriquez 1994, p. 70). One must note, too, that there is a double entendre in the choice of this term which embodies the Filipinos spirit of defiance and protest, and a sense of humor and love for satire in the face of colonial imposition.

Concerned about the Americanization of psychology in the Philippines, Enriquez proposed the development of a post colonial, indigenous Filipino psychology (Pe-Pua and Marcelino 2000). This local psychology was taught in Tagalog, the participants in research were local Filipinos, and the methodology was adapted to local conditions. Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) was seen as part of the search for national identity and hence rejected the importation of an etic psychology. It is often assumed that the development of an indigenous psychology was propaedeutic to a universal psychology but Enriquez strenuously opposed the collecting of data in a Third World country to validate a western theory.

The contributions of Enriquez to the development of a Filipino psychology include the following. First, it was he who defined Filipino psychology as a psychology that is anchored in Filipino thought and experience as understood from a Filipino perspective. He articulated its major characteristics—an emphasis on identity and national consciousness, social awareness and involvement, the study of language and culture, and the importance of applications to health issues, agriculture, art, mass media, religion, and other key areas (Enriquez 1994). Enriquez avoided the colonial mentality of overgeneralization by recognizing the linguistic and cultural complexity of the Filipino cultures. There was no single Filipino culture.

Enriquez was adamant about developing a psychology that represents the systematic and scientific study, appreciation, and application of indigenous knowledge for, of, and by Filipinos. This psychology would pertain to their own psychological make-up, society, and culture and would be rooted in their rich historical past, ethnic diversity, and dynamic interactions with forces within and without. He saw this as imperative because of the extreme reliance on Western models as a basis for analyzing Philippine social realities. He advocated for local psychologies that are not neutral or indifferent but that protest against psychologies that foster colonialism and their pervasive influence on Filipinos. He identified three primary areas of protest: first, against psychologies that perpetuate the colonial status of the Filipino; second, against the imposition in a Third World country like the Philippines of psychologies developed in industrialized countries; and third, against psychologies oriented towards the elite in society and used for exploitation of the masses (Enriquez 1994).

Enriquez saw this unshackling of the Filipino mind and decolonization of the Filipino psyche as the first steps in establishing a sikolohiyang malaya or liberated psychology. In analyzing how this decolonization is accomplished, he proposed that there are actually six stages in cultural domination (Enriquez 1995). The first is denial by the colonizer of a local culture (indigenous law, religion, literature, science, and technology) and withdrawal of any worth from the minority culture while promoting the culture of the colonizers. Included here is the suppression of the indigenous language. The colonizers make the local people believe that because they live in a multilingual setting they need one language that can unite them and the adoption of the superior language of the colonizer will help them achieve that. However, by controlling the language of the people—like what happened in the Philippines where the Americans imposed English as the medium of communication and instruction—they wielded greater power to influence the values and beliefs of the Filipino people to suit these to their own needs and interests. A second stage involves destruction of elements of indigenous culture, for example burning of indigenous manuscripts, and desecration of ancestral burial grounds. A third stage involves denigration of local people themselves with the consequent feelings of marginalization. Indigenous religious practices are labeled as pagan. In a fourth stage, indigenous culture is tolerated by allowing a few songs to enter the mainstream culture and by redefining rituals and ceremonies. There is a surface appreciation of indigenous beliefs. In a fifth stage, the dominant culture now uses selectively theoretical, methodological, and practical elements of the minority culture and recasts them in the colonial mold, for example, use of indigenous belief system in healing diseases. The concept of “hiyang,” which literally means “compatible” or “suited,” refers to the indigenous medical notion of the compatibility of the treatment and medicine with the particular individual. This was dismissed earlier as nonsensical but now is reinvented in terms of personal validation and American corporations in the Philippines use this in promoting their soap products. In a final stage, the dominating culture commercially exploits the profitable elements of the indigenous culture.

The second major contribution Enriquez made was the development of a number of indigenous concepts and theories. He made every effort to correct the distorted image of the Filipino created through years of research on what was supposedly the ‘Filipino character’ and value system completed by foreign researchers and printed in textbooks and bandied about as definitive and authoritative. One of the key concepts in Filipino psychology is kapwa. “In the Philippine value system, kapwa is at the very foundation of human values. This core value then determines not only a person’s personality but his or her personhood or pagkatao. Without kapwa, one ceases to be a Filipino. One also ceases to be human” (Enriquez 1994, p. 63). It emphasizes unity of the self with others and is an inclusive term that connotes interrelatedness. It arises from the awareness of shared identity with others.

There are other psychological examples where Enriquez forged local understandings of personality. Bostrom (Pe-Pua and Marcelino 2000) said that bahala na was akin to “American fatalism.” He described this as the Filipinos’ attitude that makes a person accept suffering and problems, leaving everything to God. Enriquez (1994) cited the work of Alfredo V. Lagmay, another prominent Filipino psychologist, who comments on the improvisatory personality of the Filipino which allows him or her to be more comfortable with unstructured, indefinite, and unpredictable situations. Bahala na is a phrase which has its roots in the pre-Hispanic concept of God, Bathala. It is used by Filipinos when they have done everything in their power to prepare for or remedy a situation and at the end of it acknowledge that the rest is all in the hands of God, Bathala. Contrary to what Bostrom argued, Enriquez countered that bahala na is actually determination and guts in the face of uncertainty rather than a passive, fatalistic attitude.

Enriquez explains that many of the foreign researchers who did studies on Filipino personality and values were only able to reach the level of accommodative values like hiya or sense of propriety, utang na loob or gratitude, and pakikisama or companionship. These were just some of the surface values that Filipinos used to accommodate to the presence of the “other”—colonizers who had taken over the land. However, they failed to see that the Filipinos also had confrontational values, those that gave the Filipino the fortitude and determination to face challenges and resist further domination. Enriquez even suggested that former colonizers wanted to keep Filipinos subjugated which was why they emphasized these accommodative values.

Enriquez was also instrumental to the development of indigenous personality measures. He lamented the fact that most of what passed as indigenization in this area were mere modifications of test items in psychological tests developed in America in what he called the “change-apples-to-papayas” approach. There have been several indigenous personality measures developed, including Enriquez’s Panukat ng Ugali at Pagkatao (Measurement of Character and Personality), that use personality dimensions that are relevant to Filipino psychology.

Some psychologists went beyond this “apples-to-papayas” kind of translating psychological tests from the west literally to Filipino and attempted to adopt some of these tests to Philippine conditions. One of these is Lagmay’s Philippine-oriented Thematic Apperception Test (PTAT). The PTAT cards were definitely more suited to Filipinos compared to the original TAT done by Murray but it was still unusual to the Abenlens of Zambales. Just the idea of “telling stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end, about people they do not know struck the Abenlens as strange.” (Enriquez 1994, p. 34)

The fourth contribution was the utilization of indigenous research methods. Many of Enriquez’s students answered the challenge he posed to develop indigenous research methods and came up with Pakapa-kapa (groping—an approach characterized by searching and probing into an unsystematized mass of social data), Pagtanung-tanong (improvised informal, unstructured interview) and Pakikipagkuwentuhan (story telling or informal conversations; Pe-Pua 2006).

Finally, as Enriquez (1994) and his students spent more time in the barrios or rural areas of the Philippines studying indigenous language and culture, it was inevitable for them to encounter concepts about the Filipinos’ spirituality which they found was an integral part of Filipino life and identity. In fact, they found that the first Filipino “psychologists” were healers and priestesses from different ethnic groups—the babaylan from the Visayas, the catalonan from Central Luzon and the baglan from Northern Philippines. They found that the dalangin (prayer) and bulong (whisper) of these priestesses were a rich resource of Filipino sacred knowledge and psychology. Based on studies about these and other ethnographic accounts, historian and ethnologist Zeus Salazar (1989), proposed that Filipino personhood has two fundamental elements: kaluluwa (spirit) and ginhawa (vital principle). Kaluluwa is the essence of a person, that part of him or herself that will not die and is concerned with things moral while ginhawa is related to feelings of health, wellness, and living a good life.

A more recent development in theorizing about Filipino personhood is the work of Covar (1994) who proposes that there are four elements in the Filipinos’ concept of personhood: kaluluwa (spirit), budhi (conscience), katauhang panlabas (external appearance), and katauhang panloob (innermost being). He proposes that for the Filipino the kaluluwa (spirit) is the source of life while the budhi (conscience) guides him or her in moral issues. The katauhang panlabas is concerned with physical characteristics and associated with body parts and what these mean. On the other hand, the loob pertains to the innermost feelings of the individual. Fulfillment is achieved with the harmony and interrelationship among these elements.

One of Enriquez’s students, Melba Maggay, who completed her Ph.D. in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines, has incorporated the work of Enriquez in her own theorizing about Filipino spirituality. Maggay (2005) applied Enriquez’s concept of indigenous psychology from within to the contextualization of Christianity. She points to two concepts in Filipino personhood that are key in the task of contextualization—the Filipinos idea of tagapamagitan or a mediator and the value that Filipinos place on connectedness. She rightly observes in Filipino culture the concept of mediator serves several functions: the tagapamagitan stands in our place and pleads for us, especially when we need some favor from the powers, delicately sets forth our case when negotiating or when healing ruptures in relationships, and speaks for us when we need help in advancing our cause during courtship or when expressing feelings that are sensitive and best sent indirectly. She suggests that Jesus’ role as a go-between, one who mediates the presence and power of God, has to be emphasized in light of the need in the culture to make God more accessible to humans.

Second, she noted that Filipinos feel a sense of connectedness even to our dead ancestors. This is seen in the rich ritual surrounding burial and remembering our loved ones who have gone before. In such a culture, it is good to emphasize themes like being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1) or being a part of great community of faith that stretches through generations. We then live our lives to honor their legacy. She calls for the renewal of the nation, incorporating the rich resource of the Filipino personhood with Christian concepts. She says: “The loob (innermost being) is the place where we return for healing and recovery of identity. It is where genuine conversion takes place, the stage upon which our own Damascus experience as a people happens. It is there that we truly turn from idols to the living God” (Maggay 2005).

Culture and its meaning

Enriquez models for us how an indigenous psychologist honors local cultures and how his model affects understandings of Filipino spirituality. His example shapes our response to ICP. The first issue we will address is the implicit definition of culture that controls the nature of indigeneity in the field of indigenous psychology. Kim, Yang, Hwang state: “Culture represents the collective utilization of natural and human resources to achieve desired outcomes; this is the process definition of culture.” (2006, p. 11, italics in original). We have two questions. Is indigenous culture conceived as pluralistic or monolithic and if plural, does that plurality include the religious?

First, we address the issue of plurality. In foundationalist fashion the editors of ICP conclude that the psychological reality to which words point can be found in many cultures. Hence they argue:

[I]ndigenous psychology is part of a scientific tradition that advocates multiple perspectives, but not multiple psychologies. The current volume uses the singular form of indigenous psychology rather than the plural form. Indigenous psychology is a part of scientific tradition in search of psychological knowledge rooted in cultural context. This knowledge can become the basis of the discovery of psychological universals and can contribute to the advancement of psychology and science. (2006, p. 9, italics in original)

Why not encourage multiple psychologies per Enriquez? To live in a highly pluralist, global community in which we recognize ethnic diversity, why might there not be multiple psychologies that undergird local identities?

This definition of culture in ICP is fundamentally modernist in nature. Since 1920, German-trained scholars, such as Franz Boas arrived in America and promoted a classical anthropology that is preoccupied with functionalism and British evolutionism. Other schools as represented by Ruth Benedict (functionalists), Claude Levi–Strauss (structuralist) or symbolic anthropology were all heavily influenced by the modernist ethos (Tanner 1997). By examining the meta-framework of those schools, Tanner (1997) argued that for the modernist anthropologist, culture is understood as a human universal (every one has a culture), which highlights human diversity (your culture is different from mine) and that culture varies with social groups (society sets the boundaries). Culture tends to be conceived as an entire way of life (including social habits, institutions, rituals, artifacts, and beliefs) and is associated with social consensus (so that it is generalizable to the culture as a whole). Culture is understood to constitute or construct human nature (precondition of human activity) and thus culture is composed of human constructions (accumulated traditions through generations). Cultures are contingent, they could have developed otherwise.

Against this modern construal of culture, Tanner raises a number of concerns and suggestions. Modernist definitions fail to pay sufficient attention to historical process. Cultures should be set back within the wider historical field from which they are abstracted. Moreover, modern approaches presume internally consistent wholes and assume social consensus. Culture never appears as a whole for the participants in it. There may be little coherence or consistency among the elements of culture. Their interrelations are not intrinsic, but were extracted and organized by modern anthropologists between the 1920s to the 1960s. There is the illusion of cultural consensus, from an outsider’s point of view. Modernists view culture as a principle of social order and that it is stable. But, Tanner points out, culture has its own internal principles of change (fluid forms susceptible of varying interpretations).

From a more postmodern perspective culture is not a single form. It is a struggle to make history and produce meaning. Cultures are not defined by space or geography like social groups. One cultural form could be shared by several groups. Postmodern anthropologists understand culture as plural in nature. It is constantly shifting, and changing. Conflict is as frequent as consensus. Cultural identity is a hybrid, relational affair, something that lives between as much as within cultures (Tanner 1997, p. 58). From a postmodern perspective there is a concern that too much attention on cross-cultural differences ignores within-cultural differences. When we speak of culture in the singular hereafter, the plurality is assumed.

A second issue is the relationship of culture to religion in indigenous psychologies. Is the normative view of culture secular or religious (Dueck and Reimer 2003)? Except for a few chapters on morality in ICP, one would think that the world’s population was not religious and that religion is not integral to indigenous psychologies. Rieff (1966) has argued cogently that culture is not neutral but prescriptive. It makes demands on its members. The narrative of a community invites members to live in accordance with its implicit charter. Does indigenous psychology include a narrative of a people’s self explanations, aesthetics, poetry (McAdams 1993, 2006, McAdams et al. 2006)? How do the more archetypal themes in the literature of a people shape their character?

Some of the ICP authors separate indigenous psychology from philosophical and religious considerations. How is that possible when a high percentage of individuals living in non-Western settings construe their personal worlds religiously (Jenkins 2002)? The editors of ICP suggest that we need to translate these ancient texts into operationalizable terms and then validate them with empirical research. For example, they state: “Philosophical and religious texts are developed for a specific purpose [over] several thousand years. In order to utilize these texts, we need to translate these ideas into psychological concepts and empirically verify their validity” (2006, p. 9). In another chapter, they state: “In psychology, empirical analysis is necessary to verify whether philosophical or indigenous ideas actually influence the way people think, feel, and behave” (p. 41). We suggest that it is critical to consider how the ancient texts serve to empower the individual to flourish and the society to prosper consistent with its own cultural mandate. We suggest the non-moral perspective of the authors belies their positivistic ideological commitments, which we will further elaborate on in the section on epistemology.

Language, thought, and culture

Whorf (1956) reminded us decades ago that language shapes culture and vice versa. Wittgenstein (1953) argued that that language emerges from our Lebensformen (forms of life) and hence one could expect greater incommensurability between communities (Winch 1958). The editors of ICP are critical of local studies of specific concepts such as kapwa in the Philippines, amae in Japan, or anasakti in India, because “they have limited communicative value to people who do not understand the language...it is difficult to ascertain whether these conceptualizations are accurate...and to assess the scientific merit of these concepts since they are not supported by empirical evidence” (2006, p. 8). We would argue that it is precisely in the particularity of language and its relationship to particular cultures that research should continue lest we assume naïve commensurability between cultures and repeat the episode at Babel.

Two of the authors, Wallner and Jandl (2006), acknowledge the community dependent nature of meaning making. Language can be a powerful means of activating associated cultural constructs, judgments, self-assessments, and memories (Bond 1983; Trafimow et al. 1997). Recent research has shown that bilinguals’ use of language may influence cognitive styles: when speaking a language associated with a more individualistic culture, bilinguals produce more individualistic narratives and conversely those who speak the language of a collectivist culture tend to generate more collectively oriented narratives (Marian and Kaushanskaya 2004; Ross et al. 2002). Language can be a carrier of cultural identity. Enriquez was so aware of this that under his direction, teaching and psychological research was conducted in Tagalog rather than English.

This language priming effect has been advocated as a promising research strategy in cultural psychology (Oyserman et al. 2002). In psycholinguistic studies, the semantic priming paradigm has been used in numerous studies to research the effect of context on word processing (Meyer and Schvaneveldt 1971). It assumes that when using a specific language, certain cognitive constructs will be activated and accessed in the linguistic network. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that switching between spoken languages will cause a parallel change in the cultural framework used by a bilingual person. In other words, the use of the Chinese language (for example) might increase the accessibility of traditional Chinese cultural knowledge and beliefs in a research setting. Conversely, the use of English may increase the accessibility to Western cultural constructs. In a study that replicates language priming study on bilingual Chinese, our research (Ting 2005; Ting and Dueck 2006) found that when participants spoke Chinese rather than English in their self-descriptions, the participants made more interdependent than independent statements. In contrast, bilingual Chinese and Caucasian Americans who used English made more independent than interdependent statements.

Do bilingual Chinese express depressive emotion differently when using a different language? It has been argued that Westerners conceive of depression as an intra-psychic, existential experience, whereas in China and many other non-Western societies, it is most frequently experienced somatically and interpersonally (Kleinman and Kleinman 1985; Ying et al. 2000). Despite a long history of interest in clinically depressed Chinese, there is a scarcity of research that examines verbal expression of depressive emotion in the general Chinese population. With regard to emotional experience, some empirical findings suggest that Chinese use more somatic expressions and social words than Americans (Tsai et al. 2004).

To build upon previous studies on bilingualism and depression among the Chinese, our research (Ting and Dueck 2006) focused on Chinese who can speak, read, and write in both Chinese and in English, and examined how they respond in English or Chinese to depressive images and stories. This study examined the cultural specificity of language of depression using the research design of a language priming effect. The aim was to deepen our understanding of the language of depression through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. We utilized both projective (images) and written (vignettes) forms of stimuli to access depressive language in our participants, while comparing the effects of language and culture. Participants were asked to write a story on each of the four pictures, using their imagination to focus on the feelings and thoughts of the main character. In the next section, there were two vignettes portraying Chinese individuals exhibiting depressive symptoms. Participants were asked to answer four accompanying questions that attempted to solicit their thoughts and feelings regarding the scenario and the characters.

The results indicate that the language which participants used to respond has a significant priming effect on how depressive emotion in bilingual Chinese individuals is expressed. The bicultural Chinese who responded in English rather than in Chinese responded linguistically in ways similar to the Caucasian American participants. They viewed depression intrapsychically while the Chinese participants responding in Chinese spoke about depression in language which was more communal. In Chinese culture, where the individual’s interdependent identity is fostered through community, it is not surprising that the language of emotions is fundamentally influenced by social norms and relationships with other individuals in the community, and to a large extent can only be described by factors external to the individual. In contrast, in Western culture where the independent self is valued, emotion often becomes a personal, cognitive matter and is defined primarily by the individual’s interpretation.

Therefore, language mediates cultural values of self-assertion and emotional expression. It assists individuals in societies to interact with each other, build their identities, regulate their ethics, shape the next generation, and claim their autonomy. In an English-dominant world, we need to acknowledge that our journals and publications may discriminate against non-English professionals. When writing an article or publishing a book in English, it is possible that certain cultural values would be primed and conveyed by the culturally specific grammar and syntax. Even in this essay in English, we may be socializing the readers’ values toward Western cultures!

Methodology

While the editors of ICP propose that indigenous psychology does not preclude particular methods (2006, p. 6), the prevailing epistemology in the book is scientific (the Pe-Pua 2006, chapter is a clear exception). They dismiss local religious traditions as follows:

[T]hese analyses are speculative philosophy and they have yet to be supported by empirical evidence. Although they provide a wealth of information and the basis of development of formal theories, they need to be empirically tested and validated.” (Kim et al. 2006b, p. 9)

Scientific verification of religious ideology may in fact distort the grammar of the religious tradition (Dueck 2006).

Ironically, the same authors call for first person accounts in an indigenous psychology that would not rely exclusively on third person accounts (2006, p. 10). If the authors are serious, they might affirm in indigenous psychology hermeneutic models that have a long history in Continental philosophy and psychology (Richardson et al. 1999) and that take with utmost seriousness the interpretive and constructive aspects of meaning creation. Similarly, they recommend linkages with the humanities but then assume the final test of acceptable knowledge is science.

Despite affirming methodological pluralism in indigenous psychology, the contributors to ICP still privilege psychology as an empirical science, a methodology clearly emerging out of the West. Why not include a place for interpretive epistemologies? Why not a more visible role for the symbolic? We argue that we need both hermeneutic and scientific epistemologies.

Hermeneutical sensitivity is largely absent from ICP, as we can see. The original goal of the hermeneutical method was to work out an interpretation applicable to human discourse. Richardson et al. (1999) traced the development of hermeneutics from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Hans-Georg Gadamer, and identified three fundamental ideas that characterized hermeneutic methodology:

  1. 1.

    The ideal of a detached, neutral, objective researcher is distorted, because we are always situated in a public life-world full human activities which we cannot objectify or control.

  2. 2.

    Humans are self-interpreting beings whose defining traits are shaped by ongoing dialogue with others in a communal context.

  3. 3.

    Social theory is not a neutral process of recording facts about humans, but carries culturally mediated values or assumptions in the process of making interpretations.

For example, modern family therapy theorists promote that healthy nuclear families are supposed to be marriage centered, intimate, adaptable, and clear on private boundaries. This so called relational model unknowingly perpetuates the Western expressive individualism that emphasizes autonomy in choosing one’s family and community ties in accordance with their preferences and goals.

According to the hermeneutic approach, we are not value-free in our research and hence a hermeneutic approach which is sensitive to values is needed. Gadamer’s (1989) metaphor of horizon can illustrate what we can see and what we can’t. The notion of horizon creates room for feeling, understanding, and experiencing at a cultural level. When horizons shift we realize how one-sided our perception is. The willingness to expand our horizons so that we can see another perspective is what the hermeneutic method strives for. By doing so, we also learn new moral rules that position and govern the inter-relationships of significant symbols, objects, and persons in the cultural milieu. As we come to understand and recognize our own context, Gadamer believed we will have an improved capacity to understand the context of the other with whom we are conversing.

We agree with Gadamer’s critique of methodologism prevalent in Western social science. In the modern era, social scientists have adopted the quantitative and experimental model of procedures from the natural sciences to study humans. The presumption of the natural–scientific model as the most accurate and reliable method to study human experience stems from the belief that the researcher can be differentiated from the subject of study. This stance of “I–it”, rather than “I–we,” gives the researcher an illusion of power and also generates the notion of “culture” as a universal object. It reduces meaning-making to data collection and hypothesis testing. To apply this objectifying stance toward indigenous psychology by internal (local) colonized leaders or by external colonizing psychologies may socialize the underlying values of modernist epistemology into cultures that are already vulnerable to the hegemony of Western countries.

As it has developed, the hermeneutic approach has provided a way of rethinking the underlying assumptions of social science. Hermeneutic theories have influenced the areas of anthropology (Geertz 1973), history of science (Kuhn 1962), political theory (Walzer 1994), and gradually transforming the practices of psychotherapy in last decade (Burston and Frie 2006). It is clearly appropriate in indigenous settings and hence we need a pluralistic approach to methodologies.

Local empowerment

The work of Edward Said (Said 1978) is a stark reminder of the deleterious effects of Western cultural hegemony. Knowledge, we know, is power. In ICP, the issue of colonialism is addressed tangentially and then (chap. 21 by Adair 2006, p. 469) dismissed as a less constructive approach. Hence, critical questions need to be raised about knowledge construction. Who is asking the questions? What issues are being addressed? Are they pressing local questions or questions that concern the discipline? Who is asking for the research and the information that may emerge? Who will collect the data or interview the participants? Who will ultimately use it? Do they think their intuitive, native psychology has already made a positive contribution to their society or that it has failed them and hence more research is necessary?

There is considerable concern in ICP to advance the emerging disciplinary field of indigenous psychology. Adair (2006) studied the development of indigenous psychologies in various countries and delineated common stages of development as parameters for understanding the development of psychology in other countries. As he argued, “a rigorous, empirical social study of the science can be used to assist psychologists in majority-world countries to realize their goal of creating an effective indigenous discipline” (p. 484). We wonder if the history of the development of an indigenous psychology is replicable from country to country as this model suggests. The development of indigenous psychology might look very different in a country that has been colonized, traumatized, and populated by the West than one which was not. We have to consider socio-political backdrop in each country before assuming a homogeneity in the discipline of indigenous psychology which emerges in different cultures. One of the authors in ICP remarks that emic and etic approaches are important. We would go a step further and argue that to begin with, the local means that emic takes precedence over etic and that it is the local psychologist who decides what research and insights from other indigenous psychologies (read American) might be helpful. We wonder if the empowerment of a colonized people who seek to be indigenous is not more important than creating a homogenous discipline. Of course, whether a local community seeks to be indigenous or to accommodate to Western psychologies is their decision. In an age of global travel and communication, local communities are seldom ‘pure’ or untouched by other cultures. A certain level of hybridity emerges. This complexifies the issue of indigenization and highlights the importance of local decision making about the nature of the cultures the local community wishes to embrace.

In addition, whether indigenous psychologies require both an insider’s (local) and an outsider’s perspective may depend on timing. Insiders may not want to hear from outsiders until they are able to develop their own voice. The editors grant that the local person possesses an implicit psychology that is episodic and practical enabling that person to negotiate life in their community. However, indigenous psychology researchers, the editors argue, translate this knowledge into analytic forms so that it can be tested and verified. We would ask whether or when this process might be beneficent or deleterious for the local community.

The purpose of cultural analysis in a modern perspective is to promote a non-evaluative alternative to ethnocentrism (suspending judgment in research, viewing a culture from a distance, being critical of one’s own culture). It furthers the humanistic project of social criticism: assessing the cost and benefits of human behaviors. However, the study of culture as a whole may become the exclusive privilege of the modern psychologist’s superior perspective. The idea of culture as a whole may help the colonizer to “manage” the people as a whole. Misra laments:

The colonial condition of India led to gross neglect and avoidance of the Indian intellectual and cultural traditions that were central to the practices of the Indian people. The academic world maintained a distance from its cultural heritage and looked down at it with suspicion. The colonial incursion was so powerful that although Western concepts were accepted and welcomed without scrutiny, indigenous concepts were denied entry to the academic discourse. Because the discipline was imitative, its growth remained always one step behind the developments in the donor country. (Gergen et al. 1996, p. 498)

Indigenous American psychology

It goes without saying that if one is involved in international development and research, one must be aware of one’s own culture. However, ICP still points to the fact that we are not sufficiently aware of how culturally embedded our research is. In other words, is it apparent how indigenous American psychology really is?

Western psychology is modernist and to export it is a form of socialization of its readers into modernity. According to Cushman (1995), a Western self is configured as masterful, bounded, and objective. Recognizing our own indigeneity, means we will need to first make the moral nature and political consequences of our own work more explicit. American understanding of psychology and the self is shaped by American individualism and consumerism. Failure to do so limits our psychological practices. The role of capitalism and the role of science is a critical historical perspective missing in some of the chapters.

By tracing the international history of psychology, Brock (2006) points out that after the return of many trained American psychologists from Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in the early nineteenth century, American psychology began its process of indigenization by adapting, rejecting, and contextualizing psychological constructs for American people. The effect of War World I inspired the behaviorist movement in America, just as War World II stirred the movement toward intellectual assessment and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder research. The imported ideas of philosophical introspection did not survive long in the pragmatic American context (Danziger 1990, 1997). Ironically, not many scholars devoted their energy and resources into defining what is “American psychology.” Even the stages of indigenization developed by Adair (ICP, chap. 21) overlooked its application to American psychology.

Hwang (2006) acknowledges that American psychology is a kind of monocultural indigenous psychology. However, in the end Hwang reverts to ‘Nature’ to provide him with a basis for models in indigenous psychology. He states: “Nature is a system with steady, unchangeable, and mutually linked relations among its various components” (p. 91). American psychology is embedded in the Western liberal tradition which presumes to transcend all traditions. MacIntyre (1988) has argued strongly that liberalism is sui generis a tradition. In similar manner, Western psychology is a tradition. Danziger (1990, 1997) posits that many of our psychological terms were developed in the West in the 20th century.

Universalizing our research findings may well be a form of cultural violence when in point of fact there are hidden cultural differences. This will require of us that we be sensitive to historical development and the social construction of reality. The evolution of the self involves a dynamic relationship with the social world. If it is true that discourse about the self is embedded in the larger political arena, then we must deconstruct the political subtext of Western psychology before we can engage in researching indigenous psychology in any other part of the world. If we export a Western configuration of the self as an objective, ahistorical, and universal self to other cultures, the unintentional political consequences may well be imperialism, racism, cultural chauvinism, and disempowerment of indigenous psychologists like Virgilio Enriquez. It appears that the modern psychologist often functions like missionaries of yesteryear. Wearing pith helmets and netting they bring the Western gospel of psychology to the uncultured natives.

Summary

Mainstream psychology is culturally bound in that it serves the benefit of the people living in a Western context. It exports the products of psychology to minority cultures through the processes of colonization, commercial exchange, globalization, and westernization. Its failure to recognize the limitations of Western theories and its fantasy of creating a universal psychology have not only disempowered the recipients in underdeveloped societies, but destroyed the shelter built by the traditions of those cultures. Ironically most of these societies have a history longer than that of America. We would make the case for regional, locally constructed psychologies and theologies. Then we would encourage dialogue between the regions as equal partners to share perspectives, practices, and stories. Our model might well be that of ecumenism in religious circles. A more important goal than a universal psychology might be peace between nations so that a conversation could emerge based on trust. Such a psychology would be more peaceable.