Psychology
When one mentions “psychology” the first thing that comes to mind for most people are names like Freud, Jung, etc.
Most Hindus may not be aware that psychology (if you can call it that) was explored also by Hindu sages a couple of millenniums before modern psychology. Though it really dealt less with relationships, and more with the nature of the mind itself, reaching heights still unknown to modern psychology. The core of Hinduism, yoga, is in essence the science of mastery of one’s self.
For example, the Bhagavad Gita, with its focus on the mastery of the self, can be taken as a summary treatise on science of the mind: the interactions between the manas (mind), buddhi (intellect), indriya (senses), ahamkara (ego), gunas (tendencies), vasanas (conditionings), and samskaras (past-life impressions) and how they make up “who/what we are” and how to master it and thus hence ourselves using the science of yoga (as described in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras). The Bhagavad Gita also talks about the four archetypes (or varna), and that an individual fits a particular archetype based on his gunas (tendencies/qualities) and karma (actions).
Carl Gustav Jung is the father of modern psychology (successor to Freud). He also gave us the words “introvert” and “extrovert”. But little do people know that his works are taken out of Hindu philosophy. He himself not just acknowledges that, but profusely documented it as his sources. But all his references to Hindu sources, while you’ll find them in journals, they have been removed or not mentioned by Western academia when they present it in school text books. So, my question is why the hush-up?.
Only problem is that his work is a subset of the bigger picture, and hence modern psychology is disconnected or incomplete. For example his theory of archetypes (aka Jungian archetypes) have very close resemblance to Hinduism’s concept of jiva-atman and atman. Unfortunately it stops short of going all the way. For the average Western scholar in the time period, to encounter concepts like the existence of four levels of consciousness (jagrata, svapna, susupti, turiya), or for that matter even trying to comprehend the myriad of faiths, languages, cultures, etc that make up Hindu culture, might have been a daunting task back then.
So why isn’t there more awareness on this (at least in India?). For one, the elite Indians during and after British rule sold themselves out to British educational system (throwing out anything that was “Hindu” in the name of secularism), thus removing studies of all Hindu texts from schools and syllabuses.
Secondly, Hindu psychology is not a doctor-patient affair. Like Ayurveda, it is also largely dependent on self-effort, demands reflection, meditation, discipline. For this it prescribes various types of yoga. In most situations, a bit of yoga (in any form), on a regular basis will help much more than what months of counseling would offer.