Psychotherapy,Selfhood,and the Bhagavad Gita : Contrasting Mental Health Scholarship and Religious Commentaries

Abstract

Indian mental health providers have suggested that the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita (“Gita”) could be a source for psychotherapeutic interventions. This raises questions about how mental health practitioners have interpreted relationships between the Gita and psychotherapy, how these interpretations construct selfhood, and how these interpretations of selfhood relate to commentaries from Hindu religious scholars. This paper answers these questions through a critical narrative review of studies on the Gita and psychotherapy, along with textual analyses of authoritative Gita commentaries, analyzed through the pattern theory of the self framework. An April 2025 search for studies that explored psychotherapy and selfhood in the Gita in five databases along with forward citation and backward bibliographic analyses uncovered 17 studies, all suggesting that principles of the Gita could be used within psychotherapy, with eight studies naming cognitive behavioral therapy. Thirteen drew on Hindu concepts of ātman, dharma, and karma to postulate an ideal self to help patients reflect on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Authoritative commentaries from Ādi Śaṃkarācārya, Swami Vivekananda, and Swami Chinmayananda show that ātman as the eternal soul, dharma as morally prescribed behaviors, and karma as actions without expectations of results have religious connotations without equivalents in Euro-American forms of psychology. A post-colonial approach to psychiatry can read the Gita alongside its commentators—ancient and modern, religious and non-religious—to uncover ways of conceptualizing selfhood before assuming that religious concepts have direct correspondences with psychotherapy.