Interview with Dr. Ashok Nagpal
by Ankur Prahlad Betageri
Professor of Psychology at the University of Delhi (North Campus) Dr. Ashok Nagpal with his mentor Dr. Sudhir Kakar made pioneering efforts in developing psychology into a culturally sensitive and socially relevant discipline. Using psychoanalysis as a model they sought to understand the rich and diverse tradition of healing in India, and revealed how that knowledge could be integrated with the mainstream psychotherapies to bring about a synthesis: a synthesis which would enhance the scope of mystical cults and broaden the reach of psychology. In this short interview Dr. Nagpal addresses three core issues: manic self interest, passive indifference and fear of labeling, and using the concept of evil offers invaluable insights into the nature of urban living and why it’s failing humanity.
Question: Psychology is not playing a major part in squarely addressing the human problems. It has become a sophisticated clinical tool of discrimination and labeling, incapable of being moved by human suffering. Why is the field of psychology so self-obsessed and dehumanized?
Dr. Ashok Nagpal: Why humanism is not taking root here…? Because there is an overarching presence of evil here which expresses itself in the form of indifference.
Everyone’s life here is dominated by self-interest, and every activity born exclusively to serve the needs of the self creates a lot of noise. I have very few ears left; I can’t take any more noise. I need to distill pure thought out of this noise. Every action of self-interest restricts us, cuts upon our desires and moulds us.
A greedy unselfconscious self-interest is the way evil manifests itself in our time.
Question: How does psychology understand the process of creativity? I have seen many psychologists taking pride in and overcoming their own insignificance by calling artists abnormal.
Dr. Ashok Nagpal: Madness provides a special inspiration for creativity; especially in the world of literature it allows our imagination to abandon itself. You glimpse something, you know others will find it too provocative, too dangerous and in clinical language it will be dubbed as a symptom. But if even one another person could understand it then it could be called creativity.
So labeling is a way of setting limits to creativity. So that it doesn’t become too dangerous to the society.
Question: I see… What exactly do you mean by evil?
Dr. Ashok Nagpal: Evil is that which is ‘not to be lived’. If you read ‘live’ backwards it reads evil, so evil is the opposite of living. The creative flash makes an artist forget his boundaries and he begins to live the unlivable by being possessed by his creativity. A creative person should bear in mind that his creative enacting shouldn’t be disestablishing. His creative enacting shouldn’t disturb the life process. So a creative person is always either the chosen one or the obscure one.
Labeling helps us to be aware of the potential danger a person might have in disturbing the delicate structure of the society. In a time of outcry against labeling we should see the positive side of labeling. Labeling should always be dynamic but the society never allows any dynamic symbolism to be dynamic for too long. It turns everything into black and white and that is the tragedy.
Question: But most of the time psychologists and psychiatrists insist on understanding people in their own narrow perspectives and terminologies.
Dr. Ashok Nagpal: You can always create sensitivity among psychologists that there is more to psychology than what they are practicing. This is something which is very difficult to deal with especially in a democracy.
Question: Can you elaborate on the concept of evil? Are there any religious and theological connotations to that concept?
Dr. Ashok Nagpal: No. Evil is the label through which we arouse curiosity about something. Evil is something which hasn’t been nurtured completely in a person. Evil is to be overly self sufficient to flatten others into a state of subservience. Evil makes itself so self-resourceful that it makes others beg and crawl… It wants to feel that it is giving; that gives it a position of power. It tempts others to crave for it and that is why it is called evil… If it doesn’t make others beg it feels that it itself is in a position to beg. This is because it can see itself either as a beggar or as a giver, not in any position in between.