PUBLISHED 03 December 2020
Last week saw the 'launch' meeting of an international collaboration between AKS Lytham and Trivandrum school in India. Psychology students split into small groups and met via Zoom to discuss their experiences in lockdown and then to further plan their research projects. Each project is focused on bridging Western and Eastern cultural perspectives to assess the mind and behaviour. Research topics ranged from Neurotheology to Psychopathology.
Here each group tells us what they will be focusing on:
Our group has decided to research psychopathology and compare eastern to western traditional methods for treating mental disorders. Charlotte and Aman are studying various western therapies and Muskaan, Meghna and Aditi are all researching eastern treatments. We will be on another zoom call on Monday to compare our research and begin to put together our presentation for the conference in a few weeks' time - Charlotte, Muskaan and Meghna
We have focused on mental health in India versus in England. Today (Tuesday 1st December) we organised a Zoom call to put in place an action plan to bring our project to life. We have decided to each do a PowerPoint (Ellie and Tara will focus on England and Richard and Nakshastra at Trivandrum will focus on mental health in India), along with a video of us explaining our interesting findings. Then we will bring together our research to contrast and compare our findings on the PowerPoint. We have already learned so much about how different our countries deal with mental health and wellbeing. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Richard and Nakshastra they have been just as enthusiastic as us, really confident and very easy to talk to - Ellie and Tara
For our topic, we have chosen to research Neurotheology along with Natasha and David from India. So far, we have been able to contact them through zoom calls as well as sharing phone numbers. We have organised ourselves into two parts; David and Natasha are researching neurotheology in Britain, whilst we are going to discover more about Indian neurotheology. We have looked into the basis of neurotheology and it is essentially a unique field of scholarship and investigation that seeks to understand the relationship specifically between the brain and theology, and more broadly between the mind and religion. We have really enjoyed talking to Natasha and David and learning about their country, as well as being able to have made two new friendships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise - Amy and Keira
Our research project is focused on a biography of the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who proposed a unique and esoteric theory of personality, and a very cross-cultural perspective on understanding the human mind. So far we have been researching archetypes, synchronicity, the collective unconscious, and extraversion/introversion. We have been liaising with our friends from Kerala via Zoom and are excited to be working with them on the final presentation - Alicia, Grace and Lucy