The making of moral futures among psychotherapeutic trainees in India

Abstract

This paper considers how psychotherapeutic trainees discern everyday morality. I ask: What does making morality in anticipation of future practice reveal about an emergent subjectivity informed by psychotherapy? I draw from ethnographic fieldwork at a psychotherapeutic training program in a privately funded university managed by a Christian Trust in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), the capital of Karnataka in southern India. Most of the trainees in this programme moved to Bengaluru in their twenties to undergo training that culminates in a master’s degree in counselling psychology. Through mandatory ‘self-work’ trainees mobilize the science of psychology to make and unmake the contours of private morality as they prepare for professional practice in India where psychotherapy is not yet regulated by the state. While ethical codes of practice developed in the United States are available to trainees, trainees produce viable moral standards of practice in India in the absence of a regulatory body. Trainees adapt seemingly universal scientific values to the local context of private psychotherapy practice in urban India. Existing caste, ethnolinguistic and religious diversity within the classroom is perceived as an advantage to be leveraged upon. On the other hand, diversity is perceived as a challenge to be overcome in future ‘multicultural’ practice. This paper is about how trainees negotiate their private morals in the shape of an imagined future.