Psychotherapy in India: past, present, and future.

If psychotherapy is defined as "interpersonal method of mitigating suffering" then many psychotherapeutic systems have existed in India a long time. Unlike Western systems, these have lacked a clinical bias but have provided a more global framework. The future of psychotherapy in both East and West lies in discovering a conceptual framework with universal validity within which ad hoc therapies--for symptom relief, personality development, or interpersonal adjustment--can be developed.