Spiritual bypassing — using spirituality to avoid unresolved psychological difficulty — has been studied almost entirely in Western samples. This conceptual paper asks whether the construct travels to Indian contexts and proposes a culturally situated alternative. The method is immanent critique: existing formulations are examined against their own stated aims to identify the assumptions they...
Spiritual bypassing, referred to as the use of spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid unresolved psychological distress, is well represented in the etic (researcher- or outsider-derived) literature but has not previously been examined through a qualitative synthesis centered on lived experiences. This meta-ethnography addresses that gap. Using Noblit and Hare’s seven-phase approach alongside...