Do mental, emotional and psychological refer to the same thing?
Question are mental, emotional and psychological referring to the same thing answer it depends on context these three terms in general refer to the non-physical aspect of our being so that is common, whether we use mental, psychological, emotional it is not referring to the physical side but beyond the physical what is there beyond the physical there have been different thinkers who have had different frames of analysis and based on those frames of analysis different things can be referred to so the mind within the Bhagavad Gita analysis refers to the subtle nature that is intermediate between the body and the soul whereas in western philosophical discourse or in today's mainstream discourse also anything different from matter from the body is called as the mind so mental we will have to see what it refers to in that context psychology as a as a technical branch of knowledge has developed in the west where it developed in the west, the word psyche it generally is again referred to the subtler side of our being where it referred to the usually the mind again, the study of the mind but today psychology largely is used to refer to the study of human behavior and in that context when we talk about the study of human behavior the focus largely is on analysis in terms of particular systems of psychology like there is Freud's system of psychology there is Carl Jung's system of psychology there are different schools of thought in psychology so we will have to see when the word psychological is used what does it mean and when we talk about emotions that is referring to a specific category within our non-physical level of function so beyond the physical there is subtle, there is spiritual, in the subtle there is mind and there is intelligence so we have a rational faculty and we have emotional faculty so the emotional faculty refers primarily to that that means the part of our non-physical subtle being which refers to the way we deal with emotions so in that sense based on the context they can all mean the same thing psychological, emotional and mental can mean the same thing but in different other context they can mean something different, somebody can say that when don't be on the mental platform, don't be on the sentimental platform that means that we shouldn't think that we shouldn't let ourselves be governed by our emotions so here when the word mental is used often it is used more to emotional in the sense of being on a negative level in a negative sense in a disapproving sense it is used whereas when the word psychological is used so often it is more in terms of trying to understand the deeper nature of a person so if you look at a person's psychological nature we can understand that some people are introvert or extrovert so here psychological is not used in a is more used in a objective non-judgmental sense so rather than saying that they all refer necessarily to the same thing or necessarily to different things we have to look at the context to see what these words mean, thank you very much.