ABSTRACT

This pioneering volume brings together scholars and clinicians working at the intersection of Islam and psychoanalysis to explore both the connections that link these two traditions, as well as the tensions that exist between them.

Uniting authors from a diverse range of traditions and perspectives, including Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian, Object-Relations, and Group-Analytic, the book creates a dialogue through which several key questions can be addressed. How can Islam be rendered amenable to psychoanalytic interpretation? What might an ‘Islamic psychoanalysis’ look like that accompanies and questions the forms of psychoanalysis that developed in the West? And what might a ‘psychoanalytic Islam’ look like that speaks for, and perhaps even transforms, the forms of truth that Islam produces?

In an era of increasing Islamophobia in the West, this important book identifies areas where clinical practice can be informed by a deeper understanding of contemporary Islam, as well as what it means to be a Muslim today. It will appeal to trainees and practitioners of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, as well as scholars interested in religion and Islamic studies.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|13 pages

‘The unity in human sufferings’

Cultural translatability in the context of Arab psychoanalytic cultural critique

chapter 2|17 pages

Islam

A manifest or latent content?

chapter 3|13 pages

Representations of the psyche and its dynamics in Islam

The work of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyah

chapter 4|12 pages

Politics of secular psychoanalysis in India

Hindu-Muslim as religious and political identities in Sudhir Kakar’s writing

chapter 5|10 pages

Between neutrality and disavowal

Being Muslim psychotherapists in India

chapter 6|18 pages

The repressed event of (Shi’i) Islam

Psychoanalysis, the trauma of Iranian Shi’ism, and feminine revolt

chapter 7|14 pages

Becoming revolution

From symptom to act in the 2011 Arab revolts

chapter 9|12 pages

Connectedness and dreams

Exploring the possibilities of communication across interpretive traditions

chapter 10|19 pages

Islam, the new modern erotic

chapter 11|13 pages

Enduring trouble

Striving to think anew