ABSTRACT
Islam and psychoanalysis are two discourses and practices that overlap; they are both seemingly distinct and share concerns as well as socio-cultural-psychic preoccupations in relation to what makes us human. In this chapter, I want to explore some of the inter-connections between Islam and psychoanalysis in order to draw out a few shared preoccupations between these two seemingly distinct discourses and practices. There is, as Joseph Massad points out, a difficulty with knowing what Islam is and what it has come to mean; does Islam, he asks, name a ‘religion, a geographical site, a communal identity?’ (2009, p. 193). A similar question can be asked of psychoanalysis: is it a religion, an ideology, a theoretical framework and/or clinical practice? I understand Islam and psychoanalysis as belief systems, ideologies and discourses that involve practices and rituals. While there is agreement that there are different versions of psychoanalysis and similarly that Islam is practised differently according to geographical location, to date there has been little attention paid to the question of whether there exist specific connections between Islam and psychoanalysis. Attending to this question will hopefully unsettle commonplace perceptions that there is little overlap between the West and the Rest and this chapter is an attempt to prise apart these concrete – and frequently resolutely held – opinions. We need to ensure that Islam and psychoanalysis speak to each other while simultaneously recognising their different conceptualisations of socio-cultural systems and their contrasting understandings of human beings.
