فرويد العربي: التحليل النفسي والإسلام في مصر الحديثة

by Omnia El Shakry, أمنية الشاكري, محمد الدخاخني (Translator)

يعد الكتاب نظرة أولى متعمقة لكيفية رسم مفكري ما بعد الحرب العالمية في مصر للتقاطعات بين الخطابات الإسلامية وفكر التحليل النفسي.
في كتاب "فرويد العربي" تتحدى أمنية الشاكري فكرة التقسيم الصارم بين التحليل النفسي والإسلام من خلال تتبع كيفية مزج مفكري ما بعد الحرب العالمية في مصر نظريات التحليل النفسي بمفاهيم من الفكر الإسلامي الكلاسيكي في بمشاركة أخلاقية إبداعية.

‎بالاعتماد على الكتابات العلمية وكذلك الأدبيات الشعبية حول الشفاء الذاتي ، تقدم الشكري أول دراسة متعمقة للتحليل النفسي في مصر وتكشف كيف أن علمًا جديدًا كعلم النفس - أو "علم الروح" كما أصبح يسمى - ارتبط ارتباطًا وثيقًا بالإسلام والتصوف. تستكشف كيف كانت الأفكار الفرويدية عن اللاوعي حاسمة في تشكيل الخطابات الحديثة للذاتية في مجالات متنوعة مثل علم النفس والفلسفة الإسلامية والقانون. تُظهر أن الشخصيات المؤسسة في التحليل النفسي المصري ناقشوا زمانية النفس ، والحالات الصوفية ، والدافع الجنسي ، وعقدة أوديب ، مع تقديم رؤى مذهلة لطبيعة الحياة النفسية والأخلاق والأيروس.

‎يدعونا هذا الكتاب الاستفزازي المتأمل لإعادة التفكير في العلاقة بين التحليل النفسي والدين في العصر الحديث. برسم خرائط نقاط التقاطع بين الخطابات الإسلامية وفكر التحليل النفسي ، ويوضح كيف تم تطوير فرويد العربي ، مثل التحليل النفسي نفسه ، عبر فضاء الاختلاف البشري.

Genres: Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Islam, History, Religion, Egypt

336 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of the way Freud's work was received in Egypt in the early 20th century.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely outstanding book. Shakry's work in The Arabic Freud completely deconstructs the arguments of theorists like Charles Taylor, Jurgen Habermas, and Alasdair MacIntyre who see 1. Christianity as the progenitor of secularism and liberal rationality and other traditions as being inimical to this rationality (Islam as irrational fundamentalism) and 2. epistemological traditions as incommensurable. Instead, Shakry argues that the history of psychoanalysis in modern Egypt demonstrates a uniquely creative and ethical engagement of epistemological resonance with Islam (and Sufism in particular). Rather than incommensurable epistemologies and ontologies, the creative encounter between psychoanalysis and Islam is one of interaction, hybridization, and interconnected and mutual webs of knowledge production between the Arab world and Europe.

To quote Shakry's conclusion at length on the epistemological resonances between Islam and psychoanalysis that allowed for a creative and ethical encounter:

"Thus, for instance, ʿAbd al-Qadir notes that Freud’s 1923 discussion of the tripartite distinction of the self, the id, ego, and superego, could be found in Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Ihyaʾ ʿUlum al-Din, which was translated into German in 1913; that Avicenna’s view of the self and of fantasy was similar to that of Freud’s, and that some of Avicenna’s methods foreshadowed those of the group psychodrama techniques established by Jacob Moreno in the 1920s; and that Abu Bakr Muhammad Bin Zakariyya al-Razi’s Spiritual Physick heavily theorized the relationship between the psyche and the body, arguably the main concern of psychoanalysis."

Overall a really phenomenal work that demonstrates that 1. psychoanalysis doesn't have to be an inherently "secular" discipline and 2. Islam is not a reified tradition that is inherently hostile to to psychoanalysis.

[Griffin Duffey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great work. Amazing how much detail is covered in 115 pages, and how much can come to bear on how we can think about traditions of psychoanalysis and modern philosophy’s relationship to thinking subjectivity outside of secular/enlightenment/colonialist spaces. El Shakry survey’s the very concrete quilting points of PA and Islamic social and political thought in post-war Egypt. As it turns out, many of the concepts Freud develops were received and thought alongside Islamic categories for formations of the self, and almost all the bases are covered. Desire, unconcious/ego/superego, even Lacanian categories such as jouissance are embraced and are treated as generative for the modern formations of Islamic thought. (Was surprised to see Lacan himself found Sufi thinkers to be immensely valuable to read.) These ideas were even actively used *against* forms of colonial power and consciously used to theorize decolonialized subjects vis a vis Fanon and others.

Most shocking of all was the fourth chapter on Egyptian criminology in the 1940s and the legal and ethical battles for PA to be used as a legitimate form of rehabilitation for troubled individuals as opposed to disciplinary state prisons and other forms of punishment. It can be hard to find the political and social critique in PA—something that I find necessary for any kind of robust epistemological framework (cf. Foucault) and perhaps I needed to look no further than thinkers like al-Rawi and Muhammad Fathi.

I mostly reached for this as an attempt to historicize and decolonialize my own engagement with PA. Even more than that, though, it was a much needed break from reading the theorist of PA themselves, which I have been struggling to enjoy past a certain point.


Here’s a taste:
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-midcentury-...

[Nazmiye Gül · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a literally eye opening book. I’m amazed by reading the echoes between the psychoanalysis and Islamic mysticism. But I wish the writer of this book would have a chance to read the books of Ekrem Demirli, a great Turkish commentator of the oeuvre of Ibn Arabi. His way of reading Ibn Arabi is so unique and subtle.
And while El Shakry exploring the parallels between Islam and psychoanalysis, she also makes great critiques about some well known contemporary philosophers such as Fethi Benslama and Julia Kristeva. Those pages were so interesting to me. You are writing so well but also you don’t mince your words. It was something I hadn’t encountered for a long time in the intellectual areas.

[Anas Taleb · Rating 2 out of 5]

You need to know psychology’s concepts to be able to understand the book, which was not my case