The Qur’an and Therapy: Which Psychologists Do Muslims Turn To?

There is a growing interest in Islamic psychology all over the world. Organizations are being created to provide advisory psychotherapeutic assistance to Muslims. Specialists combine knowledge of psychology with the teachings of the Koran. The International Association of Muslim Psychologists has long been known, and the Association for Psychological Assistance to Muslims operates in Russia.

Despite common beliefs that “Allah loves the patient” and “Women are all like that, live as you live,” Muslim women increasingly decide to turn to professionals. And psychological assistance is provided to them in the context of Sharia (a set of prescriptions that determine the beliefs of a Muslim) and adats (customs that regulate the daily life of a Muslim).

Among the most popular requests are the lack of a picture of the future, fears, hopelessness, impotence and helplessness, interpersonal, family conflicts, lack of communication skills in society, low self-esteem, resentment against relatives, depression, stuck on pipe dreams.

The separation of Islamic psychology into a separate discipline and the development of appropriate methods was only a matter of time, because the request for such help has existed for a long time. Traditional psychological schools are based on the Western worldview, with its individualism and democratic values. However, for a Muslim personality, religious identity is not just important, but «system-forming».

Intersections of concepts

The prospect of development of Islamic psychology lies in the harmonious interpenetration of worldviews, the use of centuries-old developments in self-improvement of the individual, the combination of secular and spiritual.

Islamic psychology considers a person at the level of «ruh» (soul), «nafs» (lower part of the human soul), «akl» (consciousness / mind), «jism» (physical body).

As an analytical psychotherapist working with the personal and collective unconscious of clients, I will take the liberty of suggesting the intersection of the concepts of “nafsa” and “subconscious”. A Muslim strives for taming, cleansing the nafs through prayer, refraining from worldly temptations. An ordinary person seeks to realize and take control of the negative manifestations of the subconscious, formed on the basis of traumatic childhood experiences, forbidden in the society of feelings.

Personal experience

Without claiming to be the ultimate truth, I want to share the experience of personal therapy, which brought me back into the bosom of ethnic religion. This happened thanks to my Italian psychotherapist — Irish, Catholic. She saw the resource of my psychological healing in the restoration of religious and national identity.

Namaz, and then Sufi dhikr (religious practice) helped me cope with childhood traumas, and they were enough. Mom was brought up in an orphanage during the Great Patriotic War. And, to my great regret, reconstructed my own in my childhood. The analysis helped to separate the religious moment in communication with the mother from the psychopathic one.

Most of us are hostages of tragic moments in the history of our multinational homeland. The psychopathic component is passed down from generation to generation. Silent obedience to the sadism of parents, envy of relatives often becomes an unbearable burden for the psyche (unless, of course, we are saints — biblical or Koranic characters).

It was analysis that helped me come into contact with repressed aggression and pain. While faith in God helped to accept fate, to become a psychotherapist, justifying the myth of a wounded healer who must first heal himself.

Psychotherapy as a spiritual practice

Good psychotherapy is always a spiritual practice, in the sacred cauldron of which children’s complexes are melted into a new core of personality. A person who has known the essence of his nafs, knows his Creator.

A person of any confession, any level of awareness has shadow aspects that are projected onto others. In a Muslim environment, such manifestations of the unconscious can be attributed to the action of genies, shaitans (the activity of the latter is a separate issue).

For example, a young Russian woman who converted to Islam and became the second wife of a Muslim complained that her husband did not pay as much attention to her as he did to his first wife. In the personal history of a woman — the tragic death of her father in childhood. The husband says that she herself pushes him away.

During the consultation, I noted the inconsistency of reactions and words. Refinement and piety were replaced by rude, arrogant statements — both in general and in my address in particular.

I have been consulting for more than 20 years and, based on a number of symptoms, I suggested that the client has an ambivalent-anxious type of attachment, when one hand attracts and repels with the other. The subconscious childish fear of being abandoned by the father makes the woman repel her husband as well.

The client insisted that it was the first wife who sent damage, shaitans, arguing her assumption that others did not want to communicate with her either. I suggested that a woman has difficulties in adapting to a higher social stratum (social group) into which she fell due to marriage. In this case, it is really easier for a person to shift responsibility for his life to the action of otherworldly forces than to face his own injuries and carry out complex internal work.

Back to the roots

At the end of the article, I want to say words of gratitude in memory of my psychotherapist Angela Mary Connolly, who gave me the opportunity to return to my roots. In one of the sessions, Angela mentioned Henri Corbin, a Jungian psychologist, one of the greatest Western scholars in the study of Sufism and Islamic mysticism, director of the School of Practical Research at the Sorbonne University, comparing our spiritual paths.

I do not know more subtle, profound works on mystical Shiism, Iranian Sufism, than the books of Henri Corbin, who was … a Huguenot. So the Irish, the Catholic restored the connection of times. And the example of her work with me tells me that all roads lead to God.