The first in-depth look at how postwar thinkers in Egypt mapped the intersections between Islamic discourses and psychoanalytic thoughtIn 1945, psychologist Yusuf Murad introduced an Arabic term borrowed from the medieval Sufi philosopher and mystic Ibn 'Arabi-al-la-shu'ur-as a translation for Sigmund Freud's concept of the unconscious. By the late 1950s, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams had been translated into Arabic for an eager Egyptian public. In The Arabic Freud, Omnia El Shakry challenges the notion of a strict divide between psychoanalysis and Islam by tracing how postwar thinkers in Egypt blended psychoanalytic theories with concepts from classical Islamic thought in a creative encounter of ethical engagement.Drawing on scholarly writings as well as popular literature on self-healing, El Shakry provides the first in-depth examination of psychoanalysis in Egypt and reveals how a new science of psychology-or "science of the soul," as it came to be called-was inextricably linked to Islam and mysticism. She explores how Freudian ideas of the unconscious were crucial to the formation of modern discourses of subjectivity in areas as diverse as psychology, Islamic philosophy, and the law. Founding figures of Egyptian psychoanalysis, she shows, debated the temporality of the psyche, mystical states, the sexual drive, and the Oedipus complex, while offering startling insights into the nature of psychic life, ethics, and eros.This provocative and insightful book invites us to rethink the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion in the modern era. Mapping the points of intersection between Islamic discourses and psychoanalytic thought, it illustrates how the Arabic Freud, like psychoanalysis itself, was elaborated across the space of human difference.

Acknowledgments ixNote on Transliteration and Translation xiii
Introduction Psychoanalysis and Islam 1
A Copernican Revolution ~ Psychoanalysis and the Religious Subject ~ The Mystic Fable ~ Psychoanalysis and Islam: A Tale of Mutual Understanding? ~ Decolonizing the Self ~ Structure, Method, and Argument
I THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE MODERN SUBJECT
1 Psychoanalysis and the Psyche 21
Translating the Unconscious ~ The Integrative Subject ~ Unity and the Philosophical Self ~ The Epistemology of Psychoanalysis and the Analytic Structure ~ Insight and Hermeneutics ~ The Socius: Self and Other ~ Conclusion
2 The Self and the Soul 42
Divine Breath ~ The Topography of the Self ~ A Phenomenology of Mysticism ~ Self-Struggle (Jihad al-Nafs) ~ Noetic Knowledge and das Ding ~ Conclusion
II SPACES OF INTERIORITY
3 The Psychosexual Subject 63
Languages of Desire ~ The Sexual Drive ~ The Spiritual Physick ~ The Psychology of (the Female) Gender ~ Same-Sex Desire ~ Technologies of the Self ~ Conclusion
4 Psychoanalysis before the Law 83
Psychoanalysis, Crime, and Culpability ~ The Criminal at Midcentury ~ Psychoanalysis before the Law ~ Anti-Oedipus ~ The Political Unconscious ~ Psychopathy ~ Conclusion
Epilogue 110
Notes 117
Glossary 165
References 169
Index 191