Comments on: Psychoanalysis and Islam

By: Matin

Matin — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:25:14 +0000

This article appears to be a ironic self-portrait of its authors. The authors wrote that “All science must begin with free inquiry”, a remarkable declaration for them since they dont do this principle justice.

By: dymphna

dymphna — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 04:45:16 +0000

Every time I come over here I want to steal something and drag it back to my blog…sometimes I do. Like the patents thing. A delicious, meaty piece indeed.

Islamic psychotherapy seems an oxymoron at best. Free inquiry, free association — Allah protect us.

I always thought of Freud and Marx as the last of the Jewish prophets…

By: Stephen Rittenberg

Stephen Rittenberg — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 13:53:00 +0000

Fascinating essay. Thanks for writing it. I was reminded that under Stalin, the vibrant psychoanalytic community of the ’20’s in the Soviet Union was wiped out, its members executed and/or sent to the Gulag to die. The psychoanalytic method was incompatible with Marxist economic determinism and was condemned as a dangerous bourgeois anachronism. In the post-Stalin days, deviation from the party line was ‘diagnosed’ often as mental illness, requiring hospitalization, medication and shock treatment. Totalitarian Islam will, most likely, follow the same path. They’ve already taken to diagnosing apostates as mentally ill. Staghound is completely wrong in his comments about psychoanalysis, which does not view us as mere puppets driven about by our unconscious. Freud’s earliest theorizing, positing a location for “the unconscious” gave way in the face of observed clinical data to his structural theory: the id, ego and superego. Consciousness or unconsciousness are qualities that can attach to each and in varying degree. The ego is especially the seat of rationality, judgment, assessment of reality. We strive in psychoanalysis to expand rationality, through self-inquiry, and thereby expand our power to shape our own lives, achieve true independence of thought and action and free the individual to find satisfaction in all spheres of life.

By: Watcher of Weasels

Watcher of Weasels — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 05:19:33 +0000

Submitted for Your Approval

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By: larwyn

larwyn — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 23:30:43 +0000

Dear Jack,
I’ve emailed 3 of the finest “right winged” psych bloggers and asked that they would send you cites/links to their work and the works of other in the field.
Hate to be “paranoid” …..But Google has shown in
many instances that they are not playing fair.
May be just like Borders and all the LSM and just
burying information that would “offend” CAIR.
I know that at least 5 of these blogs have addressed this issue more than once. So hope they will inundate your email box with their answers.

By: staghounds

staghounds — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:12:27 +0000

“unconscious motivation deprives man of choice” is actually a pretty accurate statement of how Freudians see the unanalysed or pre-analysis patient. “Free choice” is an illusion, if one accepts Freud’s outlook, since we perform like trained seals to commands buried in our unconscious. Inly through years and years of expensive analysis, available only from approved psychoanalysts, can we have enough insight to understand and control those commands.

Unless of course what we see as insight and control are just obedience to deeper and deeper unconscious commands… more analysis!

(I believe that Freudianism is as much personal pathology writ large as Leninism is.)

AND, why shouldn’t the west’s foul ideas be turned to the prophet’s will? The faithful use reconstructive surgery to replace damaged hymens…