Islamically Integrated Psychotherapy:

Publisher: Templeton Press, West Conshohocken, PA, 2018, 304pp. ISBN: 9781599475813

This important book contains a collection of nine interesting chapters by eminently well qualified and experienced psychotherapists, male and female, from a variety of backgrounds, training paths, geographic career paths and Islamic cultures. All concur that Islamic culture can be integrated into psychotherapy where the clients are Muslims and open to Islamic concepts, and that there is a demand for such psychotherapy from among the Muslim communities in their areas.

This demand is from Muslim men, women and children who would not be comfortable with secular psychotherapies. It seems that there is a strong suspicion of these therapies among Muslims, and vice versa, based on the general rejection of religion in post-Renaissance and 20th century West, and in particular on the opinions of Sigmund Freud that “religion is a universal obsessional neurosis” that people should have grown out of. Freud’s theories still underpin several mainstream therapeutic methods, like psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy (p. 128), and so this poses some conflicts for therapists in integrating Islamic concepts into them.

The various chapters explore and illustrate how these therapists have found Islamic concepts to be helpful in treating patients, even when the problems they are presented with appear to be grounded in their Islamic culture, usually because of misconceptions, guilt and anxiety. The therapists generally explore the clients’ problems by various other means such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (p. 194) based on C.G. Jung’s writings, but some do try to use more Freudian methods to analyse them using ‘chair-work’ and ‘self-talk’ to enable the clients to explore the roots of their own problems.