Summary

Shakry’s (2017) book explores the conjunctions and elaborations of psychoanalysis and Islamic thought. Shakry uses 20th century thinkers of Egypt to demonstrate how Islamic traditions were used to think through some of the profound theories of psychoanalysis. “The hybridization of psychoanalytic thought with pre-psychoanalytic Islamic discursive formations illustrates that The Arabic Freud emerged not as something developed in Europe only to be diffused at its point of application elsewhere, but rather as something elaborated, like psychoanalysis itself, across the space of human difference" (2).  In the first two chapters of her book, she uses two cases to demonstrate how Freudian psychoanalysis entered Egyptian academic discourse and their coherent engagements with Islam, and Sufism in particular. Ultimately, the book challenges the idea of a homogenous, Western school of psychoanalysis. Instead, Shakry demonstrates the compatibility of Islam and psychoanalytic inquiry.