Islamic psychology translates the term ʿIlm al-Nafs[1] (Arabic,علم النفس) the science of the Nafs ("self" or "psyche")[2] and refers to the medical and philosophical study of the psyche from an Islamic perspective. This article is about the subject during the Islamic Golden Age (9th–13th centuries).
Concepts from medieval Islamic thought have been reexamined by Muslim psychologists and scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries.[3]
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In the writings of Muslim scholars, the term Nafs (self or soul) was used to denote individual personality and the term fitrah for human nature. Nafs encompassed a broad range of faculties including the qalb (heart), the ruh (spirit), the aql (intellect) and irada (will). Muslim scholarship was strongly influenced by Greek and Indian philosophy as well as by the study of scripture.
In medieval Islamic medicine in particular, the study of "mental illness was a speciality of its own",[4] and was variously known as al-‘ilaj al-nafs (approximately "curing/treatment of the ideas/soul/vegetative mind),[5] al-tibb al-ruhani ("the healing of the spirit," or "spiritual health") and tibb al-qalb ("healing of the heart/self," or "mental medicine").[2]
Some authors have argued that the medieval scientist Alhazen should be considered the founder of psychophysics, and by definition, of experimental psychology.[6] However, there is no evidence that he used quantitative psychophysical techniques and many of his psychological speculations had been remarked upon previously by other polymaths of the ancient world such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Lucretius and Euclid.[7] To apply the term "psychology" to the works of Alhazen is presentist, anachronistic and it has been argued that to do so is boosterist.[7]