The french psychoanalytical connection

Submitted by Peter van Summeren (Netherlands), Jan 30, 2005 at 16:07

I wonder if people on this site know about La psychanalyse à l'épreuve de l'islam / Fethi Benslama? (Paris: Aubier, ISBN: 2-7007-2426-7 ).

It helped me a lot to understand how islamists could kill muslims. Also the position of women comes in a remarkable light. Most religions can not cope with women. Certainly not Islam.

I think that the unconsciousness is cultural dependent. Psychoanalysis shows that the rational is often for all of us, a false companion. In the arguments of both writers, Daniel Pipes and Lawrence Auster, peculiar turns are visible. For example Auster goes from one sentence to the other from the general to the specific (where he defines ecumenist) without arguments. Then Pipes has to defend himself against an argument that is applicable to many more situations (the pope also looks for ultimate harmony etc.). Auster also refuses to give arguments on the individual level for his civilizationism. Therefore he is to general again.
As far as I can see it, the Islam was very near what Descartes, as first one, stated. Islam is in my eyes a perpetual failed society. It could have had it all. But we have that. Also Catholic Church did have its difficulties with science. But it could adapt. Not so for the position of woman!

I indeed think that most people within Islam can live with their position. But the few who are driven out of their soul by the power of the West, they could be a study of psychoanalysis.

So, I have the viewpoint that the Islam will generate terrorists, but also that it is individual. The one I associate with the view of Auster, the other of Pipes. But the term perpetual failed society is mine.

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