Ep. 9 | Exploring Spiritual Psychology in Islamic Thought | The Insight Interviews The Insight Interviews

Timestamps listed below

An informative discussion with Dr. Mojdeh Shariatmadari, Founder and Director, Alaa Cultural Institute Tehran.

The topic of discussion will be the role of psychology and its study in Islam and Shi'ism.

Hosted by Dr. Vinay Khetia, this instalment in our series ‘The Insight Interviews’, promises to be an engaging conversation.

00:00 / Beginning
00:29 / Guest Introduction
02:15 / Discussing the link between psychology and spirituality
03:13 / Her journey to Islamic and Shia spiritual psychology
05:54 / Looking at the Shīʿī duʿāʾ corpus
07:02 / What is spiritual psychology?
08:01 / The Age of Insanity: Modernity and Mental Health by John F. Schumaker
09:49 / Breaking down spiritual psychology
10:10 / Divine love in Shīʿism and its connection to the subject
10:20 / Viewing Wilāya as a divine friendship
10:55 / Love of ʿAlī is a part of faith - ḥubbu ʿAlī min al-īmān
12:27 / Whoever loves you (the infallibles), loves God - al-Ziyāra al-Jāmiʿa al-Kabīra
12:52 / Wilāya as the most significant differentiating factor in Shīʿī spiritual psychology
15:44 / The role of duʿāʾ (supplication) in spiritual pyschology
17:19 / Is there such a thing as "Islamic psychology" and how can we define terms?
21:47 / Discussing the earliest written work on Islamic spiritual psychology
24:35 / Abu Zayd al-Balkhī and his 9th century work on mental health
27:24 / What is unique about the Twelver Shīʿī concept of saʿāda (flourishing)
30:16 / Theory of the personality in Islamic spirituality
32:14 / What exactly is spiritual flourishing?
34:17 / Dr. Martin Seligman's theory of well being
36:15 / Mourning for Imam Husayn and its connection to well being
43:44 / Loneliness and Islamic Spiritual Pscyhology
49:12 / The relationship between wilāya and inner peace
55:03 / How would Shīʿism treat the concept of grief and loss?
58:15 / Grief treated through the lens of religious history
59:05 / Conclusion

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