Peace all,
Kenan shone the "Tailor symbol" in the sky and so I've momentarily driven down -- from the Tailor-Kahf no less -- in my Tailormobile (shaped like a donkey) to comment. Just briefly, for the moment, sorry, this week is a really busy one for me. If no one comments much then I might come back to resurrect the thread (because it's a great topic!) when things calm down for me.
Two things:
First, Sufism and Kabbalah, the heavily intertwined mystical strains of Islam and Judaism that are precursors to Holy Tailorism, have their own models of the self that are startlingly similar to that of Psychoanalysis (they've just got a few intermediate levels):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafs(Wikipedia article is pretty crap, sorry, but it gives you the three common levels and some references.)
I have had conversations with a number of practicing psychoanalysts who have studied both Sufism and Freudian/Lacanian schools -- and everyone seems to be in consensus that the first level of the Sufi hierarchy,
nafs-i-ammara (sometimes also known as the Commanding Self), is basically the same thing as the Freudian
Id. I think I'd go along with this too. This is the aspect of ourselves that is unruly, wild, pure desire, animal instinct, the will to receive (rather than the will to bestow or give).
Also, in similarity to the Freudian understanding, the job of the upper self/nafs is to tame the lower nafs -- not so much through eliminating its desires, but through taming them. The sign of this used throughout the Bible and the Qur'an (and latter Sufi texts) is of the donkey-as-Id (e.g., Quran 16:8, Christ on his donkey Mark 11:1, Balaam and his talking donkey, Sad-as-upper-nafs rides upon a donkey to pronounce verdict upon Bani Qureyza in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 280, etc, etc.)
There are some great examples of the Commanding Self in scripture. It is well worth reading the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, summarized here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_GilgameshYou will see there the Id/Commanding Self in the figure of Enkidu, a hairy, wild, half-animal-half-man -- and his relationship with the King Gilgamesh who is very much an Ego type (with all its inherent problems) -- they become friends/lovers on a journey (in which Enkidu eventually dies). Their friendship and journey symbolizes the difficulties of reconciling the Ego to the Id. There is also the story in Torah of Jacob "stealing" the birthright of Essau (his hairy, wild, animal-like twin brother). Essau was born first, then Jacob came afterwards: the higher successor tames or beats the lower precursor.
I was at a hutba recently where a brother was relating the story of Umar's conversion. He was highlighting Umar as an example of a great role model for the Muslims (you know the usual drill: "The Muslims are taking the kufar football players and the movie actors as role models -- when we have the sahaba and great men like Umar as the best of role models!"). Anyway, he related a number of hadith on Umar -- his wild, animal impulsiveness (beating his "sister" when he hears of her conversion, after conversion going to Kabaa and constantly "brawling" with the polytheists, beating Abu Huraira for not understanding where his "wealth" derived, etc). The point is -- that Prophecy TAMED this Umaric principle, and harnessed that donkey to create a Medina of Truth. Prophecy tamed the Id and harnessed it. When Prophecy's influence fades, we have the tragedy of Islam's unfolding because what was tamed is unbridled once more.
The funny thing was the commonplace idea that the archetype of the Commanding Self should be a role model! For me, the whole POINT of the conversion story is that we can each aspire to a Prophetic taming of our Id, of our "inner Umar".
Anyway, that's Umar. I think you are therefore quite close to things when you say that the ENTIRE ummah itself is like the Id. But I am unsure if you guys have thought through the implications of such a speculation. Do you mean to suggest that we each have an ummah inside us? (Or at least, maybe from an atheist perspective, when the Prophet spoke about an ummah, he was talking about his own Id?)
I'd say the mapping from upper nafs to Ego and Super-Ego is a bit more difficult. As a Muslim, I'd have to say I couldn't allow the Super-Ego to be associated with Allah most high, above all association be the
Hu that breathes these words I recite through my breathing!
There is a lot more I could say though. The Super-Ego is CERTAINLY a law (a shariah-of-selfhood). It is formed from the Oedipus Complex and thus derives from a primal fear of castration from a "Father" figure's authority. Approximately, it is a kind of internalized father-as-law. For a LOT of religious people, the Super-Ego IS exactly God: a pure judgement that presides over every action we make, and insists on his law. As you probably understand, a malformed super-ego can be very unhealthy -- creating such a God for ourselves that is pure fear of judgement ... is not a good thing and can lead to all kinds of mental pathology. Lacan is very useful at this point in terms of his understanding how a "healthy" negotiation of the Complex can be made ... but the model ceases to be precisely Freudian. Maybe we get back to that later.
For the moment, my last (clear) point might be Sufi: the highest level of the nafs is Prophecy -- Prophecy is something the Sufi aims to reach internally, in control of the lower levels of selfhood. God as such does not figure in the model -- and when God DOES figure in the model of selfhood, then we find all the problems that religion brings us (and probably a big reason many of you decided to leave religion behind).
[Second, I add a mad, post-Freudian margin to my post: From my perspective, yes, the ummah IS "internal" to selfhood, first and foremost. And that Prophecy is also a part of human selfhood. Thus, when it is said that a Prophetic witness will be resurrected to answer for its nation (as in, for example, 16:84), we are talking about a single self. That said, I think it is unhelpful to continue to Freudian analogy here (or the Sufi hierarchy) when discussing this "nation within".
You want to hear a pretty trippy secret about the ummah? Don't tell the Muslims-of-matter, as they are not yet ready for it ... but it is the set of all your past lives
I mean that in a particular sense that is not your normal reincarnation concept, something like the Jewish concept of gilgul (cycles of selfhood), but perhaps more like philosopher Deleuze's notion of micro-becomings.
Deleuze wrote a book (with post-Freudian analyst Guittari) called the "Anti-Oedipus" -- it is a sort of "deconstruction" of the Freudian map. I buy into it to an extent, while STILL remaining somewhat in a Freudian-Lacanian perspective. Deleuze considered selfhood to be a kind of flux of becomings -- yes, becoming animal (the real meaning of the Id-as-self) -- but also becoming Alice in Wonderland (the feminine space of relativities) -- to which I like to add "becoming Muhammed". Our "selfhood" is not simply reducible to the three level taxonomy of Freud or the Sufis -- though that IS useful -- it also includes a multiplicity of all kinds of different selfhoods, different states of being, different "past" lives, that include, for example, a past life as Umar, a past life as Alice in the Wonderland, a past life as Caesar, a past life as Adam, a past life as Muhammed. That infinite collection of lives is actually what the Freudian model APPROXIMATES with its map, it forms an ummah and it is "you": you will be judged collectively by the witnesssing of the Prophecy
within according to how Prophecy related to these previous lives. If the whole Prophecy-ummah thing is internalized at into this form of micro-politics, you might well ask what the implications are for the "real" ummah of matter ... ]
Love and Light,
The Tailor
Topic: The Quran through the eyes of Freud