The Islamophobic Normative Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Considerations

Abstract

While much has been written about Islamophobia in recent years, in the interest of scope, this chapter primarily makes reference to and expounds on a divisive ideological profile that has the potential to be activated when we work with or think clinically about Muslims—or those thought to be so; the analysis is offered from a psychoanalytic perspective. The chapter emanates from a place of deep belief in psychoanalysis as a viable theory to metabolize, hold, and further the growing ability of ethical clinicians to name and address Islamophobia (much like other forms of sociopolitical systemic abuses), especially in previously unanalyzable spaces. It offers two examples from within the field: one extreme, if not dangerous, and another more benign, each of which will explicate a facet of this unconscious phenomenon. While neither example is a clinical vignette, they offer us an illustration of how clinicians themselves are called to participate, validate, and reproduce Islamophobic normative unconscious processes. The Islamophobic normative unconscious emerges as a formidable apparition that has the potential to cloud psychoanalytic theory and technique and unwittingly create hegemonic collusion within the therapeutic space. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)