Islamic Psychology: Foundations and Theory

Islamic Psychology: Foundations and Theory presents Islamic psychology as a systematic science of the soul grounded in tawḥīd (Divine unity), revelation, reason, and the Islamic intellectual tradition. Rather than adding Islamic concepts to models based on a different understanding of the human person, the book constructs Islamic psychology from within its own worldview. At its centre are Divine unity, the soul, primordial nature, love, perception, taqwā, dhikr (remembrance of God), and contemplation. The human being is approached as an integrated and dynamic unity of body, nafs (self/soul), qalb (heart), rūḥ (spirit), ʿaql (intellect), and fiṭrah (primordial nature). The book develops this account through its principal methodological innovation: the London School of Structural Islamic Psychology, pioneered by Dr Seyed Salman Safavi. Its methodology, Interpretive Semantic Structure, examines the ordered relationships among Qur’anic concepts to disclose a coherent psychology of the human being. Within this framework, perception, belief, taqwā, love, dignity, moral agency, and spiritual transformation emerge not as isolated themes, but as interrelated elements of an integrated psycho-spiritual system centred upon tawḥīd. Cognition, emotion, desire, moral struggle, character, suffering, healing, and spiritual development are understood as interconnected dimensions of the soul’s formation and orientation. Human flourishing is conceived not merely as adaptation, functionality, or subjective well-being, but in relation to truth, moral responsibility, rightly ordered love, spiritual refinement, Divine proximity, and falāḥ. Drawing upon the Qur’an, the authenticated Sunnah, ʿaql, and the metaphysical, philosophical, ethical, and spiritual sciences of Islam, the volume establishes the ontology, epistemology, anthropology, conceptual vocabulary, intellectual genealogy, and methodology of Islamic psychology. It brings this framework into disciplined dialogue with contemporary psychology, identifying where modern approaches may be engaged, expanded, integrated, or critically reconsidered in light of an Islamic understanding of the person. This is the first volume of a three-volume project. Foundations and Theory establishes the theoretical foundations of Islamic psychology; the second volume develops its formative and psycho-spiritual practices; and the third addresses specialised clinical application, empirical investigation, and outcomes. This sequence ensures that Islamic psychological practice and clinical care arise from a coherent account of the soul, knowledge, disorder, healing, and human purpose, rather than functioning merely as religious adaptations of psychological models developed elsewhere. The volume is authored by Dr Seyed Salman Safavi and Seyed Sadr al-Din Safavi. Dr Seyed Salman Safavi completed advanced Islamic studies at the Ḥawza ʿIlmiyyah of Qom and holds a PhD in Philosophy and Mysticism from SOAS, University of London, where he completed postdoctoral research in philosophy. The author of over ninety books, his scholarship brings together Qur’anic structural semantics, the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, Islamic mysticism, and the systematic study of the soul. Seyed Sadr al-Din Safavi is a SOAS graduate who also studied the Islamic intellectual tradition in Qom. His research, editorial work, publications, and translations span Islamic philosophy, mysticism, Qur’anic studies, and comparative philosophy. Written for psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, chaplains, academics, researchers, students, and readers of Islamic thought, Islamic Psychology: Foundations and Theory offers a rigorous and innovative foundation for the systematic study of the soul and the development of Islamic psychology as a coherent field of knowledge.