Differences between Freud and Iqbal (Mohd Abbas, 2013, pp. 340-342)

Freud Iqbal

1. Their Personalities

-Born as a Jew, later became an avowed atheist.

During his professional life, he became a positivist

interested in empirical studies.

- A devout Muslim whose struggle in life was to see the

revival of true Islamic spirit mentioned in the Qur’an.

2. Concept on Human Nature

- Painted a distorted and ugly image of man.

- Man as an intellectual beast who under goes

neurosis.

- Shackled to his psychosexual development.

- Presented man as a dignified creation of God

(Khalīfatullah fil-ard).Through his philosophy, gave hope

that man can actualize many of his hidden potentials

embedded in his psyche.

3. Women

- Wrote disparagingly on women.

-Women’s status is lower than men.

-Women are doomed to suffer from many

psychological problems, like ‘penis envy’,

hysteria, etc. Unable to sublimate the id

impulses into creative works of art.

-Contributed less compared to men to the

human civilization.

-Wrote and spoke in honour of women and motherhood.

Iqbal’s ideas were parallel to the message found in the

Qur’an and Sunnah.

-Wrote beautiful lines of poems praising women of the

household of the Prophet (P.B.U.H.), women among the

followers of the Prophet, and Iqbal’s own mother.

-The ideal society should honour motherhood in order to

produce dynamic personalities.

4. Theory of Personality

- Presented a controversial theory, which

centered on the human sexual drive.

- Theory full of vulgarity and profanity.

- Personality develops over five stages known

as psychosexual development.

-Divided the human psyche into three

contending rivals (id, ego and superego)

fighting for supremacy of the human psyche.

-Theory reflects ideas taken from Plato,

Darwin, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others.

-Distorted data gathered from his clients who

came for psychotherapy.

-Kept on revising his theory to suit his

conviction.

- In line with the Qur’anic principles. Called his theory as

the philosophy of the Self (Khudi).

-Did not change or revise his theory when criticized by

some from the Sufi movement.

-Kept on giving explanation that is more detailed on his

fundamental views on the human psyche.

-Used intuition, contemplation and speculative methods in

conceptualizing his ideas. In formulating his theory used

ideas taken from Rumi and other early Muslim scholars

and made a marriage with the positive elements spoken of

by Western philosophers.

-Divided the human psyche into ‘efficient ego’ and

‘appreciative ego’. The two are not at loggerhead to one

another. The latter reminds the former during prayer of its

link with God.

5. Personality

-The psychic life begins when a child is born.

It starts with the id, and then followed by the

development of the ego and superego. As a

positivist, he did not explain what happens to

the human psyche upon death of an

individual.

- Personality is the outcome of a tense situation

that occurs in the human psyche. Out of the

havoc created by the warring components of the

psyche, the personality of an individual

manifests through his behaviour.

- The life of the ego has its beginning in God. It has

hidden potentials that an individual needs to actualize.

The ego has to face challenges in the external world. It

has to live in the midst of other egos in the society. It also

has a final journey to make upon death of an individual.

- Personality as well as behaviour is born in the human

psyche.

-Personality is the manifestation of the inner Self in the

form of mental states of an individual, which is eventually

displayed in the form of behaviour.

-Strong personality manifests in an individual when he

assimilates many of God’s attributes into his own

personality.