Psychology Can’t Agree on Human Nature

From the outside, mainstream Western psychology can look neat and consistent but in reality, it’s much more fragmented and unclear than it seems.

On one end, you have neuroscience, which often suggests that we’re nothing more than brain activity. But it still hasn’t been able to properly explain things like consciousness.

On another end, you have approaches like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which most therapists use. CBT doesn’t try to define what a human being is, it focuses on what seems to help people feel better.

Then there are other schools, like psychodynamic approaches, which argue that there are deep, hidden processes within us shaping our thoughts and behaviour.

So overall, mainstream psychology doesn’t really commit to a single understanding of human nature. It neither fully explains what we are nor rules anything out. In that sense, it’s a field that feels quite uncertain and even in crisis.

Neuroscience hasn’t successfully explained the mind, and even advances in artificial intelligence haven’t come close to replicating human thinking.

At the same time, contributions from Islamic civilisation to psychology are often overlooked or downplayed in Western academia.

When people bring up “Islamic psychology” as another perspective addressing the same core questions, it’s often dismissed entirely. As if psychology only began in 1876 in Germany.

So the bigger issue isn’t just about different theories, it’s that the foundations of psychology itself feel unsettled, and some important perspectives are being ignored.

Dr.Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre & Shaykh Shadee Elmasry