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Islamic psychology translates the term Ilm-al Nafsiat (Arabic,علم النفس) the science of the Nafs ("self" or "psyche")) and refers to the medical and philosophical study of the psyche as it flowered during the Islamic Golden Age (8th–15th centuries). In Muslim scholarship the term nafs (self) could encompass a broad range of faculties including qalb (heart), ruh (spirit), aql (intellect) and irada.

Arab and Persian science contributed to modern psychology, psychiatry and the neurosciences. Advances in medieval Muslim psychology included the establishment of the first mental hospitals, the development of a clinical approach to mental illness, and the development of an experimental approach to the study of the mind.

Concepts from medieval Islamic thought have been reexamined by Muslim psychologists and scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries. Some modern reviews of the medieval Islamic study of mind have referred to it as "Islamic psychology", while others have reserved this term for the particularly religious view of the science, differentiating this from "Muslim psychology". Muslim science was infuenced by Greek and Indian philosophy as well as by tradition, observation and the study of scripture.

The commentaries upon Aristotle of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) influenced the Christian scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas in an era in which Arabic medical works were rapidly translated into Latin. However neither Aristotle nor his commentators ever became a required religious doctrine in the Muslim world. Contributions were also made by non-Muslims living in the Muslim world such as the 13th century Spanish Jew Maimonides who wrote about neuropsychiatric disorders, describing rabies and belladonna intoxication.

Classical texts and the philosophy of mind
An important example of the use of neo-Platonic ideas may be found in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (10th century), which discusses the soul, brain, and process of thought, dividing the soul into three; the vegetative soul, concerned with nutrition, growth and reproduction, the animal soul, concerned with movement, sensation, perception and emotion, and the rational human soul, concerned with thinking and talking. The Brethren of Purity contradicted Aristotle in considering the brain the most important organ of the body, responsible for higher functions such as perception and thought, and wrote that the thinking process begins with the five external senses which send messages through the nerves to the brain, which processes the messages in different locations of the brain.

Later Sufi psychology follows a similar pattern, using the three-fold division Nafs (ego), Qalb (heart) and Ruh (spirit). This is found as early as the Koranic commentary by Ja'far as-Sadiq and is followed by Bayazid Bastami, al-Tirmidhi and Junayd.

Ibn Sina (980-1037), known in Latin Christendom as Avicenna, was a practising physician as well as the leading scholar and theorist of his day. In The Book of Healing (1027) he discusses the mind, its existence, the mind-body relationship, perception, emotions and the will. In The Canon of Medicine (1020s) Avicenna extended the Theory of Humours to encompass "emotional aspects, mental capacity, moral attitudes, self-awareness, movements and dreams", a work considered by some to constitute a "forerunner of twentieth century psychoanalysis" yet based upon the Greek models of Hippocrates and Galen.

Faith and psychopathology
Mediaeval Christian physicians were influenced by Jesus' casting out of demons from the insane and the belief that Jesus had commanded his followers to expel evil spirits in his name. They therefore relied on demonological explanations, or the notion of punishment from God, to explain mental illness particularly. But Sura 4:5 of the Qur'an instructed Muslims;

""Do not give your property which God assigned you to manage to the insane: but feed and cloth the insane with this property and tell splendid words to him.""

This led to the establishment of mental hospitals in the Islamic world from the 8th century and an early scientific understanding of mental disorders as caused by dysfunctions in the brain. Insane asylums were built in Baghdad in 705, Fes in the early 8th century, and Cairo in 800. Other famous mental hospitals were built in Damascus and Aleppo in 1270. Medicine in medieval Islam used observation of mentally ill patients, moral treatment, medication, music therapy and occupational therapy. The study and treatment of "mental illness was a speciality of its own", known as al-‘ilaj al-nafs (approximately "treatment of the psyche" or "psychotherapy"), al-tibb al-ruhani (" healing of the spirit") and tibb al-qalb ("healing of the heart").

Hadiths of the Prophet indicate that dreams consist of three parts, and early Muslim scholars also recognized three different kinds of dreams: false dreams, patho-genetic dreams, and true dreams. Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Sirin's (654–728) Ta’bir al-Ru’ya and Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tabir al-Ahlam, a book on dreams and dream interpretation, states that it is important for a layperson to seek assistance from a an Alim (Muslim scholar) with a proper understanding of dreams.

The Persian physician Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi (850-934) introduced the concept of al-tibb al-ruhani ("spiritual health") to Islamic medicine in his Masalih al-Abdan wa al-Anfus (Sustenance for Body and Soul). He criticized doctors for emphasising physical and neglecting mental illnesses and argued that "since man’s construction is from both his soul and his body, therefore, human existence cannot be healthy without the ishtibak [interweaving or entangling] of soul and body." Al-Balkhi traced his ideas to verses of the Qur'an and hadiths attributed to Muhammad;

""In their hearts is a disease.""

- Qur'an 2:10

""Truly, in the body there is a morsel of flesh, and when it is corrupt the body is corrupt, and when it is sound the body is sound. Truly, it is the qalb [heart].""

- Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Iman

""Verily Allah does not consider your appearances or your wealth in (appraising you) but He considers your hearts and your deeds.""

- Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, no. 8707

So "if the body gets sick the nafs (psyche) loses much of its cognitive and comprehensive ability and fails to enjoy the desirous aspects of life" while "if the nafs gets sick the body may also find no joy in life and may eventually develop a physical illness." This holistic view emphasised body-mind unity and psychosomatic medicine, as well as the importance of actions and lifestyle in health.

Ibn Miskawayh (941–1030) in Tahdhib al-Akhlaq (Cultivation of Morals) and Al-Fauz al-Asgar (The Lesser Victory), gives advice on the fear of death, self-restraint and morality. He advises Muslims who feel guilt to correct themselves through charity, fasting, etc.

Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111) stated that "the self has an inherent yearning for an ideal, which it strives to realize and it is endowed with qualities to help realize it". It is, however, prone to the spiritual diseases of self-centeredness, addiction to wealth, fame and social status, and ignorance, cowardice, cruelty, lust, doubt, malevolence, calumny, envy, deception and greed. He described the personality as an "integration of spiritual and bodily forces" and believed that "closeness to God is equivalent to normality whereas distance from God leads to abnormality."

A full account of mind also required an account of religious ethics and experience. Avicenna argued that intellect "possesses levels of development from the material intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulani), that potentiality that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘il), the state of the human intellect at conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge." Mystics are particularly concerned with the nature of religious experience. Nūrī saw in man four different aspects of the heart, which he derived in an ingenious way from the Koran:

Sadr (breast) is connected with Islam (Sūra 39:23); qalb (heart) is the seat of īmān (faith) (Sūra 49:7; 16:106); fuad (heart) is connected with marifa (gnosis) ( Sūra 53:11); and lubb (innermost heart) is the seat of tauhīd ( Sūra 3:190).

Sufis often add the element of sirr ("secret"), the innermost heart in which divine revelation is experienced.

Empiricism and experiment
Al-Biruni (973-1048) also used an experimental method to describe the concept of reaction time:

""Not only is every sensation attended by a corresponding change localized in the sense-organ, which demands a certain time, but also, between the stimulation of the organ and consciousness of the perception an interval of time must elapse, corresponding to the transmission of stimulus for some distance along the nerves.""

The polymath Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965-1039) was nicknamed Ptolemaeus Secundus ("Ptolemy the Second") and "The Physicist" in medieval Europe. He has also been dubbed the "father of modern optics" for his influential Book of Optics which proved the intromission theory of vision and refined it into essentially its modern form and a "founder of experimental psychology" for his experimental work on the psychology of visual perception. In Book III of his Book of Optics (1021) he argued that vision occurs in the brain rather than the eyes, pointing out that vision and perception are subjective.

Ibn al-Haytham also studied the cognitive process of reading, giving the first descriptions of the role of perception in the understanding of written language. On the nature of word recognition he wrote:

""For when a literate person glances at the form abjad on a written paper, he would immediately perceive it to be abjad [a word denoting the Arabic alphabet ] because of his recognition of the form. Thus from his perception that the ' a ' and the ' d ' last, or from his perception of the configuration of the total form, he perceives that it is abjad. Similarly, when he sees the written name of Allah, be He exalted, he perceives by recognition, at the moment of glancing at it, that it is Allah's name. And it is so with all well-known written words which have appeared many times before the eye: a literate person immediately perceives what the word is by recognition, without the need to inspect the letters in it one by one. The case is different when a literate person notices a strange word which he has not come upon beforehand or the like of which he has not already read. For he will perceive such a word only after inspecting its letters one by one and discerning their meanings; then he will perceive the meaning of the word.""

In animal psychology and musicology, Ibn al-Haytham's Treatise on the Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals was an early treatise dealing with the effects of music on animals. In the treatise, he demonstrates how a camel's pace could be hastened or retarded with the use of music, and shows other examples of how music can affect animal behaviour, experimenting with horses, birds and reptiles. Through to the 19th century, a majority of scholars in the Western world continued to believe that music was a distinctly human phenomenon, but experiments since then have vindicated Ibn al-Haytham's view that music does indeed have an effect on animals. Al-Kindi also developed cognitive methods to combat depression and discussed the intellectual operations of human beings. Al-Kindi promoted music therapy and attempted to cure a quadriplegic boy using this method. Al-Kindi (Alkindus) (801–873) also wrote a treatise on dream interpretation entitled On Sleep and Dreams. Later in the 9th century, al-Farabi also dealt with music therapy in his treatise Meanings of the Intellect, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.

Ibn Sina also engaged as a physician in neuraoanatomical study. He held that intellectual dysfunctions were largely due to deficits in the brain's middle ventricle and that the frontal lobe of the brain mediated common sense and reasoning. He discovered the cerebellar vermis&mdash;which he named "vermis"&mdash;and the caudate nucleus, which he named "tailed nucleus" or "nucleus caudatus", terms still used in modern neuroanatomy.

The Egyptian Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) performed the earliest known dissections on the human brain, leading to the correction of incorrect theories of Galen and Avicenna on the anatomy of the brain in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon. Galen believed that blood reached the brain at the forebrain through the dura mater. Ibn al-Nafis wrote;

""The blood permeates first to the back ventricle (hindbrain) then to the other two ventricles. Dissection confirms this and disproves what they say. The permeation of arteries into the cranium is well known not to be from the front ventricle.""

Likwise Ibn al-Nafis corrected Avicenna's statement that the glossopharyngeal nerve, vagus nerve and accessory nerve arose from the nerve ganglion and attached to the sigmoid and facial nerves through membranous fascia so that these five look like one nerve emerging in three branches from the foramen lacerum. Ibn al-Nafis performed the earliest recorded dissection on the human brain and reported;

""About what he [Ibn Sina] said concerning the sixth nerve being attached to the fifth through membranous facia, I have not so far found a good reason for that attachment, and I have not even verified it. This sixth pair [a confluence of the glossopharyngeal, vagus and accessory nerves] both arises and emerges from behind the fifth, so there is no way it could be attached to it.""

Another example was Galen's incorrect theory on the optic nerve, in which he stated that the optic nerve "which comes from the right side of the brain goes to the right eye, and the nerve which comes from the left side goes to the left eye." Ibn al-Nafis also proved this theory wrong and stated:

""In fact it is not like that, [but] each nerve goes to the opposite side.""

Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) identified the "psychic faculties" with cognition, sensation, imagination, and animal locomotion, and disproved Aristotle's notion that these come from the heart rather than the brain through observation. After Ibn al-Nafis empirically discovered that the brain and nerves are cooler than the heart and arteries, he concluded that the psychic faculties come from the brain on this basis. He further wrote that it is the brain which controls sensation, movement and cognition.

Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) dealt with psychology in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon. He developed his own theories on hylomorphic psychology and philosophy, mostly on a theological basis. In particular, he made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and he developed his own theory on the soul. He also crtiticized the ideas of Avicenna and Aristotle on the soul originating from the heart. Ibn al-Nafis rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs." He further criticized Aristotle's idea that every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Ibn al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying ‘I’."

In the 9th century the Arabian psychological thinker al-Kindi (Alkindus) (801–873) experimented on himself in order to propose that sensation is proportionate to stimulus.

Psychopathology


Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (known as "Rhazes" in the west, 865-925), Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari and Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi ("Abu Zayd", 850-934) were early physicians who discussed al-‘ilaj al-nafs.

The Persian physician Rāzi wrote the landmark texts El-Mansuri and Al-Hawi, presenting definitions, symptoms and treatments of many mental illnesses. Razi managed the mental ward of a Baghdad hospital. He reported a psychotherapeutic case study from a contemporary Muslim physician who treated a woman suffering from severe cramps in her joints which made her unable to rise. The physician cured her by lifting her skirt, putting her to shame. He wrote: "A flush of heat was produced within her which dissolved the rheumatic humour."

Al-Tabari 's Firdous al-Hikmah ("Garden of Wisdom"), written in the 9th century, was influenced by early Islamic thought and ancient Indian physicians such as Sushruta and Charaka. Al-Tabari emphasized strong ties between psychology and medicine. Delusions can be treated through "wise counselling" by smart and witty physicians who win the confidence of their patients leading to a positive therapeutic outcome. In his chapter on mental illness al-Tabari described thirteen types of mental disorders, including madness, delirium, and Fasad Al-Khayal Wal-Aql ("damage to the imagination, intelligence and thought").

According to the psychologist Amber Haque Al-Balkhi was "probably the first cognitive and medical psychologist to differentiate neuroses and psychoses, classify neurotic disorders and show how rational and spiritual cognitive therapies can be used to treat his classified disorders." Al-Balkhi compared physical and psychological disorders and discussed "their interaction in causing psychosomatic disorders." He recognized that mental illness can have psychological and/or physiological causes - the body and the soul can be healthy or sick or "balanced or imbalanced". Imbalance of the body can result in fever, headaches and other physical illnesses, while imbalance of the soul can result in anger, anxiety, sadness and other mental symptoms.

Al-Balkhi stated that a healthy individual should always keep healthy thoughts and feelings in his mind. He also introduced the concept of reciprocal inhibition (al-ilaj bi al-did), which was re-introduced over a thousand years later by Joseph Wolpe in 1969. He classified neuroses into four emotional disorders: fear and anxiety, anger and aggression, sadness and depression, and obsession. According to Haque, al-Balkhi further classified three types of depression: normal sadness (huzn) which is "today known as normal depression", "endogenous depression" which "originated within the body", a "sudden affliction of sorrow and distress, which persists all the time, preventing the afflicted person from any physical activity or from showing any happiness or enjoying any of the pleasures", which may be caused by physiological reasons (such as impurity of the blood) and can can be treated through physical medicine. and "reactive depression" which "originated outside the body", caused by known reasons such as loss or failure and can be treated both externally (such as by persuasion, preaching and advising) and internally (such as by the "development of inner thoughts and cognitions which help the person get rid of his depressive condition").

Avicenna dedicated three chapters of The Canon of Medicine to psychopathology, defining madness (Junun) as a mental condition in which reality is replaced by fantasy due to a disorder of the reason. Avicenna first described a number of neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor. Avicenna also described a condition resembling schizophrenia which he described as Junun Mufrit (severe madness), reporting agitation, behavioural and sleep disturbance, inappropriate answers to questions and occasional incapablity of speech. He wrote that such patients need to be restrained, in order to avoid any harm they may cause to themselves or to others. Avicenna also dedicated a chapter of the Canon to mania and rabies, a bestial madness characterized by rapid onset and remission, with agitation and irritability, describing rabies as a type of mania.

Avicenna's contributions in neurology include his diagnosis of facial nerve paralysis, his distinction between brain paralysis and hyperaemia, and most importantly his discovery of meningitis. He diagnosed meningitis as a disease induced by the brain itself and differentiated it from infectious brain disease, and was also able to diagnose and describe the type of meningitis induced by an infection in other parts of the body.

The Tunisian Arab Muslim physician, Ishaq ibn Imran (d. 908), known as "Isaac" in the West, wrote an essay entitled Maqala fil-L-Malikhuliya, in which he first described psychosis, and also described a type of melancholia: the "cerebral type" or "phrenitis". He described the diagnosis of this mental disorder, reporting its varied symptoms. The main clinical features he identified were sudden movement, foolish acts, fear, delusions, and hallucinations of black people. This work was later translated into Latin as De Oblivione (On Forgetfulness) by Constantine the African.

Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (d. 982), in his Kitab al-Malaki (Complete Book of the Medical Art), described the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the brain, describing a type of melancholia, clinical lycanthropy, associated with certain personality disorders;

""Its victim behaves like a rooster and cries like a dog, the patient wanders among the tombs at night, his eyes are dark, his mouth is dry, the patient hardly ever recovers and the disease is hereditary.""

Al-Majusi elaborated on how the physiological and psychological aspects of a patient can have an effect. He found a correlation between patients who were physically and mentally healthy and those who were physically and mentally unhealthy, and concluded that "joy and contentment can bring a better living status to many who would otherwise be sick and miserable due to unnecessary sadness, fear, worry and anxiety." He also discussed various mental disorders, including sleeping sickness, memory loss, hypochondriasis, coma, hot and cold meningitis, vertigo epilepsy, love sickness, and hemiplegia. He placed more emphasis on preserving health through diet and natural healing than he did on medication or drugs, which he considered a last resort.

Najab ud-din Unhammad (870-925) described nine major categories of mental disorder, which included 30 different mental illnesses in total. The categories included obsessive-compulsive disorders (anxious and ruminative states of doubt), delusional disorders (which "manifested itself by the mind's tendency to magnify all matters of personal significance, often leading to actions that prove outrageous to society"), degenerative diseases, involutional melancholia, and states of abnormal excitement.

Unhammad made many careful observations of mentally ill patients and compiled them in a book which "made up the most complete classification of mental diseases theretofore known." The mental illnesses first described by Najab include agitated depression, neurosis, priapism and sexual impotence (Nafkhae Malikholia), psychosis (Kutrib), and mania (Dual-Kulb).

Unhammad also listed nine classes of psychopathology. This included the earliest description of Souda a Tabee (febrile delirium), which was in turn subdivided into Souda where patients showed impairment of memory, loss of contact with the environment, and childish behaviour; and Jannon (agitated reaction) which occurs when Souda reaches a chronic state and is characterized by insomnia, restlessness and sometimes "beast-like roars."

Neurosurgery
In al-Andalus, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), considered a father of modern surgery, developed material and technical designs which are still used in neurosurgery.

Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) gave the earliest accurate descriptions on certain neurological disorders, including meningitis, intracranial thrombophlebitis, and mediastinal tumours, and made contributions to modern neuropharmacology. Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson's disease and attributed photoreceptor properties to the retina.

Sociological approach
Al-Farabi's Social Psychology and Model City were the earliest treatises to deal with social psychology. He stated that "an isolated individual could not achieve all the perfections by himself, without the aid of other individuals." He wrote that it is the "innate disposition of every man to join another human being or other men in the labor he ought to perform." He concluded that in order to "achieve what he can of that perfection, every man needs to stay in the neighborhood of others and associate with them."

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), considered a father of sociology and the social sciences, was another Muslim scholar who significant contributions to the area of social psychology. His book Muqaddimah (known as Prolegomena in the West) was a classic on the social psychology of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Bedouins.

The earliest works on "the social organization of ants" and "animal communication and psychology" were written by al-Jahiz (766–868), an Afro-Arab scholar who wrote many works on these subjects.

Intellect and consciousness studies


In consciousness studies, al-Farabi (Alpharabius) (872-951) wrote the On the Cause of Dreams, which appeared as chapter 24 of his Book of Opinions of the people of the Ideal City, was a treatise on dreams, in which he was the first to distinguish between dream interpretation and the nature and causes of dreams.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

 * Further information: Avicennism - Thought experiments on self-consciousness and Avicennism - Avicennian epistemology and psychology

Avicenna was philosophically orthodox in his classification of human perception into five external senses. To these, however, he added five internal faculties; a sensus communis (common sense) that integrates the data of the various senses, an imaginal faculty that conserves perception, an active imagination that acts upon these images by comparing and differentiatng them, so serving as the seat of the practical intellect, a Wahm (instinct) that perceives qualities (such as good and bad, love and hate, etc.), so forming basic character, and lastly intention (ma'ni) which conserves experience in memory.

In The Book of Healing (1027), Avicenna wrote that at the most common level, the influence of the mind on the body can be seen in voluntary movements, in that the body obeys whenever the mind wishes to move the body. He further writes that the second level of influence of the mind on the body is from emotions and the will. As a thought experiment, he states that if a plank of wood is placed as a bridge over a chasm, a person could hardly creep over it without falling if that person only pictures himself/herself in a possible fall so vividly that the "natural power of limbs accord with it." He also writes that strong negative emotions can have a negative effect on the vegetative functions of an individual and may even lead to death in some cases. He also discusses hypnosis, which he refers to as al-Wahm al-Amil, distinguishing it from sleep. He states that one could create conditions in another person so that he/she accepts the reality of hypnosis.

Avicenna (980-1037) often used psychological methods to treat his patients. One such example involved a prince of Persia who had melancholia and suffered from the delusion that he was a cow. He would low like a cow, crying "Kill me so that a good stew may be made of my flesh," and would not eat anything. Avicenna was persuaded to undertake the case, and sent a message to the patient, asking him to be happy, as the butcher was coming to slaughter him, and the sick man rejoiced. When Avicenna approached the prince with a knife in his hand, he asked, "Where is the cow so I may kill it." The patient then lowed like a cow to indicate where he was. By order of Avicenna in his role as the butcher, the patient was also laid on the ground for slaughter. When Avicenna approached the patient, pretending to slaughter him, he said, "The cow is too lean and not ready to be killed. He must be fed properly and I will kill it when it becomes healthy and fat." The patient was then offered food, which he ate eagerly and gradually "gained strength, got rid of his delusion, and was completely cured."

Avicenna (980-1037) recognized "physiological psychology" in the treatment of "illnesses involving emotions" and develop "a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings" which is seen as an anticipation of "the word association test of Jung." Avicenna identified love sickness (Ishq) when he was treating a very ill patient by "feeling the patient's pulse and reciting aloud to him the names of provinces, districts, towns, streets, and people." He noticed how the patient's pulse increased when certain names were mentioned, from which Avicenna deduced that the patient was in love with a girl whose home Avicenna was "able to locate by the digital examination." Avicenna advised the patient to marry the girl he is in love with, and the patient soon recovered from his illness after his marriage.

Avicenna also gave psychological explanations for certain somatic illnesses, and he always linked the physical and psychological illnesses together. He described melancholia (depression) as a type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias. He stated that anger heralded the transition of melancholia to mania, and explained that humidity inside the head can contribute to mood disorders. He recognized that this occurs when the amount of breath changes: happiness increases the breath, which leads to increased moisture inside the brain, but if this moisture goes beyond its limits, the brain would lose control over its rationality and lead to mental disorders. He also wrote about symptoms and treatments for nightmare, epilepsy, and weak memory.

while he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and self-consciousness and the substantiality of the soul. He referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. His "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. Avicenna also wrote about the potential intellect (within man) and active intellect (outside man) and that cognition cannot be produced mechanically but involves intuition at every stage. As an analogy, he compares the ordinary human mind to a mirror upon which a succession of ideas reflects from the active intellect. He writes that a mirror can be rusty at first (i.e. before acquiring knowledge from the active intellect), but when the mirror is polished (i.e. when one thinks), the mirror can then readily reflect light from the Sun (i.e. the active intellect).

One of Avicenna's most influential theories in psychology and epistemology is his theory of knowledge, in which he developed the concept of tabula rasa, a precursor to the nature versus nurture debate in modern psychology. He argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which are developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to propositional statements, which when compounded, lead to further abstract concepts."

Al-Ghazali
stated that the self has motor and sensory motives for fulfilling its bodily needs. He wrote that the motor motives comprise of propensities and impulses, and further divided the propensities into two types: appetite and anger. He wrote that appetite urges hunger, thirst, and sexual craving, while anger takes the form of rage, indignation and revenge. He further wrote that impulse resides in the muscles, nerves, and tissues, and moves the organs to "fulfill the propensities."

Al-Ghazali discussed the concept of the self and the causes of its misery and happiness. He described the self using four terms: Qalb (heart), Ruh (spirit), Nafs (soul) and 'Aql (intellect).

Al-Ghazali also divided the sensory motives (apprehension) into five external senses (the classical senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch) and five internal senses, which he was able to describe more accurately than Avicenna. The five internal senses discovered by al-Ghazali were: common sense (Hiss Mushtarik) which synthesizes sensuous impressions carried to the brain while giving meaning to them; imagination (Takhayyul) which enables someone to retain mental images from experience; reflection (Tafakkur) which brings together relevant thoughts and associates or dissociates them as it considers fit but has no power to create anything new which is not already present in the mind; recollection (Tadhakkur) which remembers the outer form of objects in memory and recollects the meaning; and the memory (Hafiza) where impressions received through the senses are stored. He wrote that, while the external senses occur through specific organs, the internal senses are located in different regions of the brain, and discovered that the memory is located in the hinder lobe, imagination is located in the frontal lobe, and reflection is located in the middle folds of the brain. He stated that these inner senses allow people to predict future situations based on what they learn from past experiences.

In The Revival of Religious Sciences, al-Ghazali also writes that the five internal senses are found in both humans and animals. In Mizan al Amal, however, he later states that animals "do not possess a well-developed reflective power" and argues that animals mostly think in terms of "pictorial ideas in a simple way and are incapable of complex association and dissociation of abstract ideas involved in reflection." He writes that "the self carries two additional qualities, which distinguishes man from animals enabling man to attain spiritual perfection", which are 'Aql (intellect) and Irada (will). He argues that the intellect is "the fundamental rational faculty, which enables man to generalize and form concepts and gain knowledge." He also argues that human will and animal will are both different. He writes that human will is "conditioned by the intellect" while animal will is "conditioned by anger and appetite" and that "all these powers control and regulate the body." He further writes that the Qalb (heart) "controls and rules over them" and that it has six powers: appetite, anger, impulse, apprehension, intellect, and will. He states that humans have all six of these traits, while animals only have three (appetite, anger, and impulse). This was in contrast to other ancient and medieval thinkers such as Aristotle, Avicenna, Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas who all believed that animals cannot become angry.

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
H. Chad Hillier writes the following on the contributions made by Ibn Rushd ("Averroes", 1126–1198) to the field of psychology:

""There is evidence of some evolution in Ibn Rushd's thought on the intellect, notably in his Middle Commentary on De Anima where he combines the positions of Alexander and Themistius for his doctrine on the material intellect and in his Long Commentary and the Tahafut where Ibn Rushd rejected Alexander and endorsed Themistius’ position that "material intellect is a single incorporeal eternal substance that becomes attached to the imaginative faculties of individual humans." Thus, the human soul is a separate substance ontologically identical with the active intellect; and when this active intellect is embodied in an individual human it is the material intellect. The material intellect is analogous to prime matter, in that it is pure potentiality able to receive universal forms. As such, the human mind is a composite of the material intellect and the passive intellect, which is the third element of the intellect. The passive intellect is identified with the imagination, which, as noted above, is the sense-connected finite and passive faculty that receives particular sensual forms. When the material intellect is actualized by information received, it is described as the speculative (habitual) intellect. As the speculative intellect moves towards perfection, having the active intellect as an object of thought, it becomes the acquired intellect. In that, it is aided by the active intellect, perceived in the way Aristotle had taught, to acquire intelligible thoughts. The idea of the soul's perfection occurring through having the active intellect as a greater object of thought is introduced elsewhere, and its application to religious doctrine is seen. In the Tahafut, Ibn Rushd speaks of the soul as a faculty that comes to resemble the focus of its intention, and when its attention focuses more upon eternal and universal knowledge, it become more like the eternal and universal. As such, when the soul perfects itself, it becomes like our intellect.""

""Ibn Rushd succeeded in providing an explanation of the human soul and intellect that did not involve an immediate transcendent agent. This opposed the explanations found among the Neoplatonists, allowing a further argument for rejecting of Neoplatonic emanation theories. Even so, notes Davidson, Ibn Rushd’s theory of the material intellect was something foreign to Aristotle.""

Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (1377) states the following on dream interpretation:

""Often, we may deduce (the existence of) that high spiritual world and the essences it contains, from visions and things we had not been aware of while awake but which we find in our sleep and which are brought to our attention in it and which, if they are true (dreams), conform with actuality. We thus know that they are true and come from the world of truth. "Confused dreams," on the other hand, are pictures of the imagination that are stored inside by perception and to which the ability to think is applied, after (man) has retired from sense perception.""

Empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture
In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Arabian philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) first demonstrated Avicenna's theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island. The Latin translation of his work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many Enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.

Other philosophical theories of the mind
Al-Kindi dealt with psychology in his First Philosophy, and Eradication of Sorrow. In the latter, he described sorrow as "a spiritual (Nafsani) grief caused by loss of loved ones or personal belongings, or by failure in obtaining what one lusts after" and then added: "If causes of pain are discernible, the cures can be found." He recommended that "if we do not tolerate losing or dislike being deprived of what is dear to us, then we should seek after riches in the world of the intellect. In it we should treasure our precious and cherished gains where they can never be dispossessed…for that which is owned by our senses could easily be taken away from us." He also stated that "sorrow is not within us we bring it upon ourselves."

The Arab Muslim physician An-Naysaburi (d. 1016) wrote the Kitab al-Uquala al-Majanin, in which he used the term Mahwus for patients with delusions and hallucinations. He attempted to explain the phenomenon of madness and insanity in philosophical terms, rather than the psychopathological methods used by his contemporaries. He considered life as a blending of opposites such as health and disease, and wrote that reason is mixed with madness so that even the sane are never free from madness.

Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) (d. 1138) "based his psychological studies on physics." In his essay, Recognition of the Active Intelligence, he wrote that active intelligence is the most important ability of human beings, and he wrote many other essays on sensations and imaginations. He concluded that "knowledge cannot be acquired by senses alone but by Active Intelligence, which is the governing intelligence of nature." He begins his discussion of the soul with the definition that "bodies are composed of matter and form and intelligence is the most important part of man—sound knowledge is obtained through intelligence, which alone enables one to attain prosperity and build character." He viewed the unity of the rational soul as the principle of the individual identity, and that by its contact with the Active Intelligence, it "becomes one of those lights that gives glory to God." His definition of freedom is "that when one can think and act rationally". He also writes that "the aim of life should be to seek spiritual knowledge and make contact with Active Intelligence and thus with the Divine."

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149-1209) wrote the Kitab al Nafs Wa’l Ruh, which deals with both human psychology and animal psychology along the same lines. In this work, he analyzed the different types of pleasures as sensuous and intellectual, and explained their comparative relations with one another. He asserted that "a careful scrutiny of pleasure would reveal that it consists essentially in the elimination of pain." He then gives the following example: "the hungrier a man is, the greater is his enjoyment of pleasure of eating." He also argues that "the gratification of pleasure is proportionate to the need or desire of the animal" and that when "these needs are satisfied or desires fulfilled, the pleasure actually turns into revulsion," as "excess of food or sex results not in more pleasure, but in pain." He argued that human needs and desires are endless, and "their satisfaction is by definition impossible." He concludes that mental pleasure is more "noble and perfect than the sensual pleasure" and suggests that "the excellence and perfection" of a human is only realized by means of science, knowledge and "excellent manners," rather than "eating, drinking, and mating."