IAS: Sufism Psychology Forum

Sufism and Psychology Forum

Newsletter

Sufism & Psychology Newsletter

In 2004, our “Letter from the Editors” began

Welcome to Psychology: Traditional, Spiritual, Contemporary. Previously entitled Sufism and Psychology Forum Newsletter, we have decided to change our format in order to reach a wider audience. Our goal is to be more inclusive, interfaith, and interdisciplinary, seeking bridges between the old and the new, always centering around the relationship between self-knowledge and spirituality.

In the intervening years we have fulfilled the goal of becoming more inclusive and have had articles representing a wide range of spiritual and psychological perspectives, oftentimes coinciding with presentations at the Spirituality and Psychology Panel at the annual Sufism Symposium. Several of these articles can be found archived on this site.

That first issue included Lonnie A. Nelson's and Shauna Shapiro's excellent article Great Nest of Being, which took a broad view of spirituality as a developmental process, and properly placed the domain of psychology in perspective as an aspect of this larger field. Subsequent issues have included articles such as “Sufism and Image Psychology” by Akhter Ahsen, the renowned image-psychologist; an cross-cultural exploration of learning ,“Sohbet and Western Education, by Transpersonal educator Olga Louchakova; Nondual Realization and the Personal Self, by Judith Blackstone, a therapist and teacher of nondual practice; and psychologist ” John Prendergast’s “Body of Wisdom: Discovering Your Body’s Natural Sense of the Truth.”

We are excited to continue to extend this bridging of traditions and cross-fertilization of psychological knowledge in an inclusive spiritual context in future issues.

For more information to order the newsletter, or if you have comments or suggestions, please contact us at spf@ias.org