The Psychology of the Theologian and Existential Anxiety: A Study of Psychological Defense Mechanisms in Kalām Thought

Kalām, as an Islamic theological discipline, emerged as a bastion for defending religious beliefs in the quest for reassurance, certainty, and identity, as well as to ward off anxiety, doubt, psychological tension, and the mental barriers to faith associated with them. The stances of theologians were shaped by accumulated psychological dimensions. For instance, the phenomenon of takfīr among the Khārijites represented a psychological response to the collective trauma they experienced during the arbitration (taḥkīm) and its consequences. In an effort to restore their lost balance, they resorted to a psychological defense mechanism known in psychoanalytic theory as “projection.”
In this study, entitled “The Psychology of the Theologian and Existential Anxiety: A Study of Psychological Defense Mechanisms in Kalām Thought”, the researcher examines the possibility of identifying the psychological foundations within Kalām thought as a psychological discourse, and the extent to which human beings have a psychological need to formulate doctrinal certainty in the face of a chaotic reality. The study also explores the tension between rational inquiry and the need for psychological security, as well as the dynamics of collective emotion, defense mechanisms, and the narcissism of small differences inherent in theological debates and the epistemological structures of sects.
A psychoanalytic reading of Kalām terminology and issues reveals the psychological concepts embedded within them that express existential anxiety and its causes. In its psychological essence, the analogy of the unseen to the seen is an attempt to humanize the metaphysical realm and render it familiar—projecting the cognitive structure of human experience onto the unseen and the Absolute—to alleviate the psychological tension arising from confronting the unknown. Likewise, the concept of the indivisible atom (al-jawhar al-fard) expresses a profound existential submission, transforming ontological anxiety into faith-derived certainty rooted in the feeling of the continuous divine presence. Moreover, the emergence of the Mahdī concept can be traced to psychological motives: the ideal of justice remained closer to an illusion, and from the silent hopes of calming people’s fears arose the idea of the awaited absent one.