Abstract

SUMMARY Religious thoughts and behaviors can play an important role in the relief or exacerbation of psychopathologic symptoms in Muslim patients; therefore, every successful psychotherapist needs to be familiar with Muslim culture in his or her country. Furthermore, some clinical trials show that adding religious psychotherapy to the usual secular therapy can accelerate clinical improvement in religious Muslim patients. In this chapter, I will (a) provide a short description of the basic tenets of Islam, (b) describe important points in initial assessment of Muslim clients, addressing transference and countertransference issues, and (c) discuss several Islamic concepts useful in treatment of depression, anxiety, and interpersonal problems in Muslim clients. Clinical examples are also provided to show how these concepts can be used in psychotherapeutic settings. Defining psychotherapy is difficult (pp. 6–7).(1) Although there are many kinds of psychotherapy(2) and many differences between them, it seems that all of them have at least one common goal: decreasing clients' overall suffering. Each client coming to a psychotherapeutic session has some problems, that is, some issues that cause (usually serious) negative feelings such as depression, anxiety, or anger. The more a psychotherapist succeeds in helping the patient overcome these negative feelings and prevent their recurrence, the more successful is his or her psychotherapy. There are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world and Islam is the second largest religion in Europe and anticipated soon to be the second largest religion in the United States. © Cambridge University Press 2009.