A Psycho-Analytical Reading of the Story of Joseph: Before Oedipus, a Brotherhood Complex

Abstract

Psychological studies in modern Arabic criticism as an attempt to read Arabic literature, ancient and modern, started from the complexes proposed by psychanalysis, that, following Sigmund Freud, are the most able to understand and interpret the psychological makeup of man. This was the method used by Mahmoud Abbas al-Aqqad to read the personality of Abu Nawwas and his poetry through the lens of narcissism in Abu Nawwas al-Hassan bin Hani. It is also the approach how Mohammad al-Nuwayhi took after al-Aqqad studied the Oedipus complex, leading to a chapter in the same book on “The psychology of Abu Nawwas.” Subsequent periods were not devoid of studies in the same direction, including Georges Tarabichi’s “The Oedipus complex in the Arab novel” and Khristo Negm’s “Narcissism in the literature of Nizar Qabbani.”