Summary Article:An Introduction to the Psychology of Occultation
Mushtaq Al-Ali, Ph.D.
Translated by: Mujtaba Al-Helu
As long as psychology could be defined as the field of study that is concerned with human behavior and foreseeing his next actions, there are various fields of psychology as the psychology of personality, business, industrialization, and crime, we can also add to this long list of categories the ‘psychology of Occultation’, as long as the individuals are connected to this concept, to understand their behavior, control it, and to foresee it.
The concern of this field would be the connection of a group of people to the Occultation of Imam Al-Mahdi and its effect to their everyday life, physically and spiritually. By physically I mean the very actions resulted from such a connection, and by spiritual I mean the ideological challenges that one may encounter in his life.
In the light of general psychology, I may describe the psychology of Occultation through three stages:
١- Describing human behavior to understand it: this includes describing that behavior before and after Occultation to understand the divine wisdom behind this choice.
٢- The stage of regulating human behavior: the concern of this stage is to control the negative impact of human behavior and to modify it positively through various means, among which are the following:
a. The strategy of misfortunes.
b. The strategy of awaiting.
c. The strategy of role model.
d. The strategy of trial.
٣- The stage of foreseeing the behavior: the concern of this stage is to maintain the positive aspects of human behavior through divine trials and to position individuals among the chosen ones (the chosen nation according to Quran), finally to be awarded by the Debut of Imam Al-Mahdi.
To summarize, this paper aims at certain points, which are the following:
١- To read Mahdism from different viewpoints than those of the classical reading and textual analysis.
٢- Analyzing this concept through Western psychoanalytic theories and means, an attempt to read Mahdism both under the Islamic and Western theories.
٣- To frame Mahdism with a more modern contemporary understanding of people who believe more in scientific aspects than other things.
