Dr. Mustafa Merter

In his psychotherapy sessions carried out for many years in Switzerland and Turkey, Psychiatrist Dr. Merter, who has witnessed countless types of spiritual and psychological problems, writes that the inner distress that can suddenly seize an ordinary person stems from being stuck at the level of self we currently inhabit — in other words, from “not being able to ascend.”

In short, even if I live a healthy life, build peaceful relationships with my loved ones, have a job where I can express my talents, and regularly pray and worship, there comes a moment when I begin to feel restless. Like a tiger locked in a cage, I cannot stop pacing angrily back and forth “on my own level.” And this stems from being unable to develop myself in an existential sense.

In The Nine-Hundred-Layered Human, drawing on a rich range of sources from modern psychology to postmodern theories of levels of consciousness and Sufi literature, Merter presents a multi-layered model of the ego/nafs…

Nefs Psikolojisi (or psychology of the self/soul), popularized by Dr. Mustafa Merter as the “third dimension” of psychology, integrates modern Western psychological concepts (Freud, Jung, Transpersonal) with Islamic Sufi traditions. It focuses on the multi-layered “Nefs” (inner self/ego) to address modern mental struggles like anxiety and depression