Egyptians having been putting their personality under scrutiny over the last few decades, so now that they have performed their own revolution, Rania Khallaf looks back at an earlier study and what it made of us Ahmed Okasha is a highly-crdited academic, chairman of the Egyptian Psychology Society and the Arab Psychologists Union. He held the post of the International Society for psychology from 2002 to 2005, and he has written 74 books on psychology and phsyo-psychology in both Arabic and English. In 2008, Dar El-Shorouk relaunched a book by Okasha which they called Analysing the Egyptian Character. Despite the new title, it was the fourth edition of a book first published in 2001 and originally entitled Horizons of Artistic Creativity: a Psychological View. This might explain why I found the current book title somewhat irrelevant to its content. The 267-page book is divided into 15 long essays, only six of which bear any close connection to the Egyptian people and society. Adding a snazzy title seems to be a common ploy on the part of a publisher to increase the sales of a book, and in this case to attract readers who are mostly uninterested in psychology to an unusual topic. In the first chapter, which carries the same title as the book, the author argues that "we cannot generalise on a group of qualities in a certain nation, because all qualities and values are there in people but in different degrees" -- an argument that, paradoxically, conflicts with the concept of the book as a whole. Instead of classifying Egyptian people into main groups according to geographical location (as we all know, Egypt's territory covers different regions: desert, the Nile valley and delta; urban cities and coastal and other rural areas, and the characteristics of the Bedouin, for example, differ substantially from those of city inhabitants) the author tends to cite general characteristics, each with a reasonable explanation. "The Egyptian character is characterised as simple, warm, responsible, coherent, and yet negative, aggressive, and with a poor understanding of the real essence of the religion and a tendency to take emotional and irrational decisions. It is also described as a dependent character, since it tends to condemn and to criticise the behaviour of other people, and yet repeats their mistakes." Also, Okasha argues, "Egyptians rarely have the urge to demonstrate peacefully to call for certain demands, as is the case in other countries. They tend to accept the status quo as if it were their fate." I believe another study is needed to analyse how and when Egyptians decided to revolt and to topple the political regime. Okasha, meanwhile, continues his theme of uncovering the relationships between this rather "passive" character and Egypt's social problems. There is a clear relationship between a high density of population in a certain area and the individual's psychological health, he says. Cairo is one of the most crowded capital cities in the world, with the ratio of people to one square kilometre reaching 53,000. This, he says, definitely leads to a lack of creativity; since the citizen is interested only in his or her own family concerns and is unaware of national issues and unwilling to participate in political life. So what of regions such as Sinai, which has a very low population density? Should the inhabitants be more creative and healthier in psychological terms? The book gives us no clue. "One of the main reasons for this poor creativity and negative behaviour is the misunderstanding of religion," Okasha writes: "We are still living in the shadow of heresy, superstition and fundamentalist ideas." Ever since the days when they worshipped their pharaohs, Egyptians have idolised their rulers. This characteristic, he says, has played a major part in hindering initiative and positive action and generating what he scientifically terms as "dependent characters". "It was odd enough for Egyptians to go out on demonstrations after the 1967 defeat to urge president Gamal Abdel-Nasser to stay in power at a time when he might have been put on trial as a leader who brought defeat to his country," he comments. It is easy, Okasha goes on, to deceive and brainwash people, which is what happened with a ruthless leader like Nasser who was able to exert control under the luster of authority and could manipulate the Arab world with his fingers. Another symptom traced by the author is what he labeled 'the language mess". He writes: "If we look deeply into Egyptian films, we find there are many phrases that need psychological analysis. This could be traced to the play Madraset El-Moshaghbeen (The Rowdy School), first performed in the theatre during the 1980s, which had a bad influence on subsequent generations. Many people after that used language that denoted a slack, sloppy and disdainful attitude to given social symbols and values." The author also refers to the tendency of wealthy people to enroll their children into English, American, French, or German schools. The result is that we have students who speak foreign languages much better than their mother tongue, yet in the same vein are unable to create and communicate with their native communities. Environment also plays a major role in forming the Egyptian character: pollution and the lack of such basic services as clean water, proper sewage and public transport lead to depression, aggression, and a sense of inferiority and isolation. This in turn leads to gloom, drug dealings, and an increase in crime rates and public acceptance of corruption. The author also points out that, despite the prevailing idea that the residents of rural areas hardly ever become depressed, recent surveys show the rate of depressive symptoms among dwellers in the countryside stands at 34 per cent compared with 28 per cent among urban residents. Emigration from the countryside to towns and cities is one of the reasons for this escalation. Moreover, the import of new values and a lack of security in families whose breadwinners have immigrated to Gulf countries have led to confusion, emotional instability and violence. The study also looks at the educational system as a major factor that defines moral and behavioral terms of reference and formulates the value systems children and young people. Okasha argues that the dynamics of the teacher-student relationship in Egyptian public schools are governed by a method of austere social control; a patriarchal model which does not support discussion or argument. Girls have the lion's share of the problem here, since most government schools impose the hijab (headscarf) as an Islamic costume, not for the sake of augmenting Islamic values but rather to draw a thick line between boys and girls in the same school. While boys have the chance to revolt against these rules at home to prove that they are the superior gender, girls are subject to rules dictated to them by home rules as well as by the school regime. In short, the author concludes, Egyptian schools in general adopt a paternal and authoritative code, thereby producing a generation of dependent citizens with a marginal role to play in their communities. This section of the book enriches the reader with a rather better approach to understanding the Egyptian psyche, while other essays focus on music and art and their correlation to psychological values. Analysing the Egyptian Character thus presents the reader with a partial glimpse of a broad subject, "the character of the Egyptians". It is rather a starting point of a long journey into the depths of the Egyptian people, a journey that cannot be dealt with by taking such a wide approach because of the rich diversity of Egyptian regions and customs and their rather complicated psychological nature. It is, however, a nature that has surprised the entire world with its unprecedented awakening of both mind and consciousness at a time when no one could have expected this "lazy and passive nation" to raise its voice so loud and so clear.
