Salman Akhtar
Salman Akhtar, MD, was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. His more than 300 publications include nine books: Broken Structures; Quest for Answers; Inner Torment; Immigration and Identity; New Clinical Realms; Objects of Our Desire; Regarding Others; Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy; and The Damaged Core, as well as twenty-six edited or co-edited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and six collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Salma Akhtar received the Sigourney Award in 2012.
Psychoanalytic Listening: Methods, Limits, and Innovations
'Joseph Breuer’s celebrated patient, Anna O., designated psychoanalysis to be a "talking cure". She was correct insofar as psychoanalysis does place verbal exchange at the center stage. However, the... (more)
Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
This book provides easy to read, concise, and clinically useful explanations of over 1800 terms and concepts from the field of psychoanalysis. A history of each term is included in its definition and... (more)
On Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. Pushing aside the primacy of the... (more)
Unusual Interventions: Alterations of the Frame, Method, and Relationship in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
Radical departures from the set and familiar rules of technique often become necessary in the course of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. These can include conducting a session outside the office,... (more)
Three Faces of Mourning: Melancholia, Manic Defense and Moving on
Mourning and the importance of the capacity to bear some helplessness, while still finding pleasure in life, are central to this tightly organized volume. The multi-faceted processes involved in... (more)
On Freud's "Negation"
Ever since Freud proposed that certain ideas can be permitted to become conscious only in their inverted and negative forms, interest has grown into the entire realm of the presence of absence, so to... (more)
Between Hours: A Collection of Poems by Psychoanalysts
While accommodating playfulness and even a bit of audacity, both psychoanalysis and poetry deeply respect formality of structure, nuance of affect, and the multifaceted resonance of the spoken... (more)
Immigration and Identity: Turmoil, Treatment and Transformation
Why do people migrate from one country to another? What is the difference between an immigrant and an exile? What determines the psychological outcome of immigration? Can one ever mourn the loss of... (more)
The Trauma of Transgression; Psychotherapy of Incest Victims
Has there been an actual increase in the occurrence of incest? Or is the seemingly, greater frequency due to our increased awareness of incest and more careful listening to our patients? The... (more)
Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy: Initial Assessment, Boundaries, Money, Disruptions and Suicidal Crises
'Putting aside the narcissistic-masochistic aspiration of authoring a text on all the intricacies of in-depth psychotherapy, I have chosen to address five areas of difficulty in this enterprise. This... (more)
Lying, Cheating, and Carrying on: Developmental, Clinical, and Sociocultural Aspects of Dishonesty and Deceit
What constitutes a lie? What are the different types of lies? Why do people lie? Is dishonesty ubiquitous in human experience? And what should be done with individuals who seek psychotherapeutic help... (more)
Interpersonal Boundaries: Variations and Violations
Across the lifespan we may experience moments of sublime intimacy, suffocating closeness, comfortable solitude, and intolerable distance or closeness. In "Interpersonal Boundaries Variations and... (more)
Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment
This book integrates psychiatry and psychoanalysis to present deeper and sounder clinical profiles of the personality disorders than have been hitherto available.... (more)
The Damaged Core: Origins, Dynamics, Manifestations, and Treatment
This comprehensive and tightly argued book deals with the process through which a coherent self evolves, the various ways such development fails to occur, and the therapeutic measures to put things... (more)
On Freud's "The Future of an Illusion"
"The Future of an Illusion" reveals Freud's reflections about religion as well as his hope that in the future science will go beyond religion, and reason will replace faith in God. The discussion... (more)
Immigration and Acculturation: Mourning, Adaptation, and the Next Generation
Moving from one country to another causes a radical alteration of one's cultural and geophysical surround. Separation from friends and family, loss of valued possessions, and encountering new ways of... (more)
Freud and the Far East: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the People and Culture of China, Japan, and Korea
This book is a lexical ambassador with the dual responsibility of bridging the West and East and enhancing psychoanalytic conceptualization in the course of such an encounter. By juxtaposing the... (more)
On Freud's "The Unconscious"
If there ever was one word that could represent the essence of Freud’s work, that word would be ‘unconscious’. Indeed, Freud himself regarded his 1915 paper ‘The Unconscious’ as central to clarifying... (more)
The Language of Emotions: Developmental, Psychopathology, and Technique
This book is about affect-its origins, development and uses-and how it is viewed in a clinical setting. The authors track and further develop the recent major changes in the understanding of affect.... (more)
Good Feelings: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Positive Emotions and Attitudes
This tightly edited volume opens a new vista in psychoanalysis by focusing upon positive and life-enhancing emotions and attitudes. The realms it covers include love, friendship, enthusiasm, courage,... (more)
Severe Personality Disorders
This book is about understanding and managing patients with severe personality disorders. It covers biological, psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioural approaches and provides a pragmatic guide to... (more)
The Wound of Mortality: Fear, Denial, and Acceptance of Death
Death is a much avoided topic. Literature on mourning exists, but it focuses chiefly upon the death of others. The inevitable psychic impact of one's own mortality is not optimally covered either in... (more)
Matters of Life and Death: Psychoanalytic Reflections
The author's focus in this book is upon the intrapsychic vicissitudes of what it means to be truly alive and how death accompanies us at each step of our life's journey. He attempts to show that,... (more)
The internal mother: Conceptual and technical aspects of object constancy
This work analyses the concept of object constancy in the light of developmental research and clinical practice. The clinical implications of disturbances in object constancy are discussed, with... (more)
The Seasons of Life: Separation-Individuation Perspectives
This work shows how, in applying Margaret Mahler's developmental framework to the life-cycle, the separation-individuation process continues, even after a degree of self and object constancy has been... (more)
Intimacy and Infidelity
Contents include: Fidelity: from cannibalism to imperialism and beyond; intimacy and individuation; egocentricity.... (more)
The birth of hatred: Developmental, clinical and technical aspects of intense aggression
This work describes the problem of hatred and intense aggression, which are often directed against someone who is also loved. Analysts and developmental theorists discuss the development of hatred... (more)
A quest for answers: A primer of understanding and treating severe personality disorders
This text examines severe personality disorders from various angles. It covers: diagnosis and differential diagnosis; structure and dynamics; origins and development; evaluation and triage;... (more)
Mahler and Kohut: Perspectives on Development, Psychopathology and Technique
Aims to clarify the similarities and differences in the ideas of Margaret Mahler and Heinz Kohut, with regard to the mutuality and complexity of the interaction between the parents and the child in... (more)