Salman Akhtar
Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His more than 450 publications include 120 books, of which the following twenty-three are solo-authored – Broken Structures (1992), Quest for Answers (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2003), Objects of Our Desire (2005), Regarding Others (2007), Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy (2009), The Damaged Core (2009), Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009), Immigration and Acculturation (2011), Matters of Life and Death (2011), Psychoanalytic Listening (2013), Good Stuff (2013), Sources of Suffering (2014), No Holds Barred (2016), A Web of Sorrow (2017), Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest (2018), Silent Virtues (2019), Tales of Transformation (2022), In Leaps and Bounds (2022), and In Short (2024) – as well as sixty-nine edited or coedited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar has delivered many prestigious addresses and lectures including, most significantly, the inaugural address at the first IPA-Asia Congress in Beijing, China (2010). Dr. Akhtar is the recipient of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Best Paper of the Year Award (1995), the Margaret Mahler Literature Prize (1996), the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians’ Sigmund Freud Award (2000), the American College of Psychoanalysts’ Laughlin Award (2003), the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Edith Sabshin Award (2000), Columbia University’s Robert Liebert Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis (2004), the American Psychiatric Association’s Kun Po Soo Award (2004), the Irma Bland Award for being the Outstanding Teacher of Psychiatric Residents in the country (2005), and the Nancy Roeske Award (2012). He received the Sigourney Award (2013), which is the most prestigious honor in the field of psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar is an internationally sought speaker and teacher, and his books have been translated in many languages, including German, Turkish, and Romanian. His interests are wide and he has served as the film review editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and is currently serving as the book review editor for the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. He has published eighteen collections of poetry and serves as a scholar-in-residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. His Selected Papers (Vols I–X) were recently published and released at a festive event held at the Freud House & Museum in London.
Greed: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
Though references to it are scattered in the writings of Klein and Winnicott, the topic of greed has drawn meagre attention from contemporary psychoanalysts. This book fills that lacuna. Noting that... (more)
Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
In this, the latest in a series of books examining emotional states and psychological life, Salman Akhtar and Aisha Abbasi critically discuss a concept that remains, appropriately perhaps, elusive... (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)
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)
The Mother and Her Child: Clinical Aspects of Attachment, Separation and Loss
This edited volume focuses upon the formation of an individual's self in the crucible of the early mother-child relationship. Bringing together contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts and... (more)
Sources of Suffering: Fear, Greed, Guilt, Deception, Betrayal, and Revenge
This concise and well-written book deals with six important roots of human anguish. It divides the six areas into those primarily affecting the individual and those primarily affecting others around... (more)
Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis
The Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis is a unique and original contribution to the field of psychoanalysis. Emphasizing and underscoring the need for interdisciplinary discourse in understanding the... (more)
Human Goodness: Origins, Manifestations, and Clinical Implications
Human Goodness: Origins, Manifestations, and Clinical Implications focuses on the positive attributes that exist in each human heart. In this volume eight distinguished clinicians elucidate the... (more)
Guilt: Origins, Manifestations, and Management
Guilt: Origins, Manifestations, and Management is replete with clinical pearls and highly useful tips for the management of patients driven by feelings of guilt and remorse. Eight distinguished... (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)
The Geography of Meanings: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Place, Space, Land, and Dislocation
This book is a multi-faceted attempt to understand the psychological mysteries of land, space, native cultures, changing eras, and geographical dislocation. It shows us that many remote and seemingly... (more)
New Clinical Realms: Pushing the Envelope of Theory and Technique
Focusing on facets of mental functioning and psychopathology that remain largely unrecognized in psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature, this work raises intriguing questions about man's... (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)
Intimacy and Infidelity
Contents include: Fidelity: from cannibalism to imperialism and beyond; intimacy and individuation; egocentricity. (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)
The New Motherhoods: Patterns of Early Child Care in Contemporary Culture
The New Motherhoods: Patterns of Early Child Care in Contemporary Culture offers innovative perspectives in psychotherapy that accommodate emerging pathways to parenthood, changing roles of mothers,... (more)
Fear: A Dark Shadow Across Our Life Span
Beginning with Freud’s celebrated case of Little Hans, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have been intrigued with the topic of fear. Eclipsed in theoretical writings by the term ‘anxiety’, fear... (more)
The Electrified Mind: Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment in the Era of Cell Phones and the Internet
The Electrified Mind helps therapists understand and empathize with patients who rely heavily upon cell phones and the internet for the purposes of self-expression as well as for defensive avoidance... (more)
Good Stuff: Courage, Resilience, Gratitude, Generosity, Forgiveness, and Sacrifice
Good Stuff is divided into two main parts; Part I addresses Positive Attributes and Part II, Positive Actions. The former contains chapters on Courage, Resilience, and Gratitude. The latter contains... (more)
The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives
Brings together the contributions of distinguished mental health professionals and scholars of humanities to offer a multifaceted perspective on the transgenerational trauma of slavery, the hardship... (more)
The Electrified Mind: Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment in the Era of Cell Phones and the Internet
The Electrified Mind explores the positive and negative aspects of the internet and other communication technologies on the people who use them in order to help mental health care professionals... (more)
The Colors of Childhood: Separation-Individuation Across Cultural, Racial and Ethnic Diversity
Starting from a separation-individuation perspective, this text discusses cultural issues in child rearing and clinical practice. Included are chapters on African-American, Japanese, and South... (more)
The American Latino: Psychodynamic Perspectives on Culture and Mental Health Issues
The American Latino: Psychodynamic Perspectives on Culture and Mental Health Issues focuses on the culture of the Hispanic population in the United States and replaces stereotypes with portrayals... (more)
Listening to Others: Developmental and Clinical Aspects of Empathy and Attunement
This edited volume addresses the critical psychoanalytic issue of effective listening. This issue has been discussed widely in the literature but most often from the standpoint of technique.... (more)
Escuta Psicanalítica: Métodos, Limites e Inovações
A célebre paciente de Joseph Breuer, Anna O., denominou a psicanálise como “a cura pela fala”. Ela estava correta porquanto a psicanálise realmente posiciona o intercâmbio verbal no centro do palco.... (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)
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)