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. He has authored, edited or co-edited more than 300 publications including books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis and several collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Salman Akhtar received the Sigourney Award in 2012.
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)
A Web of Sorrow: Mistrust, Jealousy, Lovelessness, Shamelessness, Regret, Hopelessness
Bringing together the experiences of mistrust, jealousy, lack of love, shamelessness, regret, and despair, this far-reaching book elucidates human sorrow in striking sociocultural and clinical... (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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Hopelessness: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
Hope is the most reliable sustainer of life. It offers the promise of something good in the future, contributes to resilience, and keeps one going. However, there are circumstances when hope dries... (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)
Betrayal: Developmental, Literary, and Clinical Realms
Betrayal underlies all psychic trauma, whether sexual abuse or profound neglect, violence or treachery, extramarital affair or embezzlement. When we betray others, we violate their confidence in us.... (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)
Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest: Psychoanalytic Reflections
In this compact and pithy book, the distinguished and prolific psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar steps out of his consulting room to address certain matters of urgent global concern. These include... (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)
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)
Guilt: Origins, Manifestations, and Management
In this elegantly written book, eight distinguished psychoanalysts address the ubiquitous phenomenon of guilt. They describe the childhood experiences that form the bedrock of this emotion and... (more)
Good Stuff: Generosity, Resilience, Humility, Gratitude, 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)
Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and its Sublimation
‘This book is a major contribution to culture and to the psychoanalytic literature. The authors explore how animals, both wild and domesticated, have powerful symbolic meanings in our psyches,... (more)
Mental Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and its Pathology
‘Salman Akhtar and Vamik Volkan’s dynamic book, Mental Zoo, takes the reader on a panoramic tour illuminating the rich world of animals in human experience. Here Freud’s rats, wolves, and horses join... (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)
Revenge: Narcissistic Injury, Rage, and Retaliation
Revenge: Narcissistic Injury, Rage, and Retaliation addresses the ubiquitous human wish to take revenge and settle scores. Featuring the contributions of eleven distinguished mental health... (more)
Beyond the Symbiotic Orbit: Advances in Separation-Individuation
In this tribute to Selma Kramer, eminent child analyst and colleague and close friend of the late Margaret Mahler, senior analysts explore the continuing relevance of Mahler's... (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 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)
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)
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 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)
Does God Help?: Developmental and Clinical Aspects of Religious Belief
Can psychoanalysis lead us toward understanding the roots and nature of religious belief? In this text, five classical psychoanalysts representing five different religious faiths share their... (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)