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.
Beyond the Primal Addiction: Food, Sex, Gambling, Internet Shopping and Work
Written by experienced practitioners in the fields of addiction and psychoanalysis, and illustrated by a range of moving vignettes, this groundbreaking book examines the psychological foundations of... (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)
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)
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)
Immigration and Acculturation: Mourning, Adaptation, and the Next Generation
This book provides clinical strategies for working with immigrant and ethnically diverse patients and their offspring while drawing observations from the humanities to reveal truths about the... (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)
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)
Brothers and Sisters: Developmental, Dynamic, and Technical Aspects of the Sibling Relationship
Sibling relationships and rivalry are as old as recorded history. This analysis explores that ambivalence between siblings, which casts its shadow throughout people's lifetimes and affects their... (more)
Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
One hundred (and one) tales to mark Salman Akhtar’s one hundredth book! Divided into eight informative parts – Dr Akhtar’s journey to psychoanalysis; the lessons he learned from his teachers,... (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)
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)
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)
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)
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 tension-discharge-gratification... (more)
Shame: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
A late-comer to psychoanalytic theorizing, 'shame' results from a disjunction between the ego and the ego-ideal. A complex psychosocial experience, it is comprised of a painful exposure of one’s... (more)
The Seed of Madness: Constitution, Environment, and Fantasy in the Organization of the Psychotic Core
More and more individuals with ego defects, severe object relations conflicts, affective turbulence, and unassimilated contradictions are seeking help from psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.... (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)
Bereavement: Personal Experiences and Clinical Reflections
This is a book about death, loss, grief and mourning, but with an unusual twist. It is different in that it explores specific kinds of deaths encountered within families and households, rather than... (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)
Silent Virtues: Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity
Silent Virtues addresses six areas of mental functioning, namely, patience, curiosity, privacy, intimacy, humility, and dignity. Each of the areas is elucidated with the help of clinical, literary,... (more)
Intimacy: Clinical, Cultural, Digital and Developmental Perspectives
Intimacy: Clinical, Cultural, Digital and Developmental Perspectives applies a contemporary, psychoanalytic lens to the many facets of intimacy between people, from romantic and sexual relationships,... (more)
Arrogance: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
Arrogance as a specific constellation of affect, fantasy, and behavior has received little attention in psychoanalysis. This is striking in light of the enormous amount of literature accumulated on... (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)
Regret: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
Missed opportunities, unfulfilled dreams, and broken promises are the stuff of everyday life and so is regret, the emotion that accompanies them. Unlike remorse which is consequent upon the... (more)
Jealousy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms
Jealousy is a human feeling experienced by everyone in varying intensities, at different times and phases of growth. Frequently confused, jealousy and envy are often intertwined. Even within the... (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)
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)