Anxiety: Clarification, Critique and Update
Book Details
- Publisher : Karnac Books
- Published : October 2026
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 256
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98643
- ISBN 13 : 9781800134850
- ISBN 10 : 1800134851
Also by Salman Akhtar
Also by Mary Kay O'Neil
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A much-needed exploration of anxiety from a variety of outlooks: conceptual, developmental, cultural, and clinical – from both the patient and the analyst’s viewpoint. Ten original papers from ten distinguished clinicians from around the world under the editorship of Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O’Neil.
The book features contributions from a stellar international line up: Salman Akhtar, Maxine Anderson, Cobi Avshalom, Behdad Bozorgnia, Tom DeRose, Joseph Fernando, Alan Michael Karbelnig, Julie Jaffee Nagel, Gila Ofer, Mary Kay O’Neil, Nirav Soni, and Daniel Traub-Werner.
Anxiety is one of the most central concepts in both the theoretical and clinical foundations of psychoanalysis. Thus, the study of anxiety is, in effect, the study of psychoanalysis itself. Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O’Neil have gathered together a thoughtful group of scholars to cover this challenging terrain. The book opens with two chapters that lay out the groundwork for things to come: the first offers succinct definitions of the plethora of psychiatric and psychoanalytic terms pertaining to this emotion; the second elucidates Freud’s changing views of anxiety. These chapters are followed by independent discourses on separation anxiety and castration anxiety that attempt to describe, critique, and update these well-established notions. A section on cultural matters follows which includes essays on performance and climate anxieties. Part IV focuses on the clinical process and provides three pithy discourses on the entanglement of anxiety with enactment, aging, and trauma. The fifth and final part explores the analyst’s clinical and professional anxieties.
The book’s approach arises from a multiplicity of perspectives. It aims to strengthen theory, clinical practice, and the technical skills of all psychoanalytically oriented therapists. It is essential reading for practicing clinicians, trainees, and students to help them gain a better understanding of the complexities of anxiety.
Reviews and Endorsements
‘Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O'Neil have put together a unique volume on anxiety. They have enlisted distinguished contributors who approach this topic from varying perspectives. Thus matters of taxonomy, causation, accompanying fantasies, and defensive alterations of anxiety all feature in the pages of this book. It truly is a gift to the field, allowing us to find the latest on a most important topic.’
FRED BUSCH, Ph.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, Author, A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique
'This book is a gem. It offers an exhaustive and fascinating discourse on anxiety in its myriad forms. Above all, the essays contained in it help clarify all sorts of theoretical and clinical ambiguities. Akhtar and O’Neil's book is an essential source of knowledge for a wide range of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.'
CHRISTINE DUNBAR, M.D., Training and Supervising Analyst (retired), Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, Co-author, One Hundred Years of Psychoanalysis: A Timeline (1900–2000)
‘This well-edited and written volume takes the reader on an enthralling journey through the theoretical and clinical terrain of anxiety in its many forms and dimensions, from its fin-de-siècle Freudian conceptual origins to contemporary questions on the treatment of climate-change and related socio-political anxieties. The book believe speaks wonderfully both to more and less seasoned psychoanalysts and psychotherapists – yet also to students across mental health disciplines and beyond (i.e., as an amateur musician, I adored reading a developmentally informed chapter and case-study focusing on performance anxiety).’
DANIEL S. SCHECHTER, M.D., Psychoanalyst, Child & Adolescent, Psychiatrist, and Professor, Lausanne University Hospital and Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Switzerland
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
About the editors and contributors
Introduction
Part I: Conceptual terrain
1. The formidable lexicon of anxiety
Salman Akhtar
2. Freud’s changing views on anxiety
Tom DeRose
Part II: Developmental viewpoint
3. Separation anxiety
Nirav Soni
4. Castration anxiety
Behdad Bozorgnia
Part III: Cultural realm
5. Performance anxiety
Julie Jaffee Nagel
6. Climate anxiety
Alan Michael Karbelnig
Part IV: Clinical praxis
7. Anxiety, the post-traumatic zero process, and interpretation
Joseph Fernando
8. Unexperienced anxiety and unformulated anxiety
Gila Ofer and Cobi Avshalom
9. Anxieties encountered in aging and decline
Maxine Anderson
Part V: Behind the couch
10. Analysts’ clinical anxieties
Daniel Traub-Werner
11. Analysts’ professional anxieties
Mary Kay O’Neil
References
Index
About the Editor(s)
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.
Mary Kay O'Neil, a Supervising and Training Analyst of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, is in private practice in Montreal, Quebec. Currently, she is Associate Director of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (Quebec, English). She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto, where she was on the staff at the University of Toronto Psychiatric Service and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. She is author of The Unsung Psychoanalyst: The Quiet Influence of Ruth Easser and co-editor of Confidentiality: Ethical Perspectives and Clinical Dilemmas. Her research and publications include articles in areas such as depression and young adult development, emotional needs of sole-support mothers and their children, post-analytic contact between analyst and analysand, and psychoanalytic ethics. She has served on psychoanalytic ethics committees at local, national, and international levels; as a reviewer for JAPA, the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis; and, currently, on the North American Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
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