Overview

In Short: Private Notes of a Psychoanalyst is wise, uplifting and inspiring. Salman Akhtar brings his talent for poetic literature to gift us 111 pithy 'proto-essays' on a wide range of subjects. His meditations touch upon mental health, humor, death, animals, Freud, religion, children, and so much more. He imparts his advice with the lightest of touches, willing you to partake, consider, and refine his offerings. His aim: to further the cause and message of his beloved psychoanalysis. AUTHOR: 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, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. His more than 400 publications include 105 books, of which the following 22 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), The Book of Emotions (2012), 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 (2021), and In Leaps and Bounds (2022).

Full Product Details

Author:   Salman Akhtar
Publisher:   Karnac Books
Imprint:   Phoenix Publishing House
Dimensions:   Width: 12.00cm , Height: 1.10cm , Length: 16.50cm
Weight:   0.248kg
ISBN:  

9781800132467

ISBN 10:   1800132468
Pages:   162
Publication Date:   01 February 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction Part I Preparation 1. Reading Freud 2. Three ‘must read’ papers by Ferenczi 3. Children, animals, and poetry 4. Alternate professions 5. Life style requirements 6. Silent sacrifices 7. Seeking diverse supervision 8. Setting up an office 9. A mysterious rug 10. Entering a world of ambiguity 11. Reading, reading and reading 12. Borrowed faith Part II Principles 13. Mental health vs. mental illness 14. A mentally healthy person 15. Half-sane, half-insane 16. Happy and unhappy children 17. Peek-a-boo 18. Hunger, vision, and the rhythms of nature 19. Learning from children 20. The non-human envelope 21. Toy shops are not for kids 22. Spirituality vs. religion 23. Sex–aggression–sex 24. Metapsychology 25. Two major updates on metapsychology 26. ‘Bad’ death instinct, ‘good’ death instinct 27. Six misunderstandings about death in psychoanalysis 28. Three reactions to separation 29. Two griefs that last a lifetime 30. What happens to the deceased’s possessions? 31. A crowded preconscious 32. Receiving vs. taking 33. Reaction formation and undoing 34. Even Unabomber … 35. Double-bind 36. The unknown, the unmet, and the unlived 37. Where does an aborted childhood go? 38. Being emotional vs. being sentimental 39. Feeling ‘at home’ 40. Who should change? 41. Toxic nobility 42. Basic trust, earned trust, and mutual trust 43. Good enough revenge 44. Where the ego was … 45. Two ‘great crimes’ 46. Detachment theory Part III Practice 47. Who picks the day and time for the first appointment 48. Abstinence 49. Safeguarding the sacred nature of the clinical space 50. Restroom 51. Where is Rome? 52. Hearing is essential for listening 53. Floating couch 54. Does the analyst’s gender matter? 55. No ‘correct’ way of laying on the couch 56. Handling patients’ questions 57. Doodling etc. 58. Addressing the analyst by his/her professional title 59. Not asking about actual sex 60. Before and after 61. About defecation and feces 62. Diminishing frequency of sessions 63. Chronic lateness 64. The use of a deliberately wrong interpretation 65. Small gifts given by immigrant patients 66. Refusing to listen to certain kinds of material 67. Being special 68. Pleasure and mental illness 69. ‘Insane chemistry’ 70. Demystification 71. Imaginary interlocutors 72. When not to give the bill to a patient? 73. Humility 74. Which form of racism is worse? 75. Masochistic funnel 76. The novelist and the poet 77. Analyst’s boredom 78. Analyst’s financial status 79. Where does the analyst look? 80. Insight addiction 81. Three different outcomes 82. Why not this at the end? 83. The fate of the analyst’s bills 84. Uttering an adult patient’s first name 85. Procrastination and nail biting 86. Stillness 87. Cats, not dogs 88. Countertransference sublimation 89. Financial extremes Part IV Profession 90. The second beard 91. Psychiatry and psychoanalysis 92. Do we need a prefix to ‘psychoanalysis’? 93. Jewish psychoanalysis, Christian psychoanalysis 94. Pauses 95. Writers and non-writers 96. Analysts’ memoirs 97. Was Bion Hindu? 98. PEP vetting 99. Age-specific writing 100. The ‘domestication’ of wild analysis 101. Childless child analysts 102. Three tips for supervisors 103. Non-analyst friends 104. The future of psychoanalysis 105. Blood killing 106. Un-associated and un-affiliated 107. The analyst’s funeral 108. Analysts turned gurus 109. Taboos 110. The analyst’s dog 111. Alternate pathways Acknowledgments About the author Name index

Reviews

‘Salman Akhtar distils his decades of clinical experience into pithy and poetic reflections on psychoanalytic theory and practice. His book, In Short, is a rare gem offering a thoughtful and provocative inquiry in both the prosaic and the profound facets of our profession.’ -- Joan Wheelis, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute; author of 'The Known, The Secret, and The Forgotten' ‘No one writes better than Professor Salman Akhtar. I simply could not put this book down, having read it with much pleasure in only one sitting. Sigmund Freud would have been extremely proud that Professor Akhtar has devoted himself with such warmth and such intelligence to our profession.’ -- Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London, and Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London, as well as Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council; author of 'Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis'

Author Information

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, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. His more than 400 publications include 105 books, of which the following 22 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), The Book of Emotions (2012), 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 (2021), and In Leaps and Bounds (2022).  Dr Akhtar has delivered many prestigious invited lectures including a Plenary Address at the 2nd International Congress of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders in Oslo, Norway (1991), an Invited Plenary Paper at the 2nd International Margaret S. Mahler Symposium in Cologne, Germany (1993), an Invited Plenary Paper at the Rencontre Franco-Americaine de Psychanalyse meeting in Paris, France (1994), a Keynote Address at the 43rd IPA Congress in Rio de Janiero, Brazil (2005), the Plenary Address at the 150th Freud Birthday Celebration sponsored by the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society and the Embassy of Austria in Leiden, Holland (2006), the Inaugural Address at the first IPA-Asia Congress in Beijing, China (2010), and the Plenary Address at the Fall Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 2017.  Dr Akhtar is the recipient of numerous awards including 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) and Irma Bland Award for being the Outstanding Teacher of Psychiatric Residents in the country (2005). He received the highly prestigious Sigourney Award (2012) for distinguished contributions to psychoanalysis. In 2103, he gave the Commencement Address at graduation ceremonies of the Smith College School of Social Work in Northampton, MA.  Dr Akhtar’s books have been translated in many languages, including German, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, and Turkish.  A true Renaissance man, Dr Akhtar 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 11 collections of poetry and serves as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.  

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