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This is the perfect little book to dip into and galvanize your thoughts. Was Bion Hindu? What happens at psychoanalysts’ funerals? Which form of racism is worse? Dr. Akhtar gives his reflections but what are yours? Divided into four parts with four Ps – Preparation, Principles, Practice, Profession – you’ll want to return to this book again and again.
| Author |
Salman Akhtar |
|---|---|
| ISBN |
9781800132467 |
| Format |
Small format paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book |
| Page Extent |
162 |
| Publication Date |
February 2024 |
| Subject Areas |
Psychoanalysis |
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.
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.
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
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PROFESSOR BRETT KAHR, Senior Fellow, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London, and Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London –
‘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.’
JOAN WHEELIS, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute; author of The Known, The Secret, and The Forgotten –
‘Salman Akhtar distils his decades of clinical practice 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.’