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