Salman Akhtar | |
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Children | Kabir Akhtar (son) |
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Relatives | Javed Akhtar (brother) Farhan Akhtar (nephew) Zoya Akhtar (niece) |
Salman Akhtar (born 31 July 1946) [1] is an Indian-American psychoanalyst practicing in the United States. He is an author and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
Salman Akhtar was born in Khairabad, Uttar Pradesh to Jan Nisar Akhtar, a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet, and Safia Akhtar, a teacher and writer. His grandfather, Muztar Khairabadi, was a poet while his great great grandfather, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, was a scholar of Islamic studies and theology and played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He is the brother of veteran poet and film lyricist Javed Akhtar and brother-in-law of actress and social activist Shabana Azmi. His son Kabir Akhtar is an American television director and Emmy-nominated editor.
After receiving his M.B.B.S. degree at Aligarh Muslim University's Medical School (JNMC) [2] in India, Salman Akhtar did his internship at Maulana Azad Medical College of the University of Delhi in India. He completed post-graduate medical education in psychiatry at PGIMER Chandigarh under renowned Psychiatrist N. N. Wig. [3] During this time, he wrote a famous article "A phenomenological analysis of symptoms in obsessive-compulsive neurosis". [4] He moved to the United States in 1973 and repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia Medical Center in 1976. He obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute in 1986.
Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College and psychiatrist an at the Jefferson University Hospital as well as 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. Salman Akhtar has authored, edited, or co-edited more than 300 publications, including 100 academic books. He has also 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 also has published seven collections of poetry and serves as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. In recent history, the term has been used to refer to anxiety-related conditions more generally.
Paul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", "schizoid", "autism", depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called "Bleuler's happily chosen term ambivalence".
Kleptomania is the inability to resist the urge to steal items, usually for reasons other than personal use or financial gain. First described in 1816, kleptomania is classified in psychiatry as an impulse control disorder. Some of the main characteristics of the disorder suggest that kleptomania could be an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder, but also share similarities with addictive and mood disorders.
In psychoanalysis, egosyntonic refers to the behaviors, values, and feelings that are in harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or consistent with one's ideal self-image. Egodystonic is the opposite, referring to thoughts and behaviors that are conflicting or dissonant with the needs and goals of the ego, or further, in conflict with a person's ideal self-image.
Léon Wurmser was a Swiss psychoanalyst, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at West Virginia University and a training and supervising analyst of the New York Freudian Society. He was formerly Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program at University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Medard Boss was a Swiss psychoanalytic psychiatrist who developed a form of psychotherapy known as Daseinsanalysis, which united the psychotherapeutic practice of psychoanalysis with the existential phenomenological philosophy of friend and mentor Martin Heidegger.
Vamık D. Volkan, M.D., DFLAPA, FACPsa, is a Turkish Cypriot born American psychiatrist, internationally known for his 40 years work bringing together conflictual groups for dialogue and mutual understanding. Among his many other honours, he is the president emeritus of International Dialogue Initiative (IDI).
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional excesses—a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events.
Fixation is a concept that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.
Jack Drescher is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Edmund Bergler was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst whose books covered such topics as childhood development, mid-life crises, loveless marriages, gambling, self-defeating behaviors, and homosexuality. He has been described as the most important psychoanalytic theorist of homosexuality in the 1950s.
The American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP) is a scholarly society including psychiatrists interested in all aspects of psychodynamic psychiatry.
Emil Arthur Gutheil was a Polish-American psychiatrist specializing in human sexuality, music therapy, and psychoanalysis. He was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and editor of the American Journal of Psychotherapy.
Counterphobic attitude is a response to anxiety that, instead of fleeing the source of fear in the manner of a phobia, actively seeks it out, in the hope of overcoming the original anxiousness.
Robert Waelder (1900–1967) was a noted Austrian psychoanalyst and member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Waelder studied under Anna Freud and Hermann Nunberg. He was known for his work bringing together psychoanalysis and politics and wrote extensively on the subject.
Charles Prudhomme, M.D. (1908–1988), an African-American physician and psychoanalyst, entered the field of psychiatry in the 1930s. He served as the vice-president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1970–1971, the first African-American to gain elected office in the organization.
Elvin Semrad (1909-1976) was a prominent American psychoanalytic psychiatrist. He was noted for his ability to establish a rapport with deeply troubled individuals. He was one of the most influential teachers of psychotherapy in his time and he had been trained by a close associate of Freud.
Helen Block Lewis was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Her work pioneered the study of the differences between guilt and shame. She founded the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology, taught at universities, was the psychoanalysis division president of the American Psychological Association, and wrote several books. Her books include Shame and Guilt in Neurosis, Psychic War in Men and Women, Freud and Modern Psychology volume 1 and 2, Sex and the Superego, and The Role of Shame in Symptom Formation.