Psychoanalytic Listening: Methods, Limits, and Innovations
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : October 2012
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 208
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 33344
- ISBN 13 : 9781780491455
- ISBN 10 : 178049145X
Also by Salman Akhtar
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'Joseph Breuer’s celebrated patient, Anna O., designated psychoanalysis to be a "talking cure". She was correct insofar as psychoanalysis does place verbal exchange at the center stage. However, the focus upon the patient’s and therapist’s speaking activities diverted attention from how the two parties listen to each other. Psychoanalysis is a listening and talking cure. Both elements are integral to clinical work. Listening with no talking can only go so far. Talking without listening can mislead and harm. And yet, the listening end of the equation has received short shrift in analytic literature.
This book aims to rectify this problem by focusing upon analytic listening. Taking Freud’s early description of how an analyst ought to listen as its starting point, the book traverses considerable historical, theoretical, and clinical territory. The ground covered ranges from diverse methods of listening through the informative potential of the countertransference to the outer limits of our customary attitude where psychoanalytic listening no longer helps and might even be contraindicated.'
- Salmon Akhtar, from his Introduction
Reviews and Endorsements
'In this slim but remarkable volume, Salman Akhtar has recast psychoanalysis, the renowned "talking cure", as essentially a "listening cure". Like a virtuoso musician, he guides us to better discern the sounds and silences of the analytic hour. His book is replete with experience-near vignettes and contains numerous pearls of clinical wisdom. It is bound to become another classic in the Akhtar tradition!'
- Ira Brenner, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia
'It might seem a matter to be taken for granted; of course, analysts listen to their patients. Far from being so, listening analytically is an essential skill that may take the analyst years to learn and is a skill that would seem to be unteachable. Salman Akhtar has taken up the challenge and demonstrates, in this masterful volume, how complex and multifaceted is this seemingly simple act. He reveals with brilliant clarity the many modes in which the analyst may listen to his patient and listen to himself while with his patient, and he provides the student a theoretical and practical base from which to learn to listen "like an analyst".'
- Herbert J. Schlessinger, Ph.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York
About the Author(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 twenty-three solo authored books – 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.
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