Silent Virtues: Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity PDF
Preview Silent Virtues: Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity
‘In a style that is at once intimate, well-researched and engaging, Salman Akhtar takes the reader through an exploration of patience, curiosity, privacy, intimacy, humility and dignity–matters that are rarely considered within the psychoanalyticrealm. Drawing on poetry, personalreminiscences, and clinical moments that shimmer with delicate truths, Akhtar shines a light on psychic experiences that reside in the interior spaces of the mind and are integral to shaping one’s core sense of being in the world. He examines benevolent and malignantformsofeachtraitandimpartsclinical,developmental,andcultural insightswith great wit, generosity andwisdom.’ Anne J. Adelman, Ph.D, Faculty Member of the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis; editor of Psychoanalytic Reflections on Parenting Teens and Young Adults (2018). ‘In this important book, Salman Akhtar offers an unexpected and enlivening proposal: that we should stop arguing about what makes us sick and start paying more attention to what makes us healthy, especially to the “silent vir- tues” of patience, curiosity, privacy, intimacy, humility, and dignity. Akhtar’s generative and thought-provoking account of these virtues constitutes a pro- foundly moral vision of I-Thou relatedness as both the means (as strived for by the analyst) and the end (as discovered by the patient first from without and then from within) of the psychoanalytic process.’ Elio Frattaroli, MD, Faculty Member, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia; author of Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain (2001). This page intentionally left blank Silent Virtues Silent Virtues addresses six areas of mental functioning, namely patience, curiosity, privacy, intimacy, humility, and dignity. Each of the areas is eluci- dated with the help of clinical, literary, and cultural material. The book introduces a series of novel ideas, including: (i) the distinction between patience as a component of the therapeutic attitude and the exercise of patience as a specific technical intervention; (ii) the description of the five psychopathological syndromes involving curiosity: excessive, deficient, uneven, anachronistic, instinctualized, and false curiosity; (iii) the description of four psychopathological syndromes (failed, florid, fluctuating, and false) involving intimacy; (iv) the discourse on the importance of humility in selecting patients and in deciding upon the longevity of our professional careers; and (v) the description of three forms of dignity (metaphysical, exis- tential, and characterological) and the various ways in which they affect psy- choanalytic technique. Salman Akhtar, MD, isProfessorofPsychiatryatJeffersonMedicalCollege,and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He is the recipient of the prestigious Sigourney Award (2012) for Outstanding ContributionstoPsychoanalysis. This page intentionally left blank Silent Virtues Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity Salman Akhtar Firstpublished2019 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 52VanderbiltAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2019SalmanAkhtar TherightofSalmanAkhtartobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright, DesignsandPatentsAct1988. ChapterOnewasoriginallypublishedinthePsychoanalyticReview102:93–122, 2015.ChapterTwowasoriginallypublishedintheJournaloftheAmerican PsychoanalyticAssociation65:265–304,2017.ChapterFivewasoriginallypublished intheAmericanJournalofPsychoanalysis78:1–27,2018.ChapterSixwaspublished intheAmericanJournalofPsychoanalysis75:244–266,2015.Thesepapersare reprintedherewiththepermissionofpertinentauthor,editors,andpublishers. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe publishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent toinfringe. BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Acatalogrecordhasbeenrequestedforthisbook ISBN:978-1-138-33215-7(hbk) ISBN:978-1-138-33238-6(pbk) ISBN:978-0-429-44668-9(ebk) TypesetinTimesNewRoman byTaylor&FrancisBooks To MUGE with love, gratitude, and devotion This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements x About the author xi Introduction 1 PARTI Sensing and searching 3 1 Patience 5 2 Curiosity 27 PARTII Restraining and relating 57 3 Privacy 59 4 Intimacy 86 PARTIII Titrating and transcending 113 5 Humility 115 6 Dignity 136 References 154 Index 176
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