Silent Virtues: Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, And Dignity

193 Pages·2019·1.571 MB·English

by  Salman Akhtar

‘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).
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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.
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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
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trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
toinfringe.
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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
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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