Fear

Salman Akhtar, MD, was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has authored, edited or co-edited more than 300 publications including books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis and several collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Salman Akhtar received the Sigourney Award in 2012.

• Introduction , Prologue , Fear, phobia, and cowardice , Six Main Fears of Our Lives , Fear of breakdown , Fear of aloneness , Fear of intimacy , Fear of injury , Fear of success , Fear of death , Epilogue , Fear across the life span

'Remarkably, until this book, the turmoil caused in our patients by their multivariant fears has been neglected. A collection of distinguished colleagues examine a cluster of everyday, ubiquitously experienced fears - of dark and violent places within us, of breakdown, aloneness, injury, and death. It also looks at the most troubling, paradoxical fears: of intimacy and of success. Like anxiety, fear of a conscious experience opens the door to our patients' psychodynamics and conflicts; it points the way. As we have come to expect of him, Salman Akhtar again, wisely, enlarges our understanding of what so interferes with our patients' well-being.'- Henri Parens, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University; training and supervising analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia'Salman Akhtar has once again produced a book filled with his unique blend of scholarship, humanity, humour, and integrity. In the introductory chapter entitled "Fear, Phobia, and Cowardice", he asks, "Is fear to be avoided at all costs or can this bitter gourd of emotion be transformed into a sweet mango of cultural delight?" He goes on to treat the reader with a masterly and eloquent synthesis of psychoanalytic knowledge and ideas, richly illustrated by his own clinical examples and reflections. The subsequent chapters, designated "The Six Main Fears of our Lives", are carefully chosen, with each contributor providing an invaluable addition to the literature.'- Julian Stern, MD, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy and Head of Psychiatry, Adult Department, Tavistock Centre, London