BRETT KAHR’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2021
Professor Brett Kahr certainly knows something about the art of authoring books. Over the decades, he has written or edited sixteen volumes and has served as series editor for more than seventy-five further titles.
Most recently, he has published Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis (Karnac Books, 2021). This highly pertinent book describes how the great Sigmund Freud survived not one but, rather, six separate pandemics during his own lifetime and yet still managed to thrive. Kahr examines what lessons each of us can learn from Freud about the art of resiliency and the efficacy of what he has come to refer to as “psychological vaccination”.
Karnac Books has released Brett’s new volume as the inaugural title in the new “Freud Museum London Series”, in collaboration with Freud Museum London. Copies can be purchased at a special discount from either our bookshop (https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/freuds-pandemics-surviving-global-war-spanish-flu-and-the-nazis/95752/) or from the museum itself (https://shop.freud.org.uk/collections/offers/products/freuds-pandemics-surviving-global-war-spanish-flu-and-nazis-brett-kahr).
Once again, Confer takes great pleasure in having invited Brett to share with us his recommendations of the ten best books of the year.
Brett writes:
Last year, in my “Top Ten” book list for 2020, I wrote at length about the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic. It breaks my heart that, as we approach the year 2022, we still find ourselves struggling with so much global disruption.
But in spite of the fact that we must continue to navigate this dreadful infection, we do have some good news: the field of mental health has at long last become a much more highly appreciated and much better respected profession, as so many people around the world crave our help in this time of tremendous physical and psychological unsafety.
Indeed, as the years unfold, I suspect that those of us who toil in the psychological trenches will become increasingly busy as many new patients or clients begin to reach out to us, more than ever before. In consequence, we all need to be as erudite and up to date as we can possibly be, thus ensuring that we practise our craft with the most cutting-edge knowledge while also having incorporated all of the ancient classics written by our esteemed ancestors.
As someone who has succumbed to the incurable condition known as “bibliophilia psychotherapeutica”, I take great pleasure in reviewing some of the best books of 2021, which, I hope, will help to educate and inspire us all.
Confer Books and Karnac Books – our much-cherished “Publishers of the Mind” – have, over the last two years, produced a marvellous array of titles on a range of psychological topics. These beautifully curated volumes will, I know, come to enjoy a very important role in the dissemination of psychotherapeutic thought for years to come, and I feel very honoured to be one of the many authors of these important new ventures. I congratulate the multi-talented Publishing Team for their wonderful work.
As readers of this annual column on the Confer website will appreciate, I shall not review titles by Confer Books or Karnac Books, tempting though that may be. Rather, in the spirit of gratitude for our wider mental health publishing community, I wish to celebrate ten particularly appealing books produced by other psychological houses, which, I hope, will offer no shortage of great Christmas reading.
Brett’s Top Ten
(We have listed these books in alphabetical order, according to each author’s surname).
Whenever one mentions the word “textbook” to colleagues and, even, to trainees, most people begin to stifle a yawn … and understandably so. The majority of introductory textbooks in our profession tend to be rather bland and repetitive. But this new book by Deborah Abrahams and Dr. Poul Rohleder – a pair of highly experienced clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, and each a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation and a registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council – really does merit our attention as a truly comprehensive, insightful, and engagingly written piece of work. With much gravitas, the authors provide a detailed overview of the essentials of psychotherapeutic theory and practice, having drawn extensively upon in-depth knowledge of a range of psychopathologies.
I particularly enjoyed the careful differentiation between primitive methods of defence (e.g., dissociation, omnipotence, and projective identification) and those of a more neurotic nature (e.g., humour, intellectualisation, and sublimation). Abrahams and Rohleder (the recent recipient of the Bernard Ratigan Award for Psychoanalysis and Diversity from the British Psychoanalytic Council) also provide an excellent overview of impressive empirical data, including the work of Professor Peter Fonagy and Professor Jonathan Shedler, documenting only too clearly that psychodynamic psychotherapy really does work! And not only have the authors escorted us on a wonderful tour of the classical foundations of our profession, but they have also offered much insight into the newer challenges with which we must become familiarised, such as the use or misuse of social media, communication by e-mail, remote psychotherapy in the time of a pandemic, and even the countertransferential implications of on-line bank payments.
I strongly suspect that this lovely book – dedicated to the authors’ patients – may appear in a second edition, and then a third edition, before too long.
Dr. Gwen Adshead, one of the most respected forensic psychiatrists in the United Kingdom and beyond, has joined forces with a professional scriptwriter, Eileen Horne, to craft one of the wisest and most readable publications, which B.B.C. Radio 4 selected as a “Book of the Week”. This unique memoir of Adshead’s work with murderers, rapists, paedophiles, and other forensic patients, offers deep insights into the origins of violence, exploring not only the childhood roots of criminality but, moreover, the ways in which the clinician and, indeed, all human beings, can respond with greater empathy and understanding to these tragic tales.
Drawing upon Adshead’s decades of experience at Broadmoor Hospital – home of the “criminally insane” – she has generously shared much harrowing, but well-disguised, clinical material about some of the nation’s most sadistic offenders, ranging from “Marcus”, who strangled his office receptionist with a necktie after having discovered that she had begun to date other men on-line, to “Tony”, a vicious serial killer who decapitated his first victim with a kitchen knife before dumping the eviscerated remains in the woods.
Adshead had the privilege of studying under the great pioneer of forensic psychotherapy, Dr. Murray Cox, whom she acknowledges warmly in the book, who helped to transform Broadmoor Hospital from an old-fashioned medieval cell into a more humane place in which patients could be offered the opportunity to talk and to “work through” their unparalleled traumatic histories. Undertaking forensic mental health consultations exerts quite a toll. As the authors have reminded us, “forensic hospitals are very different from Sigmund Freud’s comfortable consulting rooms.” Fortunately, Adshead has become a wonderful narrator and explicator of the horrors of human violence and of the need to understand such people in a more intelligent manner, not only to offer better treatment but, also, more effective prevention globally.
The prose, enhanced no doubt by the contributions of the co-author, Ms. Horne, could not be better. I warmly recommend that those of us with an appetite to write compelling mental health books might learn some important lessons from Adshead and Horne and might embark upon similar collaborations so that we may all become better communicators.
I shall never forget that, back in the 1980s, I attended a psychoanalytical conference about the intersection between depth psychology and politics. At some point, a member of the audience made a reference to the American activist, Malcolm X – a Black man who championed racial diversity. One of the speakers then addressed the audience and queried, “Why aren’t there any Black people at this conference?” If memory serves me correctly, no one dared to respond. Since that time, the psychological professions have become much more inclusive and continue to be so.
In the spirit of creating a more integrated mental health community, Professor Divine Charura, a psychologist-psychotherapist, who directs the doctoral programme in counselling psychology at York St John University and who served for many years as a Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, and Colin Lago, a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, who directed the counselling service at the University of Sheffield for many years, have edited a wonderfully visionary book about the need for greater attention to inclusion among psychotherapeutic practitioners. Drawing upon the work of several great pioneers of cross-cultural approaches, such as Dr. Zack Eleftheriadou, Dr. Roland Littlewood, as well as the late Jafar Kareem (who founded the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre), as well as Colin Lago himself, the editors have created an inspiring agenda “to decolonise the profession from its roots and origins”, embracing more humane and contemporary models of both clinical training and practice.
Most touchingly, the editors have dedicated this book to the late Lennox Thomas – one of the chapter writers – who passed away last year and who will be warmly remembered, not only for his work at Nafsiyat but, also, for his contributions to the Refugee Therapy Centre. This empathic call-to-arms, splendidly conceived by Charura, Lago, and the insightful contributors, will help us to consider the ways in which mental health workers can explore diversity more fully in all respects. I recommend that this text should be foregrounded in all of our trainings as required reading.
Our much-respected colleague, Linda Cundy, the Attachment Theory Consultant at The Bowlby Centre in London, and the editor of many excellent books on a wide range of fascinating topics, has just assembled an extremely original new work on the role of food. As colleagues will appreciate, the vast majority of research on food and bodies focuses on the psychopathology of eating disorders, including the often-life-threatening conditions of anorexia nervosa and morbid obesity. But in Cundy’s new book, she and the chapter writers explore the vital role of food as an essential ingredient in the creation of secure attachment structures.
This collection of truly readable essays, all penned by experienced psychotherapeutic practitioners, includes some with highly memorable titles, such as “Food in the Consulting Room”, “ “He’s got a good appetite”: How Do Men Experience Attachment and Food?”, and even “Kitchen Therapy: Cooking for Connection and Belonging”. Cundy has drawn upon her extensive knowledge of attachment theory and research and has even reviewed some vital historical data about the impact of famines, not only upon our physical health but, also, upon our mental health, and has considered the possibility that severe conditions such as schizophrenic psychoses will develop with greater frequency amid times of actual physical hunger.
This book will be of huge relevance, not least amid the coronavirus pandemic. I award the “Cover of the Year” prize to Linda Cundy for such a delightful and entrancing image of a little child sharing food with her father!
The name of Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) – the multi-talented English composer and poet – may not be known to many younger colleagues in the field of mental health. But his story deserves careful attention. In spite of having suffered for many years from manic-depressive illness – in the wake of the Great War – and in spite of lengthy periods of psychiatric institutionalisation, Gurney still managed to produce an immense body of creative work, which continues to provide much pleasure and stimulation to this very day.
Dr. Kate Kennedy, an accomplished scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing in the University of Oxford, has written the first comprehensive biography of Ivor Gurney and has done so with tremendous engagement, clarity, and in-depth archival research. This compelling story has much to teach us about the horrors of war and about the art of resiliency. A stunning contribution to the fields of psychiatric historiography, musicology, literary studies, psychoanalytical scholarship, and many more disciplines, I learned a great deal from this beautifully constructed text, and I hope that Dr. Kennedy will continue to produce other such gripping biographies in years to come.
Professor George Makari, the distinguished American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, will be well known to many of us as the author of several deeply original and engaging books, not least his now classic Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis and, also, Soul Machine: The Invention of the Mind – each a work of tremendous clarity and insight.
Professor Makari works not only as a clinician but, also, as an historian and public intellectual, and he serves as Director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy, and the Arts, part of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City – a scholarly centre which, under his leadership, has become the very epicentre of psychiatric history. In the midst of the pandemic, Makari managed to complete his latest book – hot off the press – which explores the psychology of xenophobia across the ages.
In view of all of the global horror of the present day, the author could not have chosen a more pertinent topic. Beautifully written, and academically impressive, this new text provides not only a comprehensive and readable account of the nature of xenophobia – why we fear strangers – but, also, an exploration of the many theories of this manifestation of universal terror and hatred, and, moreover, a conceptualisation of Makari’s own, which derives from his unique integration of clinical psychoanalysis and history. For those of us who have become increasingly distressed by the growth of nationalism, ethnic hostility, and other expressions of the ugly depths of what Sigmund Freud had described as the “id”, Makari’s book – which has already received a welter of excellent reviews – provides not only much insight but, also, a great deal of hope that human beings might possess the capacity to understand the origins of this underbelly of behaviour and that we might, therefore, even find a cure.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, very few people (professionals included) appreciated the awful widespread reality of sexual abuse and traumatisation, and many sceptics accused those women and men and children who reported such assaults as suffering from a so-called “False Memory Syndrome”. Although we do know that one can, in fact, make a false allegation as an act of hostility, especially towards envied public figures, one can also tell the truth!
In this gripping book, Dr. Valerie Sinason and Dr. Ashley Conway, two leading British mental health practitioners, have produced an excellent collection of chapters written by a range of fellow colleagues as well as by members of the public, exploring the false memory movement and its pathogenic clinical consequences. Dr. Sinason, a truly compassionate psychoanalyst and child psychotherapist, and one of the founders of trauma studies in the United Kingdom (and, moreover, the recipient of the 2021 award for Innovative Excellence from the British Psychoanalytic Council), and Dr. Conway, an experienced Chartered Psychologist who serves as Chair of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, have, in my estimation, undertaken a work of great bravery by having dared to explore this highly contentious subject in a thoughtful and meticulous manner, and have endeavoured to champion the narratives of those traumatised individuals whom few people had ever taken seriously.
The editors and the chapter writers have investigated not only personal narratives and clinical accounts but, also, formal empirical data which documents the realities of repression and amnesia. Indeed, Dr. Conway’s essay, “The Abuse of Science to Silence the Abused” provides vital insights into the ways in which sceptics and critics assault important empirical discoveries. This will be a very vital book not only for those interested in mental health, abuse, trauma, and psychological treatments but, also, for those keen to promote social justice and human kindness.
I fell in love with the work of David Livingstone Smith when, in the early 1990s, I read his now classic book, Hidden Conversations: An Introduction to Communicative Psychoanalysis, which really helped me to understand the true nature of unconscious communication with patients more than any other text. Since that time, David Smith has moved from the small confines of the consulting room to the much more impactful platform of becoming a public thinker and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England, in Maine, and, in recent years, he has produced a library of bold books on the nature of human cruelty, including his gripping text, On Inhumanity.
More recently, he has completed a brave study, the compellingly titled Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, which I regard as a contribution not only to forensic psychoanalysis, but, also, in my estimation, to the potential reduction of global violence. In this excellent work, Professor Smith explains how and why human beings have developed the need to turn our enemies into monsters.
Drawing upon close examinations of such horrific acts as lynchings, Smith investigates the unconscious roots of dehumanization as well as its links with racism and how each of us has come to treat the other as an object which must be destroyed as well as preserved in order to be destroyed. I wish that every single grown-up could read this book again and again.
Practising psychotherapy cannot ever be described as simple or straightforward. Even if we work with a patient who speaks the same language as we do and who grew up in the same cultural community, we still struggle to understand the complexities of that person’s private world. But how do we navigate the intercultural challenges of engaging in conversation with a client born in a completely different country, who spent the first years of life speaking in a totally different language?
Many colleagues will be familiar with the pioneering work of the Multi-lingual Psychotherapy Centre – a bold organisation which, for many years, has helped us to understand more fully the fine art of practising psychotherapy through a variety of cultural accents and lenses. Dr. Ali Zarbafi, a highly experienced Jungian analyst, and Shula Wilson, a noted specialist in the field of disability psychotherapy – two of the pioneering members of the Multi-lingual Psychotherapy Centre – have created a splendid tome of essays about the art of understanding the psychological encounter from many different geographical and linguistic viewpoints.
The book contains chapters composed by mental health practitioners from a wide range of countries – Canada, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Japan, the United States of America, and Zimbabwe – each of whom has generously shared his or her experiences of working across languages and cultures, and often practising in a state of exile. I read this text with much appreciation, and I learned a very great deal indeed. In view of the fact that our planet becomes smaller and smaller with each passing decade, and in view of the fact that, in the wake of the pandemic, many people have consulted mental health professionals who live in other countries, via Zoom, this text will remain of great relevance for years to come.
The name Gregory Zilboorg may not necessarily be known to all of our younger colleagues, but I can think of few psychoanalysts whose work deserves to be visited and revisited. Born in Russia in 1890, Zilboorg trained in medicine in St. Petersburg, and then, in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, he emigrated to the United States of America where he ultimately became a member of the venerable New York Psychoanalytic Society. A Renaissance man of great intelligence and erudition who translated many fictional texts and who published a wide range of his own scholarly books, Zilboorg distinguished himself in many arenas.
I have long admired Dr. Zilboorg’s wonderfully prescient essays on the psychodynamics of schizophrenia which, in my estimation, should still be considered “assigned reading”, as well as his amazing tomes on the origins of psychiatry and psychotherapy, including, most especially, A History of Medical Psychology, published in 1941 in collaboration with Dr. George W. Henry. A popular clinician among the Manhattan intelligentsia, his patients included none other than the composer George Gershwin and the playwright Lillian Hellman. Alas, at one point, Zilboorg became involved in a clinical scandal, accused of the financial exploitation of one of his analysands, and that episode challenged his reputation.
Fortunately, Zilboorg’s daughter, Dr. Caroline Zilboorg, a highly-regarded literary scholar, has devoted many long years of detailed research to a study of the life of her father and has produced a magnificent, well-written, and highly accurate two-volume biography of this fascinating psychoanalyst, which I recommend most heartily. Drawing upon family archives, upon Zilboorg’s professional papers in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and, moreover, upon a plethora of unpublished documents from various psychoanalytical libraries, Caroline Zilboorg has not only restored her father’s reputation but, also, has enhanced it considerably, providing a much richer exploration than anyone heretofore.
The author of this study – a Life Member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge and a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council – has written a truly objective study of her father and has deeply enhanced our knowledge and appreciation of this founding figure within our field, correcting false accusations and exploring her father’s strengths and vulnerabilities with unusual detail and care. I recommend this two-volume masterpiece most highly.
Briefly Noted
In addition to these ten very special titles, we have many other great publications from which to choose – a true indication of the immense creativity of our bold colleagues who have kindly offered to share their clinical wisdom.
Confer Books and Karnac Books have released a veritable plethora of excellent new titles, all of which can be accessed on the website (https://www.confer.uk.com/books/index.html) or, in person, at the newly-relaunched Confer-Karnac bookshop, located on Strype Street in London E1 7LQ, between Liverpool Street and Aldgate East tube stations (https://www.karnacbooks.com/KarnacShops.asp). This beautiful new shop not only sells all of these wonderful titles but, also, hosts book parties and art exhibitions!
Our fellow publishers have also produced some hugely helpful new texts. Although I cannot do justice to all of the great books released in 2021, I will foreground a few others that have certainly captured my attention.
Pavilion Publishing and Media, based in Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex, commissioned three experts on disability, Professor Nigel Beail, Dr. Patricia Frankish, and Dr. Allan Skelly, to provide us with an excellent investigation of the current state of disability psychology and psychotherapy – not least its traumatic underbelly – and their new edited book, Trauma and Intellectual Disability: Acknowledgement, Identification and Intervention, offers tremendous insight and hope for the future of the disabled on many levels. Indeed, in her gracious “Foreword”, Professor the Baroness Hollins – herself an iconic contributor to this field – has lamented that the study of trauma and disability has become “a long but neglected tradition” and praises the authors for tackling these vital topics. I warmly recommend this book, which features chapters by such leaders as Dr. Valerie Sinason, recently honoured by the British Psychoanalytic Council for her lifetime of innovative work in these disciplines.
Phoenix Publishing House, based in Bicester, Oxfordshire, has produced not only the aforementioned book edited by Ali Zarbafi and Shula Wilson on multilingual psychotherapy, but has also released a terrific new volume about one of Dr. Donald Winnicott’s celebrated patients. This lovely text, Finding the Piggle: Reconsidering D.W. Winnicott’s Most Famous Child Case, edited by the American psychoanalyst Dr. Corinne Masur, has already spawned a number of engaging on-line events, including a special exploration of this book, hosted by a group of child psychotherapists in Russia. Dr. Masur also completed another title, When a Child Grieves: Psychoanalytic Understanding and Technique, which provides a moving account of her vital work in the field of child bereavement. I would also encourage everyone to purchase a copy of The Curiosity Drive: Our Need for Inquisitive Thinking, written by the British psychoanalyst Philip Stokoe, a clinician of great inspiration.
Routledge, located in London and in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, has published a plethora of important titles in the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Among some of the more memorable titles of 2021, I would happily foreground Orit Badouk Epstein’s edited book, Shame Matters: Attachment and Relational Perspectives for Psychotherapists, as well as Erene Hadjiioannou’s excellent study on Psychotherapy with Survivors of Sexual Violence: Inside and Outside the Room, and, also, Helen Morgan’s text on The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. In addition to these very important clinical tomes, I wish to draw particular attention to Dr. Jacob Johanssen’s bold and brave new book, Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis / Inhibition, which appears in the “Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture Series” edited by Professor Caroline Bainbridge and Professor Candida Yates. This very original monograph contributes much to our understanding of such ugly topics as on-line misogyny, from a depth-psychological perspective, and provides us with tremendous insight into the unconscious nature of the digital world.
The Perfect Christmas Present
Do you remember the compelling Hollywood film, Julia, which starred Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, about an American woman living in wartime Austria who courageously endangered her own life to save many Jews from the Nazis? Few people will realise that the screenwriter based the plot of this 1977 movie on the life of Dr. Muriel Gardiner, a student of psychoanalysis who knew Professor Sigmund Freud personally and who helped many of our professional ancestors to escape after the Anschluss. Gardiner became a venerated psychoanalyst in her own right and invested much energy into the care of Sergéi Konstantínovich Pankéev (better known as Freud’s patient, the “Wolf Man”), during his later years. A long-standing friend to Anna Freud, Dr. Gardiner arranged to purchase the Freud family home at Maresfield Gardens in London so that, after Miss Freud’s death, this residence could be transformed into a museum. I had the great privilege of meeting Dr. Gardiner back in 1983 and I can think of few people more generous and warm-hearted. I suspect that if we still had Dr. Gardiner with us today, she would be spending much of her energy mounting no shortage of Black Lives Matter protests and climate change summits!
Carol Seigel, the Director of Freud Museum London, has curated a magnificent, not-to-be-missed exhibition about the life and work of Muriel Gardiner, which will be open to the public until 6th February, 2022 (https://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/code-name-mary-the-extraordinary-life-of-muriel-gardiner/) – a wonderful project warmly supported by Dr. Gardiner’s family and, moreover, by Vanessa Redgrave who has kindly participated in several recent fund-raising events on behalf of the museum.
As part of this exhibition, the Freud Museum London has issued a reprint of Muriel Gardiner’s gripping memoir, Code Name ‘Mary’: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground (Freud Museum London Publishing), originally released by Yale University Press in 1983 and now available exclusively in a very special and very affordable new edition from the museum’s shop (https://shop.freud.org.uk/products/code-name-mary).
I could not think of a better holiday present for oneself or for one’s loved ones.
A Much-Needed Paperback
Last year, Juliet Rosenfeld published a wise and moving title, The State of Disbelief (Short Books, 2020), about the psychology of grief and mourning, which we highlighted as one of the “Top Ten”. It pleases me to report that this hardback text, which has become extremely popular, will be released in a new paperback edition on 22nd February, 2022, with a gripping new afterword, all about the role of bereavement in the COVID period. Juliet Rosenfeld, a Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and, more recently, of Freud Museum London, writes with tremendous grace, and I hope that those who may have missed the cloth edition will embrace the updated paper version, as it will help us all to process the universal inevitability of death.
Two Special New Books for 2022
In the coming months, we shall all delight in the arrival of some important new titles, two of which, I know, will become classics.
Our esteemed colleague, Susanna Abse, the past Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the former Chief Executive Officer of Tavistock Relationships in London, has completed the typescript of a spectacular book, Tell Me the Truth About Love, which explores the deep psychology of human intimacy. Due for publication by Ebury Press in the spring of 2022, this book will, in my estimation, become a standard text on spousal psychology. Written in an accessible and rich manner, Abse’s work will appeal not only to colleagues but, also, to members of the general public. Having learned a very great deal from Abse’s contributions to the fields of couple psychotherapy and couple psychoanalysis over many decades, I know that we will all be offered much wisdom after having absorbed this upcoming title.
Professor Salman Akhtar, undoubtedly the most published psychoanalyst in all of world history, will be releasing his one hundredth book in the spring of 2022. A genius mental health practitioner and educator, the Indian-born, American-based Professor Akhtar has just completed a truly masterful memoir entitled Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His courteous publisher, Kate Pearce of Phoenix Publishing House, kindly sent me a copy in advance. I will happily admit that I began to read this book one evening at 10.00 p.m., and I simply could not put it down, and remained awake until 2.00 a.m. I then re-read this text in full the very next day. This generous volume describes Akhtar’s career in a most gripping fashion, and, on every page, the author shares tremendous wisdom not only about how one can navigate this challenging profession but, moreover, how one can lead a rich and full and colourful and ethical life. Professor Akhtar deserves our deepest gratitude for having contributed 100 books to our libraries. No doubt many more wonderful tomes will follow. I do hope so.
Thank you, dear readers of the Confer website, for allowing me to share my bibliophilia psychotherapeutica with you. I hope and trust that some of these recommendations will provide not only intellectual enrichment, but, also, personal enjoyment, and might assist us all to improve our clinical capacities as we devote ourselves to the painful, but potentially transformative, coalface of psychological work.
Please stay as safe and as well as possible,
Wishing us all a much more pleasant 2022 …
Brett.