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Book reviews

Book reviews Edited by Robin Steier Goldberg, Ph.D. Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment, by Salman Akhtar, Jason Aronson, 1993. In Broken Structures Salman Akhtar sets out to do for a contemporary psycho- analysis, which is preoccupied with the serious personality disorders, including narcissistic, borderline, schizoid, paranoid, hypomanic, antisocial, histrionic, and schizotypal, what Otto Fenichel accomplished in his now classic 1945 systematiza- tion of knowledge about the neuroses. Recognizing that we now live in an age of medical psychiatry and the DSM, Dr. Akhtar further attempts to synthesize psycho- analytic thinking about these primitive personality disturbances with the currently prevailing medical-psychiatric model that views descriptive syndromes not as rough starting points for extensive and individual analytic investigations, but as indices potentially reducible to underlying disease processes. The result of Dr. Akhtar's effort is best characterized as a textbook--an extensive and remarkable compendium of psychoanalytically related information that is invaluable in some respects and perhaps misleading in others. The book is divided into three sections and a coda. The first is devoted to the concept of identity and the syndrome of identity diffusion, which Akhtar feels un- derlies all the serious personality disorders. The second is an accumulation of de- http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The American Journal of Psychoanalysis Springer Journals

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References (2)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
1994 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis
ISSN
0002-9548
eISSN
1573-6741
DOI
10.1007/BF02741915
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Edited by Robin Steier Goldberg, Ph.D. Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment, by Salman Akhtar, Jason Aronson, 1993. In Broken Structures Salman Akhtar sets out to do for a contemporary psycho- analysis, which is preoccupied with the serious personality disorders, including narcissistic, borderline, schizoid, paranoid, hypomanic, antisocial, histrionic, and schizotypal, what Otto Fenichel accomplished in his now classic 1945 systematiza- tion of knowledge about the neuroses. Recognizing that we now live in an age of medical psychiatry and the DSM, Dr. Akhtar further attempts to synthesize psycho- analytic thinking about these primitive personality disturbances with the currently prevailing medical-psychiatric model that views descriptive syndromes not as rough starting points for extensive and individual analytic investigations, but as indices potentially reducible to underlying disease processes. The result of Dr. Akhtar's effort is best characterized as a textbook--an extensive and remarkable compendium of psychoanalytically related information that is invaluable in some respects and perhaps misleading in others. The book is divided into three sections and a coda. The first is devoted to the concept of identity and the syndrome of identity diffusion, which Akhtar feels un- derlies all the serious personality disorders. The second is an accumulation of de-

Journal

The American Journal of PsychoanalysisSpringer Journals

Published: Mar 1, 1994

Keywords: Clinical Psychology; Psychotherapy; Psychoanalysis

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