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One of the best things about living in New York City is the opportunity for ongoing interaction with members of various immigrant groups. The taxi drivers of the city especially remind me of important things all the time. A Haitian cabdriver, responding to “Where are you from?”—a question I always ask—told me about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a foreign country. He longingly spoke of his visits home. “When I go back to Haiti I reclaim my soul,” he said. I have also come here from another place; I can relate to the man's longing. For years, my psychoanalytic longing was sustained by reading the beautiful book by the Grinbergs on immigration (Grinberg and Grinberg, 1989). I felt that the Grinbergs helped me to make sense of my experience on a level that complemented my analytic training. For years, there was no peer in the analytic literature to the Grinbergs' book.
Imagine my delight when I read in Salman Akhtar's book his acknowledgment of a particular group of people, cabdrivers in big U.S. cities. He called his acknowledgment a curious gesture of thanks, but I understood him immediately. That was just the beginning. After I finished reading Immigration and Identity, I knew that Dr. Salman Akhtar had joined the Grinbergs in their exclusive place. Akhtar is an analyst who is fully cognizant of the experience of being an immigrant and is so talented in conveying his understanding of that experience that, after reading the book, as the Haitian taxi driver said, I have reclaimed a bit of my soul. I do not mean to say that this book is for immigrant analysts or immigrant patients only, just the opposite. I am sure other readers would benefit from it greatly, especially in this metropolitan area or any other area of the country where immigrants live, where immigrants' children live.
From the first page, the spirit of this book established: great sensitivity to the issues—after all, Akhtar is someone who knows about the immigrant experience; literal referen