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Over the course of a truly rich career, the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar has made multitudinous contributions to the field of
mental health, not least the publication of an incomparable number of books, more than any other practitioner in the entire history of depth psychology. In 2022, Phoenix Publishing House—the British psychoanalytical press—released Professor Akhtar's 100th title, Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, which I have now had the privilege of reading no fewer than three times with much pleasure.
Indeed, I can think of no other book I would regard as so warmly written and as so deeply engaging as this one. I do not mind revealing that when I received my copy in the post, I began to immerse myself into the text straightaway, just before bedtime, round about 11 p.m. one evening, and yet, despite the very late hour, I failed to put the book down and continued reading this memoir until 4 a.m.—a rarity for me—as I found Akhtar's new publication so utterly gripping.
As most colleagues will appreciate, the well-known and much-admired Salman Akhtar writes in rather a unique style. Not only does he convey his tremendous clinical wisdom with clarity and with generosity but, moreover, he communicates in an affable and often witty manner, incorporating both his mental health expertise and, also, his long-standing experience as a poet, who has published in Urdu and in English. In consequence, I find the prose of Salman Akhtar as invigorating as that of Sigmund Freud.
Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis might best be described not only as a memoir of Akhtar's fulsome career as a clinician, as a researcher, as a lecturer, and as a writer but, moreover, his 100th book provides us all with great insight into how we might enhance ourselves as members of this complex profession and how, furthermore, we might enjoy the potential to learn from our ancestors and, also, our successors, thus exp