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Beyond a doubt, few living psychoanalysts are as prolific as Salman Akhtar. When awarded the prestigious Sigourney Award in 2012, Dr Akhtar already had 300 works in print. Since then he has published another 36 articles and an additional 32 books (a quarter of which he co-edited), leaving us to wonder how on earth he does it. Silent Virtues: Patience, Curiosity, Privacy, Intimacy, Humility, and Dignity is one of six books Akhtar has written or co-edited in 2018 alone. He has generously lent his name to volumes written by collaborators on such topics as arrogance, revenge, regret, jealousy, intimacy, spirituality, and human goodness. Clearly, Dr Akhtar feels he has a lot to say and our field has collectively benefited from his willingness to tirelessly put pen to paper.
In this particular volume, Dr Akhtar continues his tradition of addressing topics many analysts might think about but have yet to seriously consider. Reading this volume leaves one struck by Akhtar's scholarship, evident in his writings about each of the six “virtues” he identifies, which together constitute the subtitle of his book. In each successive chapter, Akhtar presents a
widening perspective on the topic under discussion, quoting thinkers who hail both from within and outside the sphere of psychoanalysis, which makes this an admirably multidisciplinary work.
The first chapter explores the autonomous ego function of “patience”—the capacity to wait, to resist the urge to act hastily, to delay gratification for the greater good. Akhtar describes one group of individuals who are overly patient and another who are excessively impatient. Regarding the first group, Akhtar identifies a pattern of those who “chronically wait”—who incessantly and excessively persevere, which prevents them from coming to terms with reality as it slowly comes into sharper view. Such starry-eyed optimists adopt a wait-and-see attitude, ignoring mounting evidence that a wished-for outcome isn't likely. And yet they wait be