Scientific Meeting
Saturday, February 15, 2025
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
255 Bradley Street New Haven, CT 06510
Event will also be available
via Zoom (link will be sent via email the day before the event)
Soft Diamonds: Poetic Sentiment, Poetic Speech, and Poetic Specimen in the Clinical Hour
Speaker: Salman Akhtar, MD
Discussant: Jennifer Myer, MD
Non-WNEPS members
$35.00
WNEPS members, candidates and all students/trainees
$0.00
Registration Coming Soon
Three links between poetry and psychoanalysis will be highlighted in this presentation. These refer to the presence, in the clinical hour, of i) poetic sentiment, (ii) poetic speech, and (iii) poetic specimen. Each will be elucidated in detain with the help of socio-clinical vignettes. The aim of the presentation will be to demonstrate that, through affirmative holding and partial unmasking of the instinctual-epistemic conflation in verse and free association, both poetry and psychoanalysis seek to transform the private into shared, the hideous into elegant, and the unfathomable into accessible.
Learning Objectives
As a result of listening to this presentation, the attendee shall become able to :
- Enumerate the ways in which poetic form enters the clinical process.
- Identify the elements of each of these three forms.
- Utilize such understanding for treating patients in a more empathic and beneficial manner.
Speaker: Salman Akhtar, MD
Salman Akhtar, MD is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a Training & Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. Professor Akhtar has given Plenary Addresses at both the IPA and the APsA Meetings and has received the highly prestigious Sigourney Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychoanalysis.
Professor Akhtar has served on the editorial boards of all three major US psychoanalytic journals (International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Psychoanalytic Quarterly). He also has over 450 publications to his credit including 108 books (41 of which are solo-authored), most recently including: And In Short (2024), Leaps and Bounds (2022), Tales of Transformation (2022), Silent Virtues (2019), Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest (2018).
Professor Akhtar comes from a family of respected Urdu poets and writers in India. Alongside his work as a psychoanalyst, he is the author of multiple poetry collections, published in three languages. His first published book of poems in English is The Hidden Knot (1985, Adams Press), and his latest English publication is This is What Happened (2022, Sphinx Books). He is skilled at weaving his poetry into his clinical talks, which enriches his contribution as a thinker and speaker.
