Unusual Interventions

Radical departures from the set and familiar rules of technique often become necessary in the course of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. These can include conducting a session outside the office, giving advice, not charging fees, talking about oneself, giving a gift to the patient, and so on. Such interventions have so far remained imbued with mystery or, worse, have been the staple of cocktail party conversations. Unusual Interventions brings a variety of exceptional measures together to highlight their indications, risks, and their potential anchors in psychoanalytic theory of human relatedness. In accomplishing this, the book itself becomes an unusual addition to the literature on the technique of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Salman Akhtar, MD, was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. His more than 300 publications include nine books: Broken Structures; Quest for Answers; Inner Torment; Immigration and Identity; New Clinical Realms; Objects of Our Desire; Regarding Others; Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy; and The Damaged Core, as well as twenty-six edited or co-edited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and six collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.