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The Damaged Core: Origins, Dynamics, Manifestations and Treatments by Salman Akhtar New York: Jason Aronson, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7657-0671-3.
Salman Akhtar is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and currently holds the post of Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College. He trained in psychoanalysis at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute, a centre known to embrace diverse influences within psychoanalytic practice. Akhtar is a prolific writer on the psychoanalytic scene, with over 300 publications to his name. Books he has authored demonstrate interest in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, the influence of technology on the mind, and issues related to immigration (His books include: 'Quest for Answers' (1995), 'Turning Points in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy' (2009), 'Inner Torment' (1999), 'The Electrified Mind: Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment in the Era of Cell Phones and the Internet' (2011)). I should add, in addition to this, he is also a published Urdo and English poet.
In The Damaged Core, Akhtar sets out to explore some of the core psychodynamic factors that challenge the integrity of the self in some fundamental way. He is clearly influenced by many schools of thought in psychoanalysis and is untroubled by some of the differences between them. His approach, it seems, is to draw on core clinical and analytic concepts that appear meaningful and useful in the therapeutic setting.
The book begins by examining the influence of early relationships on the formation of the self and the processes involved in internalization. Akhtar argues that the infant's relationship with the mother is pivotal in developing frustration tolerance, continuity of self-experience and a basic sense of trust. He follows Winnicott in suggesting that the mother needs to 'survive' the infant's aggression and frustration and has a major role to play 'in buffering, regulating and organizing the extent of inner and outer stimuli for the infant' (p. 10). Akhtar notes the relative absence of attention to the father's role in psychoanalysis (particularly in the child's early development) and wonders if it still reflects the profession's own mourning of its 'Freudian father'. He follows other authors in arguing that the influence of the father extends to pre-oedipal periods of development where he 'functions as a bridge between the internal world and the external reality for the child' (p. 12). He goes on: '[The father] thus...