Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms

In this, the latest in a series of books examining emotional states and psychological life, Salman Akhtar and Aisha Abbasi critically discuss a concept that remains, appropriately perhaps, elusive and hard to define: privacy.

Overlapping with ideas of solitude, secrecy, and anonymity, the concept of privacy poses several crucial questions for analysts. How do our ideas of privacy evolve from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, for example, and when does the need for privacy become morbid and psychopathological? How is privacy conceived differently in different cultures and sub-cultures? Investigating the tension between anonymity and self-disclosure, the book also assesses the challenges posed to clinical privacy, as well as the analyst’s own privacy, by the impact of social media and the wider digital age.

Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms represents an important contribution to psychoanalytic literature. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and training as well as to researchers interested in the concept of privacy from across the applied and social sciences and the humanities.

Salman Akhtar, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, and Supervising and Training Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, USA. A prolific contributor to psychoanalytic literature, he has authored or edited ninety-six books. He received the prestigious Sigourney Award in 2012.

Aisha Abbasi, MD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, USA, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is the author of The Rupture of Serenity: External Intrusions and Psychoanalytic Technique (Routledge, 2014).