Good Stuff: Courage, Resilience, Gratitude, Generosity, Forgiveness, and Sacrifice - Paperback

by Salman Akhtar (Author)

Good Stuff is divided into two main parts; Part I addresses Positive Attributes and Part II, Positive Actions. The former contains chapters on Courage, Resilience, and Gratitude. The latter contains chapters on Generosity, Forgiveness, and Sacrifice. Together, the six chapters constitute a harmonious gestalt of the relational scenarios that assure enrichment of human experience. This book offers socioclinical meditations to temper Freud's view that human beings are essentially 'bad' and whatever goodness they can muster is largely defensive. By elucidating the origins, dynamics, social pleasures, and clinical benefits of courage, resilience, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, and sacrifice, this book sheds light on a corner of human experience that has remained inadequately understood by psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals.

Author Biography

Salman Akhtar, MD, is a professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, and training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. His numerous authored and edited books include The Damaged Core, Immigration and Acculturation, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, The Crescent and the Couch, Freud and the Far East, and The African American Experience.