GOOD STUFF 12_486_Akhtar.indb 1 12/10/12 1:24 PM 12_486_Akhtar.indb 2 12/10/12 1:24 PM GOOD STUFF Courage, Resilience, Gratitude, Generosity, Forgiveness, and Sacrifice SALMAN AKHTAR JASON ARONSON Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 12_486_Akhtar.indb 3 12/10/12 1:24 PM Published by Jason Aronson A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Jason Aronson Chapter 2 is reprinted, with many additions and with permission, from The Unbroken Soul: Tragedy, Trauma, and Resilience (eds. H. Parens, H.P. Blum, and S. Akhtar, pp. 1-19, Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2008). Chapter 4 is reprinted, with many additions and with permission, from The Psychoanalytic Review (Vol. 99: 645-676, 2012). Chapter 5 is reprinted, with many additions and with permission, from Psychoanalytic Quarterly (Vol. 71: 175-212, 2002). Chapter 6 is reprinted, with many additions and with permission, from The American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Vol. 72: 95-117, 2012). The poems, “Thank You,” (in Chapter 3) and “The Second Poem” (in Chapter 5) originally appeared in The Hidden Knot (Adams Press, 1985) and Turned to Light (Adams Press, 1998) with permission by the author, Salman Akhtar, who holds the copyrights for these poems. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Akhtar, Salman, 1946 July 31– Good stuff : courage, resilience, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, and sacrifice / Salman Akhtar. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7657-0976-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7657-0977-6 (electronic) 1. Character. 2. Virtue. 3. Resilience (Personality trait) I. Title. BF818.A36 2013 179'.9—dc23 2012045065 ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America 12_486_Akhtar.indb 4 12/10/12 1:24 PM To JENNIFER BONOVITZ naturally 12_486_Akhtar.indb 5 12/10/12 1:24 PM 12_486_Akhtar.indb 6 12/10/12 1:24 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Part I: POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES 1 Courage 3 Etymology, definition, and subtypes • Counterphobia and cow- ardice • Relationship to joy, faith, and wisdom • Developmental origins • Courage in the clinical realm • Concluding remarks 2 Resilience 31 Definition and psychoanalytic underpinnings • Three excep- tional men • Lessons from their lives • Some newer studies • Concluding remarks 3 Gratitude 53 Definition and phenomenology • Developmental origins • Psychopathology • Technical implications • Concluding remarks Part II: POSITIVE ACTIONS 4 Generosity 75 Definition and development • Five pathological variants • An attempt at synthesis • Technical implications • Concluding remarks vii 12_486_Akhtar.indb 7 12/10/12 1:24 PM viii Contents 5 Forgiveness 103 Definition and dynamics • Evolutionary and developmental ori- gins • Psychopathological syndromes • Technical implications • More recent contributions • Concluding remarks 6 Sacrifice 135 Etymology and definition • Religious prototypes • Psycho- analytic contributions • The triad of altruism, masochism, and narcissism • An attempt at synthesis • Sacrifice in the clinical realm • Concluding remarks Notes 161 References 169 Index 193 About the Author 203 12_486_Akhtar.indb 8 12/10/12 1:24 PM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS number of psychoanalytic colleagues have helped sharpen my Athinking about the themes contained in this book. Some have re- viewed earlier drafts of these chapters. Others have offered valuable com- ments in an informal way. Still others have brought important reading material to my attention. Prominent among these individuals are my wife Dr. Monisha Akhtar, and Drs. Ira Brenner, Jennifer Bonovitz, Ralph and Lana Fishkin, Axel Hoffer, Susan Levine, Afaf Mahfouz, Frank Maleson, Henri Parens, Nadia Ramzy, Shahrzad Siassi, Melvin Singer, Stuart Twemlow, and Vamik Volkan. Dr. Michael Vergare, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Jefferson Medical College (my academic base for over thirty years) has offered unwavering support for my intellectual pursuits. Drs. Rajnish Mago and Stephen Schwartz have been critically sound readers of my scribblings. And, within the Jefferson “family,” Drs. Solange Mar- gery Bertoglia, Jonathan Beatty, Karl Doghramji, and Deanna Nobleza have provided useful “holding” functions and, in this indirect fashion, supported my creativity. My good friend, Dr. J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., introduced me to the ethological and evolution-related literature and thus greatly enriched my understanding of phenomena addressed in this book. Ms. Smita Kamble put me in touch with Mr. Stephen Crawford, who was kind enough to share his unpublished work on generosity with me. Dr. Glenda Wrenn and Ms. Archana Varma have graciously permitted me to include some co-authored material (for chapters 1 and 6, respectively) in this book. My assistant, Jan Wright, prepared the manuscript with her usual skill, diligence, and good humor. To all these individuals, I offer my deepest gratitude. ix 12_486_Akhtar.indb 9 12/10/12 1:24 PM 12_486_Akhtar.indb 10 12/10/12 1:24 PM PREFACE he founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, held a rather dismal Tview of human nature. He declared that belief in human good- ness was an “evil illusion” (1933, p. 104) and regarded vast swathes of humanity to be “good for nothing in life” (1905, p. 263), “antisocial and anticultural” (1927, p. 7) at their core, and fundamentally “lazy and unintelligent (1927, p. 7). Freud’s followers upheld this skeptical, if not cynical, view of man and looked at any positive traits with suspicion. They strenuously looked for the repudiated anguish or warded-off anxi- ety that, they believed, invariably lurked underneath sunny and enjoy- able attributes of personality. Over time, however, a shift occurred. British analysts (e.g., W. R. D. Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Michael Balint) who were not affili- ated with either Anna Freud or Melanie Klein, challenged the notion of “primary narcissism” and replaced it with “primary love.” They accorded greater importance to object relations than to instinctual dis- charge. They regarded psychopathology to result not from the inherent battle between life and death instincts (and, between these instincts and the superego) but from impingement, abuse, overstimulation, or neglect by the child’s early caretakers. The essentially romantic ethic of this per- spective made it possible to discern goodness in human beings, which was intrinsic and natural, not merely defensive or sublimatory. Across the Atlantic, the work of Erik Erikson rendered it possible to see human development as providing, at each step of the way, personally gratifying outcomes of age-specific tasks and challenges. Ground was thus set for psychoanalytic psychology of mental health. xi 12_486_Akhtar.indb 11 12/10/12 1:24 PM xii Preface Sporadic papers now began to appear on specific healthy character traits as well. Prominent among these were Ralph Greenson’s (1962) paper on enthusiasm, Leo Rangell’s (1963) paper on friendship, Martin Bergman’s (1971) paper on love, Warren Poland’s (1971) paper on tact, Chasseguet-Smirgel’s (1988) paper on humor, to name a few. I myself contributed to this trend by writing the first psychoanalytic essay fully devoted to the issue of forgiveness (Akhtar, 2002). A major step in the beginning consolidation of psychoanalytic interest in healthy, adaptive, and genuinely pleasurable aspects of human experience was taken in 2009 when the IPA (International Psychoanalytical Association) com- missioned a comprehensive edited volume on these emotions and ego capacities (Akhtar, 2009a). There, I brought together the scattered psychoanalytic literature and invited updates and critiques from distin- guished psychoanalysts around the world. I thought my work was done and I could put the issue to rest. That did not turn out to be the case. Emotions and behaviors not included in that volume (e.g., generosity, gratitude, sacrifice) kept tug- ging at the sleeve of my psychoanalytic attention. Other topics (e.g., resilience, forgiveness, and courage), though addressed in the IPA vol- ume, demanded further explication. As a result, I decided to write this book. I have divided the book’s contents in two 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. Allow me, at this point, to of- fer thumbnail sketches of each of these chapters. I begin the first chapter of the book by considering the etymology and definition of the word “courage” and by elucidating the relation- ship of courage to power, wisdom, faith, joy, and self-affirmation. I make a brief foray into the phenomena of counterphobia and cow- ardice and then proceed to the developmental