Keynote Speaker:

Good Stuff: Generosity, Courage, Gratitude, Forgiveness

A weekend with Salman Akhtar. M.D.

Parts 1-4: The first session will focus on courage, second on generosity, the third on gratitude, and the fourth on forgiveness. In each of these sessions, developmental origins of the respective capacities as well as their psychopathologic variants will be discussed. Illustrative vignettes from daily life, culture at large, and clinical work will be presented in all four sessions. While developmental and psychopathological concerns will be raised, the emphasis will remain upon the application of these insights to conducting psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Part 5: Resilience: The Immigrant Experience – as an immigrant clinician and as an immigrant patient

This 1-hour session will describe Dr. Akhtar’s personal journey as an immigrant from India, and its impact on the course of his work and life. It will highlight the types of resilient functioning needed to navigate this cultural and emotional transition, as well as the challenges. He describes approaches for managing countertransference issues in working with cultural differences, and some strategies to help immigrant clients benefit most from the therapeutic relationship.

Learning objectives Parts 1-4 Each of the four sessions will follow this outline with respect to the concept under discussion, for example:

Participants will learn to:

1) Differentiate between fearlessness, courage, and counterphobia

2) Enumerate the pathological syndromes of generosity

3) List the pathological syndromes of gratitude

4) Demonstrate how to empathize better with patients having difficulty with forgiveness

5) Employ the forgoing insights to improve clinical skills

6) Engageparticipants in discussion of case material and application of understanding to clinical practice.

Learning objectives Part 5

   Participants will:

1) Explore challenges immigrants cope with in adapting to a new culture and their potential impact on identity, self-esteem, relationships, and motivation.

2)Examine some of the countertransferential challenges clinicians face in working with immigrant populations and approaches to managing in the therapeutic relationship.

3)Describesome strategies to help immigrant clients benefit most from the therapeutic relationship.