Krotovskaya, N. G., Kulagina-Yartseva, V. S. Dichotomy of Life and Death (Review of Salman Akhtar’s Book ‘Matters of Life and Death’)

Abstract: Salman Akhtar is a famous American psychoanalyst and winter of numerous awards. He bases his book ‘Matters of Life and Death’ on Sigmund Freud’s teaching about the ‘two instincts’ and completes Freud’s teaching with later researches of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Eric Erikson, Wilfred Bion and others. Human life is viewed by the author from the point of view of the two components thereto – life and death – in their opposition and continuity. The first part is devoted to studying the main terms related to life: kindness, happiness and play. Different definitions of these terms are provided. Summarizing different scientific concepts of happiness, the author divides the following four categories of happiness: enjoyment, joy, ecstasy and satisfaction. Salman Akhtar traces back their ontological roots, metapsychological correlates and elements related to personal experience. The second part of the book is devoted to death. Salman Akhtar provides the two points of view on the matter – acceptance and denial of death – and their structural and existential functions. For this purpose, he also touches upon the problems of mortality, grave and orphans. Salman Akhtar studies the psychological meaning of graves as places where a deceased person is having his final sleep as well as expression of ethnic and religious hatred through desecration of graves and destruction of grave yards. He pays special attention to the problem of orphanage as a trauma experienced by a child and which consequences will remain for the rest of his life. The second part of the book views death and life as a continuous unity. Overcoming the barrier between life and death and traveling along the mental landscape of generation, we are leaving our bodies behind and returning to life as a metaphor full of play and generosity.

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