Arrogance: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms

In this wide-ranging book, Salman Akhtar, Ann Smolen, and their invited contributors greatly deepen our understanding of arrogance. They demonstrate that arrogance affects men more than women, that it is found in analysts as well as in patients, that it serves both discharge and defensive functions, and that is has adaptive as well as pathological features. Some of us may arrogantly believe they have no need to read this book, but those who do read it will be enriched by the experience. --Richard Waugaman, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst (Emeritus), Washington Psychoanalytic Institute

This book provides a timely psychoanalytic focus on the multifaceted realm of arrogance. Its distinguished contributors move from evolutionary theory through cross-cultural perspectives and from literature to clinical considerations at all phases of development. The resulting discourse gives much food for thought about attitudes toward arrogance. The inclusion of a full-length essay on the opposite of arrogance, namely, humility, adds further nuance and clinical usefulness to the text. This book will be useful for all psychotherapists and is well worth reading. --Frederick H. Lowy, MD, Psychoanalyst, former Dean of Medicine, University of Toronto