Salman Akhtar

Salman Akhtar (born July 31, 1946, in India, Uttar Pradesh) is a psychoanalyst practicing in the United States. He is a renowned author and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA. He was born into a Muslim family in Khairabad, (Uttar Pradesh) to Jan Nisar Akhtar, a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet, and singer Safia Akhtar, a teacher and writer. Amongst his family members who are poets are the Urdu poet Majaz (maternal uncle), and his uncle are Eitbar Hussain bartar and Yadgar Hussain Nashtar. His grandfather, Muztar Khairabadi, and Maulana Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, a noted philosopher, poet and religious scholar of the nineteenth century and his brother Javed Akhtar is a mainstream writer and a prominent figure in Bollywood and is a popular and sought-after lyricist.