Adam Phillips

"In ogni coppia ci sono due cospiratori in cerca di un crimine. Spesso la sua migliore approssimazione e il sesso". L''autore ha affrontato in questo saggio il tema della coppia, rivoltandolo in modo da far vacillare i detentori di certezze. Quindi, a partire da alcune intuizioni non certo trascurabili, la sua indagine introduce in una "galleria di specchi" in cui nulla e quello che sembra.

Why are we all so spellbound by ideas of escape - and yet so dismissive of mere escapism? Houdinis Box explores four different escape artists. There is the case history of a little girl who is oddly committed to playing her own wayward version of hide and seek. There is Harry Houdini, the Greatest Magician the World has Ever Seen, who electrified the world through a series of death-defying escapes, compulsively re-inventing and re-enacting his own confinement. There is a man who, Jonah-like, is always arriving at the place he was escaping from, who thinks it is his destiny to be in flight, whether from women or from his analyst. And finally the poet Emily Dickinson, who for the last twenty years of her life finds freedom in self-imposed solitary confinement. In this, his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips reminds us why people often feel most alive in the very moment of escape. But whether we are getting away from something, or getting away with something - as Icarus, or Oedipus, or Narcissus; as victims or tyrants - we cannot describe ourselves without also describing what we need to escape from, and what we want to escape to.

Tickle a child, and she peals with laughter. Go on too long, and her laughter is sure to turn to tears. Where is that ticklish line between pleasure and pain? Why do we risk its being crossed? Does psychoanalysis possess the language to talk about such an extraordinary ordinary thing? In a style that is writerly and audacious, Adam Phillips takes up this subject and others largely overlooked by psychoanalysis - kissing, worrying, risk, solitude, and composure. He writes about phobias as a kind of theory, a form of protection against curiosity; about analysis as a patients way of reconstituting solitude; about "good-enough" mothering as the antithesis of "bad-enough" imperialism; about psychoanalysis as an attempt to cure idolatry through idolatry; and even about farting as it relates to worrying. Psychoanalysis began as a virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine, but virtuosity has given way to the dream of science that only the examined life is worth living. Phillips shows that the drive to omniscience has been unfortunate both for psychoanalysis and for life. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored is a set of meditations on underinvestigated themes in psyochoanalysis that shows how much ones psychic health depends on establishing a realm of life that successfully resists examination.

Cet essai biographique sur Freud travaille avec lhostilité de Freud à légard de la biographie. Il suggère que la psychanalyse est une science immigrante, une science en déplacement, et du déplacement

"La Meilleure des vies – éloge de la vie non vécue est un livre sur les expériences que nous navons jamais eues et dont nous sommes en deuil. Chaque chapitre décrit une expérience de la vie ordinaire

"La Meilleure des vies – éloge de la vie non vécue est un livre sur les expériences que nous navons jamais eues et dont nous sommes en deuil. Chaque chapitre décrit une expérience de la vie ordinaire

Cet essai biographique sur Freud travaille avec lhostilité de Freud à légard de la biographie. Il suggère que la psychanalyse est une science immigrante, une science en déplacement, et du déplacement

A wise generous book Washington PostFrom acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips a meditation on what we must give up to feel more alive To give up or not to give up The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple Giving up our supposed vices is one thing giving up on life itself is quite another One form of self sacrifice feels positive something to admire and aspire to while the other is profoundly unsettling if not actively undesirable There are always it turns out both good and bad sacrifices but it is not always clear beforehand which is which We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are In this sense giving up is a critical moment an attempt to make a different future In On Giving Up acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up and helps us to address the central question what must we give up in order to feel more alive One of the finest prose stylists in the language an Emerson of our time John Banville The best living essayist writing in English John Gray

From acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, a meditation on what we must give up to feel more alive.To give up or not to give up?The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple.Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable.There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment - an attempt to make a different future.In On Giving Up, acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up, and helps us to address the central question: what must we give up in order to feel more alive?

Adam Phillips uses the idea of flirtation to explore the virtues of being uncommitted - to people, to ideas, to methods - and the pleasures of uncertainty. These buoyant essays promote a psychoanalysis with a light touch, a psychoanalysis for pleasure and curiosity.In On Flirtation, he has again deployed all his erudition and perception to beguiling effect . . . Adam Phillips may well be one of our greatest contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers.Independent on Sunday

Has psychoanalysis failed to keep its promise? What are psychoanalysis and literature good for? And what, if anything, have they got to do with each other? Promises, Promises is a delightful new collection of essays which sets out to make and break the links between psychoanalysis and literature. It confirms Adam Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse into art, drama, poetry and history. This collection gives us insights into anorexia and cloning, the work of Tom Stoppard and A.E. Housman, the effect of the Blitz on Londoners, Nijinskys diary and Martin Amiss Night Train, and provides a case history of clutter. In a final essay, the author turns to the question - why sign up for analysis when you could read a book?Promoting everywhere a refreshing version of a psychoanalysis that is more committed to happiness and inspiration than to self-knowledge or some absolute truth, Promises, Promises reaffirms Adam Phillips as a writer whose work, in the words of one reviewer, hovers in a strange and haunting borderland between rigour and delight.

Does psychoanalysis teach us that freedom and equality are impossible for human beings? We would all like to think of ourselves as freedom-loving, egalitarian and democratic. Yet Freud has taught us that everything we do and say is rich in ambiguity and ambivalence: we are riven by conflict and antagonism, within and without. But if is true that our inner lives are one unflagging drama of desire and dependence, of greed, rivalry and abjection, then how can we ever presume to know what might be good for someone else? With all his customary grace and deftness, the celebrated writer Adam Phillips explores these issues in a liberating collection of essays. He looks at such topics as our fantasies of freedom and the nature of inhibition, at free association and the social role of mockery; he examine too the lives and works of such diverse figures as Svengali and Christopher Isherwood, Bertrand Russell and Saul Bellow. Throughout, Adam Phillips demonstrates how psychoanalysis - as a treatment and an experience and a way of reading - can, like democracy, allow people to speak and be heard.

A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the closest they can get.All the present controversies about the family are really discussions about monogamy. About what keeps people together and why they should stay together. Now, in a book of 121 aphorisms, Adam Phillips asks why we all believe in monogamy, and why we find it so difficult to think about. Everyone knows that most people, however much they may love their partner, are capable of loving and desiring more than one person at a time. It may be reassuring, but it is in fact very demanding -- and often cruel -- to assume that only one person can give us what we want. At least in sexual matters, sharing seems to go deeply against the grain. Monogamy is so much taken for granted as the foundation of the family and of family values that, as with anything that seems essential, we are very wary of being critical of it. But, as Adam Phillips suggests, it is surely worth wondering why the faithful couple has such a hold on our imagination, and how it has come to be such an ideal.

Despues de haber dirigido los rayos de su iconoclasta inteligencia sobre las virtudes (y algunos de los vicios) del coqueteo, Adam Phillips se ocupa de la monogamia. Para el, que nació en 1954 y vivio la revolucion sexual de los sesenta y setenta, la monogamia y su figura en el espejo, la promiscuidad, no son buenas o malas, sino dos versiones de la utopia. Y de alguna manera, lo que esta en cuestion en los debates sobre la familia, el divorcio, o la crisis del matrimonio, es precisamente la monogamia, aunque las mas de las veces no se ose mencionarla. El autor, pues, procede por el camino inverso y, partiendo de la exigencia a menudo tan cruel de que una sola persona pueda darnos todo lo que queremos y de que nosotros podamos a su vez satisfacer todos sus deseos, reflexiona sobre el amor y el deseo, y los vinculos que se establecen en esa compleja relacion entre conspiradores que es una pareja, donde dos son siempre tres. Y en ocasiones, algunos mas.

Una mirada deslumbrante a la curiosidad y la avidez infantiles: lo que las inspira, lo que las mata y cómo es posible mantenerlas. Crecer es un proceso de perdida de ilusiones, o esa al menos es la idea que tiene el saber al uso. Este libro muestra por que estamos tan ansiosos por aceptar este tranquilizador pero decepcionante mito, y ofrece un retrato del conflicto existente en todos nosotros entre el niño y el realista, entre la bestia y la guarderia.

¿Por qué nos seduce tanto la idea de la huida, y sin embargo despreciamos a los que huyen? En este libro se investiga a cuatro artistas de la fuga: una niña que juega compulsivamente a una caprichosa version del juego del escondite; Harry Houdini, que electriza a su publico con escapes en los que se juega la vida; un hombre que piensa que su destino es huir siempre, ya sea de las mujeres o de su psicoanalista; y la poeta Emily Dickinson que encontro la libertad en la reclusion que ella misma se habia impuesto. Adam Phillips nos recuerda que a menudo nos sentimos mas vivos que nunca en el instante de la huida.

As an essayist, Adam Phillips combines the best of two worlds: a mastery of psychotherapy as both practitioner and theorist, and a reputation as one of the best literary writers around. In this collection of essays, he brings these two gifts to bear upon each other, speculating on the relative merits of psychoanalysis and literature and on the connections between them. In his quirky, epigrammatic style, Phillips shows us how psychoanalysis and literature at their best share the goal of shedding light on human character, the most fascinating of disorders. Promises, Promises reveals Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse, into art, novels, poetry, and history. This collection gives us insights into Martin Amiss Night Train, Nijinskys diary, Tom Stoppard and A. E. Housman, Amy Clampitt, the effect of the Blitz on Londoners, and a case history of clutter. It confirms Phillips as a writer whose work, in the words of the Guardian, "hovers in a strange and haunting borderland between rigour and delight."

In this uniquely brilliant and insightful book, an acclaimed essayist and psychoanalyst analyzes four escape artistsincluding Harry Houdini and Emily Dickinsonto meditate on the notion of escape in our society and in ourselves."Provocative ... lucid and engaging ... a pleasure to read." The Washington Post No one can escape the desire and need to escape. By analyzing four examples of escape artistsa young girl who hides from others by closing her eyes; a grown man incapable of a relationship; Emily Dickinson, recluse extraordinaire; and Harry Houdini, the quintessential master of escapePhillips enables readers to identify the escape artists lurking within themselves. Lucid, erudite, and audacious, Houdinis Box is another scintillating and seminal work by one of the worlds most dazzlingly original thinkers.