Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, plays with ideas about the lives we want.Where do we get ideas about the kinds of lives we want? What do we fail to do about actually getting them—and why do our ideas so often fail to satisfy us in the end?Ever curious, sympathetic, and perceptive, Adam Phillips uses both psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed with the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy ...

In this brilliant, epigrammatic book, the eminent psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and the social historian Barbara Taylor examine the terrors of kindness and return to the reader the intense satisfactions of generosity and compassion.Kindness is the foundation of the world's great religions and most-enduring philosophies. Why, then, does being kind feel so dangerous? If we crave kindness with such intensity, why is it often the last pleasure we permit ourselves? And why...

One of The New York Times Critics' Picks of the YearFrom 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...

A leading psychoanalyst presents a transformative book about the lives we wish we had and what they can teach us about who we are.All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We be...

Missing Out is a meditation on reality and opportunity by Adam Phillips.We all have two lives - the life we live and the life of our fantasies. But it is the life unlived - the person we have failed to be - that can trouble and even haunt us. In Missing Out acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the gap between who we are and who we are not, to discover whether not getting what we want may be the unlikely key to the fully lived life.

Being sane has long been defined simply as that bland and nebulous state of not being mentally ill. While writings on madness fill entire libraries, until now no one has thought to engage exclusively with the idea of sanity.In a society governed by indulgence and excess, madness is the state of mind we identify with most keenly. Though ultimately destructive, it is often credited as the wellspring of genius, individuality, and self-expression. Sanity, on the other hand, confounds u...

A thoughtful exploration of personal change and growth from Britain's leading psychoanalystIn On Getting Better, Adam Phillips, author of Missing Out and On Kindness, delves into the complex topic of self-improvement. He examines how our desires for change are shaped by our past experiences and the narratives we've encountered. Phillips questions how we can approach the uncertain future that change brings, and how we might improve the way we discuss person...

Adam Phillips has been called "the psychotherapist of the floating world" and "the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness." His style is epigrammatic; his intelligence, electric. His new book, Darwin's Worms, uses the biographical details of Darwin's and Freud's lives to examine endings-suffering, mortality, extinction, and death. Both Freud and Darwin were interested in how destruction conserves life. They took their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams. Ea...

In a style that is writerly and audacious, Adam Phillips takes up a variety of seemingly ordinary subjects underinvestigated by psychoanalysis--kissing, worrying, risk, solitude, composure, even farting as it relates to worrying.He argues that psychoanalysis began as a virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine, but that virtuosity has given way to the dream of science that only the examined life is worth living. Phillips goes on to show how the drive to omniscience has ...

In this dazzling exploration, renowned psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the universal human desire for transformation and the complexities of personal change.We live in a world that constantly invites us to change—to become our best selves through politics, fitness, diet, or therapy. As we age and face setbacks, we yearn to view our lives as narratives of positive growth and progress. In On Wanting to Change, Adam Phillips brilliantly examines the s...

**A provocative collection of meditations on coupledom and its discontents that is "playful, brilliant ... profound ... keeps us faithful to the last page" (The New York Observer)—from the witty psychoanalyst and author of On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored.Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it—boredom, desire, and the tempting idea tha...

In this absorbing and provocative new book from one of Britain's most elegant and original prose stylists, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips addresses a variety of urgent concerns - many centred around the idea of balance.When might we know that enough is enough? Does the road of excess ever lead to the palace of wisdom? What is the role of the parent, the teacher and of psychoanalysis itself in the development of children's minds? Should we be happy, or is there something better we can ...