Bøger af Adam Phillips

To talk about getting better - about wanting to change in ways that we might choose and prefer - is to talk about pursuing the life we want; in the full knowledge that our pictures of the life we want, of our version of a good life, come from or come out of what we have already experienced. (We write the sentences we write because of the sentences we have read.)How can we talk differently about how we might want to change, knowing that all change precipitates us into an uncertain future?In this companion book to On Wanting to Change, Adam Phillips explores how we might get better at talking about what it is to get better.

A selection of the most popular and relevant essays from Adam Phillips, the man New Yorker called 'Britain's foremost psychoanalytic writer''Phillips's prose is poetic in the best sense: it is muscular, resonant, and thrums with a dark music that is all its own' John BanvilleIn the twenty essays gathered here, ranging across his entire oeuvre, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips offers a vivid introduction to his discipline as well as his own unique thinking. Investigating subjects as diverse as desire, family, happiness, tickling, forgetting and even boredom, Phillips proves himself to be not only one of our most engaging writers but also a fascinating and provocative guide to our obsessions as human beings.

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.Praise for Adam Phillips:'"e;Phillipsian"e; would evoke a vivid, paradoxical style that led you to think that you had picked up an idea by the head, only to find you were holding it by the tail' Lisa Appignanesi, Guardian'He's brilliant' John Carey'Phillips radiates infectious charm' Sunday TimesAdam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of several previous books, all widely acclaimed, including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Going Sane and Side Effects. His most recent book is On Kindness, which was co-written with historian Barbara Taylor.

In this collection of psychoanalytic essays on a wide range of relatively unexplored subjects, the author evolves his own distinctive version of psychoanalysis as part of a wider cultural conversation. The essays combine literary and philosophical commentary with clinical vignettes.

Volumes have been dedicated to madness, but sanity is rarely mentioned. We can define the mad, but how do we classify the sane? In Going Sane, psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips delves deep into history, philosophy, literature and his own experiences to address questions that we rarely ask about ourselves, taking us on an engrossing journey in which we learn many things - including some of what it takes to be happy in the modern world.

"Originally published in 2024 by Hamish Hamilton, Great Britain"-- Title page verso.

From the leading psychoanalyst Adam Phillips comes Missing Out, 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 become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short. But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from the equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires. In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of D. W. Winnicott and William James, to suggest that frustration, not getting it, and and getting away with it are all chapters in our unlived lives-and may be essential to the one fully lived.

Clear, engaging text allows kids to learn facts in an accessible and entertaining way.

Every day, we are told that balance is a good thing. We are supposed to make balanced judgments, balance our budget, and preserve a balance of power in our government. Disturbed people are described as unbalanced. In this insightful, charming book, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips looks afresh at balance (and its shadow, excess) and asks if achieving the former is such an admirable goal. From this perspective, Phillips examines the explosive topics of money, sex, parenthood, faith, and education. In his exhilarating and casually brilliant explorations of case studies, fairy tales, works of art, and literature, the paradoxes inherent in our appetites and fears are revealed.

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 us. One of the world's most respected psychoanalysts and original thinkers, Adam Phillips redresses this historical imbalance. He strips our lives back to essentials, focusing on how we--as human beings, parents, lovers, as people to whom work matters--can make space for a sane and well-balanced attitude to living. In a world saturated by tales of dysfunction and suffering, he offers a way forward that is as down-to-earth and realistic as it is uplifting and hopeful.

Psychoanalysis works by attending to the patient's side effects, "what falls out of his pockets once he starts speaking." Undergoing psychoanalytic therapy is always a leap into the dark?like dedicating our hearts and intellect to a powerful work of literature, it's impossible to know beforehand its ultimate effect and consequences. One must remain open to where the "side effects" will lead.Erudite, eloquent, and enthrallingly observant, Adam Phillips is one of the world's most respected psychoanalysts and a boldly original writer and thinker?and the ideal guide to exploring the provocative connections between psychoanalytic treatment and enduring, transformative literature. His fascinating and thoughtful Side Effects offers a valuable intellectual blueprint for the construction of a life beholden to no ideology other than the fulfillment of personal promise.

If you are disturbed by the idea that to grow up is to learn to live with disillusionment, if you are fascinated by the perplexity of child-rearing, or if you fear you were more creative as a child, The Beast in the Nursery offers an illuminating and possibly life-changing experience. In four interrelated essays, Adam Phillips arrives at startling new insights into issues that preoccupied Freud, showing in the process that far from having lost its relevance, psychoanalysis is still one of our most incisive tools for the exploration of the human psyche and its possibilities. Phillips transforms the genre of the essay into an instrument for intellectual investigation of the most absorbing kind.

Although he founded no school of his own, 0. W. Winnicott (1896 1971) is now regarded as one of the most influential contributors to psychoanalysis since Freud. In over forty years of clinical practice, he brought unprecedented skill and intuition to the psychoanalysis of children. This critical new work by Adam Phillips presents the best short introduction to the thought and practice of D. W. Winnicott that is currently available.Winnicott's work was devoted to the recognition and description of the good mother and the use of the mother-infant relationship as the model of psychoanalytic treatment, His belief in natural development became a covert critique of overinterpretative methods of psychoanalysis. He combined his idiosyncratic approach to psychoanalysis with a willingness to make his work available to nonspecialist audiences. In this book Winnicott takes his place with Melanie K'ein and Jacques Lacan as one of the great innovators within the psychoanalytic tradition.

This book presents a day long symposium with Adam Phillips and includes two brilliant essays that reveal what is at the heart of psychoanalysis.

This book is a chronicle of the all-too-human terror that drives us into the arms of experts, and of how expertise, as psychoanalysis, addresses our fears, turning our terror into meaning. Characteristically engaging and challenging, charming and maddening, Phillips teases out the complicity between desire and the forbidden, longing and dread.