- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; 1st Edition edition (8 July 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 057120970X
- ISBN-13: 978-0571209705
- Product Dimensions: 20 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 637,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Adam Phillips's Equals attempts to relocate psychoanalysis as a natural part--and even a necessary part--of an engaged and unregimented life. Phillips is a politically aware writer. He is not a "party man" in any sense. But he has notions about democracy that inform, not just his view of psychoanalytic practice, but also his ideas about human freedom and happiness. Phillips reminds us that people suffer, not because they are in conflict with themselves, but because they have suppressed a conflict by imposing an unconscious authoritarian order over their thoughts and feelings.
The aim of psychoanalysis is to recreate emotional fluency. (One assumes the job of politics is to deal with the fallout.) Like democracy, psychoanalysis should recognise and legitimate conflict which an authoritarian (superegoistic) order would suppress. Drawing parallels between the idea of free association in democracy, and the practice of free association in psychoanalysis, Phillips writes: "hearing all those voices… may itself be a kind of happiness". Phillips's arguments are meticulous, and sometimes fussy. The general reader will find some passages obscure, but there is never the sense that Phillips is being deliberately obscurantist. His compassion--as a writer, as an analyst, and as a literary critic--is admirable. A child psychotherapist by training, his essay "Childhood Again" brings his strongest qualities together--ideological nous, close argument and compassion--in an entirely successful and memorable synthesis. --Simon Ings
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"Brilliantly lucid; reading him on top form is like having bubbles of insight exploding inside one's head."
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First Sentence
In 1945, just after the end of the war, Lacan came to London as a French psychiatrist to find out about the effect of the war on British psychiatry. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
In 1945, just after the end of the war, Lacan came to London as a French psychiatrist to find out about the effect of the war on British psychiatry. Read the first page
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Phillips best
1 Jan 2004
Format:Paperback
Adam Phillips has excelled himself. This is a book that repays careful reading. What Phillips has to say - in his cool calm, and slyly humourous way - about how we construct relationships to others, and our relationship to ourself, (particularly about how we can learn to listen)is not only cogent and unique, but also stems from a deep compassion.
Phillips 'literary' essays included in this volume could be a model for essayists everywhere, if any still exist. His writing on Primo Levi for example, shows tremendous insight.
Phillips 'literary' essays included in this volume could be a model for essayists everywhere, if any still exist. His writing on Primo Levi for example, shows tremendous insight.
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