On Flirtation [Paperback]

Adam Phillips (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674634403 | ISBN-13: 978-0674634404 | Publication Date: March 1, 1996

People tend to flirt only with serious things--madness, disaster, other people's affections. So is flirtation dangerous, exploiting the ambiguity of promises to sabotage our cherished notions of commitment? Or is it, as Adam Phillips suggests, a productive pleasure, keeping things in play, letting us get to know them in different ways, allowing us the fascination of what is unconvincing? This is a book about the possibilities of flirtation, its risks and instructive amusements--about the spaces flirtation opens in the stories we tell ourselves, particularly within the framework of psychoanalysis.

Phillips looks at life as a tale to be told but rejects the idea of a master plot. Instead, he says, we should be open to the contingent, and flirtation shows us the way. His book observes children flirting with their parents, our various selves flirting with one another, and literature flirting with psychoanalysis. As Phillips explores the links between literature and psychoanalysis--ranging from Philip Roth to Isaac Rosenberg, Karl Kraus to John Clare--psychoanalysis emerges as a multi-authored autobiography. Its subjects are love, loss, and memory; its authors are the analyst and the analysand, as well as the several selves brought to life in the process. A passionate and delightfully playful defense of the virtues of being uncommitted, On Flirtation sets before us the virtue of a yet deeper commitment to the openendedness of our life stories.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[Phillips'] writing is strong and lucid...[He] writes of his work with child and adult patients in the moving and exciting way that marked the clinical writings of D.W. Winnicott and the early works of M. Masud R. Khan.
--Janet Malcolm (New York Times Book Review )

In Phillipstour de force.
--David Ingleby (Times Literary Supplement )

[These] essays are intellectual flirtations that use the wiles of paradox to tease us into liberating ourselves from the old stories, to make us accept the madcap contingency of our lives...On Flirtation is everything Phillips says psychoanalytic writing should be--a pleasure rather than a misery to read, "a kind of practical poetry."
--Bill Marx (Boston Phoenix )

Adam Phillips' On Flirtation is less a study of the psychology of coquetry than it is a delightful glimpse into the pleasures of uncertainty. Flirtation is Phillips' metaphor for playing with stimulating ideas so that we can explore anew their complexity without fear of adhering to stultifying orthodoxy or succumbing to overearnestness...On Flirtation will be fascinating to all those who wish to restore the importance of contingency in human life and who, committed to open psychoanalytic inquiry, realize that not everything can be neatly understood or mastered...Given Phillips' subtle mind, appreciation of complexity, tolerance of conflicting views, rejection of traditional forms of closure, and epigrammatic style, it is no accident that he has written a superb book.
--Donald Kuspit (Psychoanalytic Books )

In three superb books, On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored; On Flirtation; and Terrors and Experts...[Phillips] has endorsed pleasure as a laudable goal (imagine!) and enshrined narrative as a form of soul making. In the process, he's punched lovely skylights into the gloomy Freudian edifice and in general done much to rehabilitate the psychoanalytic enterprise by honoring the idiosyncrasy of human experience and by wielding method lightly, playfully, humanely.
--Will Blythe (Esquire )

Phillips writes as a "flirt"--in the special sense he defines in his opening essay--but how much richer his book is for that. Before next going into print, the envious rivals and embittered former lovers who nowadays cluster around Freud's name should all report to Phillips for a lesson in flirtation.
--Malcolm Bowie, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford

Review

Phillips writes as a "flirt"--in the special sense he defines in his opening essay--but how much richer his book is for that. Before next going into print, the envious rivals and embittered former lovers who nowadays cluster around Freud's name should all report to Phillips for a lesson in flirtation. (Malcolm Bowie, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674634403
• ISBN-13: 978-0674634404
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #495,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant essayist on a variety of topics, July 6, 2000

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Flirtation (Paperback)

Do not be misled by the use of the word "flirtation" in this collection's title. It's a metaphor for flexibility and psychic and intellectual playfulness. In his Preface, the author asserts, "Flirtation keeps things in play, and by doing so lets us get to know them in different ways." Phillips, a British child analyst and respected literary critic, has assembled a series of readable, erudite, and sometimes thrilling essays on his customary favorite topics. They are fresh and insightful - as usual from him. He is interested in literature, contemporary and traditional psychoanalytic theory, attachment, depression, the uses and wonders of language, Lacanian musings and principles, and much more. The bibliography itself could form the backbone of a lengthy course of study. The collection is divided into several parts: "The Uses of the Past," "Psychoanalysis Revisited," and "Writing Outside," which includes literary essays on Philip Roth, Isaac Rosenberg, nineteenth century writer John Clare, and Hapsburg Empire-era Austrian Karl Kraus. But it his the essays on, or "flirting" with, a wide variety of psychoanalytic themes which are at the heart of this interesting, intelligent, and useful collection. "Freud and the Uses of Forgetting," "On Love," and "The Telling of Selves" reveal Phillips' ability to range widely - yet with focus, inherent compassion and kindness, and clarity - in the telling of his themes.

An essay on depression, in which he talks with great respect about the work of Lacanian analyst Julie Kristeva, is particularly interesting. Erich Fromm, Freud and his biographer, Jones, are also subjects of essays.

This is a terrific book, full of humane and productive thinking, and ought to be read and reread by anyone with an interest in the uses of psychoanalysis, and the very modern, creative, and original mind of Adam Phillips. Highly recommended.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tragically self-indulgent writing style, September 24, 2008

By 

Kristine Logan "A reader" (New Paltz, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Flirtation (Paperback)

This books is chock full of fascinating ideas. So chock full, that at times it loses direction. The author is so in love with the ideas, he has a little trouble following one coherently at times. This tendency is exacerbated by the authors injudicious use of parenthetical phrases (where he suddenly goes in a new direction). The book is larded, weighted down, and crippled by these parenthetical phrases - after a while I just wanted to scream for him to get an editor. GET AN EDITOR! But of course, this book was written quite a while ago. Of course some of the parenthetical phrases are fine. Many others reflect the authors inability to commit to a direction, his incapability to abandon any direction related to his main point. This is catastrophically frustrating because the ideas are so fascinating. Alas, he has trouble making his point clearly. Tragic.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of his earliest and best collections., August 4, 2010

By 

Ed Renaud (Branford, Ct.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Flirtation (Paperback)

Flirtation is really play of a particular sort, which like all play is about practice and exploration without having to sign on the dotted line. The collection of essays in this book show the value of playing with ideas. Adams tosses out questions, teases and drops hints about psychological development which reveal possibilities you might not have considered before. The subject matter of the essays is generally geared towards those with some background in psychoanalytic theory, but is accessible to a general audience. The end result, like other forms of flirtation, is that you find yourself wanting more.