Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape [Hardcover]

Adam Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 24, 2001

Houdini’s Box explores four different escape artists. There is the case history of the 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,” an assimilated Jew and immigrant escapee who compulsively reinvents and re-enacts his own confinement. There is a patient of Phillips’s who has come to him after being badgered by his (ex-) girlfriend, who says she wants to help “his next ex.” He is a man who has become entranced, not with woman as object of desire, but with flight from woman, a man hypnotized by the infinite freedom of escape, always arriving at the place from which he is escaping. And finally, there is the poet Emily Dickinson, who for the last twenty years of her life found freedom in self-imposed solitary confinement.

Whether we are getting away from something or getting away with something, we cannot describe ourselves without also describing what we need to escape from and what we want to escape to. In this, his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips reminds us why people often feel most alive in the very moment of escape.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"We cannot describe ourselves without also describing what we need to escape from, and what we believe we need to escape to," argues psychoanalyst Phillips (Promises, Promises; On Monogamy; etc.). He explores literature and mythology from Adam and Eve to Icarus to Emily Dickinson for allegories of escape, but dubs Houdini, the great escape artist, as "the modern role model," for having transformed escape into mass entertainment. Phillips interweaves his meditations on these lofty characters with therapy-couch snippets from a rather annoying patient of his, who never knows what he wants until he escapes from it. Escape, Phillips suggests, is the life project of those contemporary Houdinis, "the neurotics, and their more fervent risk takers, the perverts." But unlike Houdini, they are "driven by a daunting misapprehension. They don't realize that we don't always flee from something because it is unacceptable; sometimes it is unacceptable to us because we flee it." Although Phillips writes elegantly, and is capable of provocative analytic insights, he sometimes lapses into banal aphorisms or puzzling digressions. This isn't an account of Houdini's career or the details of his tricks so much as a catalogue of the showman's obsessions. Phillips follows up pronouncements like "Houdini was to escapism what pornography is to sex" with discourses on how porn averts the "death of desire." At one point Phillips tells his patient, "I don't know if you've changed the subject or not"; it's a confusion readers may also share. Agent, Kimberly Witherspoon.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Psychotherapist Phillips explores the concept of escapism in a piquant two-pronged inquiry in which he combines case histories with a vigorous analysis of the master of escapism, Harry Houdini. Phillips believes that the urge to escape is "often linked to a sense of failure," an insight that he applies both to his fresh consideration of Houdini's performances and to his patients, who employ various forms of escape ranging from reading to engaging in sexual fantasies. Arguing that understanding what a person is escaping from is just as crucial as analyzing what they're escaping to, Phillips discusses how avoidance and desire interact to define the self. Noting that Houdini called himself a "self-liberator," Phillips marvels over Houdini's obsession with confinement, strange parodies of madness, the curiously overlooked sexuality, and the "uncanny symbolic resonance" of his over-the-top performances, and how he intuitively tapped into the fears and longings, ambitions and mania of his time. So compelling is Phillips' take on Houdini that the more muted patient portraits pale in comparison. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1St Edition edition (July 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375406360
• ISBN-13: 978-0375406362
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,459,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent Sunday on my back porch., September 9, 2001

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Tw Rutledge "Thom Rutledge, author of Embraci... (Nashville, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape (Hardcover)

Both the fan of magic and the psychotherapist in me read Houdini's Box ---- with our feet propped up on the back porch railing, on a September Sunday afternoon.

The psychotherapist in me respects Adam Phillips' way of provoking thought without claiming any corner on "the truth." (If you like being introspective about the human psyche, this is a good one.) But mostly, the fan of magic enjoyed Phillips' take on Harry Houdini. There is little doubt that Houdini would be proud to be receiving so much attention 75 years after his death, but I think he would especially like becoming an archetype for the human condition.

If your taste runs toward mixing introspection with entertainment, and if you are curious to discover what you may have in common with "the great mystifyer," the two of me definitely recommend this book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Author Escapes from Finishing, April 20, 2005

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Bohdan Kot (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape (Hardcover)

Houdini's Box author Adam Phillips digs up more than he can catalog in this slender volume of psychology on the notion of escape. The former child psychotherapist cogently dissects Houdini, "a man who was liberating himself only to be able to liberate himself again later." Phillips' probing of Houdini's background is a lively discourse and believable answer to what would provoke a man to continually perform ever-increasingly dangerous escapes.

The writing is full of pithy gems, such as: "What one is escaping from is inextricable from, if not defined by, what one is escaping to." But the book also feels incomplete at 177 pages. Just as the book warms up, the author suddenly fades away. Ironically, the last essay is on the reclusive poet, Emily Dickinson. Phillips begins, "When the poet Emily Dickinson died in 1886 at the age of fifty-five, most of her neighbors hadn't seen her for well over twenty years."

Phillips examination of escape, except for Houdini's profile, is done in a hurried fashion. The author only gave a cursory look at the psychological stones unearthed within the three profiles of Dickinson, a young girl, and a grown man. Perhaps Phillips' main goal was to provoke questions, which he does often and well. Thankfully, he does avoid glib conclusions. But a deeper understanding may have been gleaned if Phillips kept examining the dark treasures uncovered in the psyche, instead of escaping from them.

Bohdan Kot

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Avoidance as a Clue to Motivation, August 5, 2001

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Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape (Hardcover)

....Psychotherapist Adam Phillips develops these themes in the context of Houdini's career, the attraction of his escapes for audiences, case histories such as those involving a five year-old girl who plays hide-and-seek in peculiar ways and a man who avoids women he is attracted to, mythology (Oedipus, Prometheus, Daedalus, Icarus, and Sisyphus), and literary characters (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Emily Dickinson).

The book's themes work best in the context of Houdini. The other examples provide context, but not nearly as much insight. I was particularly interested to learn that the story I had heard about Houdini's death was wrong. ....

In general, I found the book interesting, but found that it had some serious drawbacks in its structure and focus. For example, there is discussion about prostitution, pornography, and avoiding sexual relations that is loosely tied back to Houdini's skills in escape illusions. I found the connections tenuous, not well made, sometimes puzzling, and of little interest.

The discussions with patients are probably easy for a psychotherapist to follow, but I found them not very clear. I suspect that I would have enjoyed the book more without the patient sections.

At the same time, the mythological references are mainly of value to someone who doesn't know the stories. For those who do, those sections become long and somewhat tedious.

Basically, the book needed to be edited down further and to connect the dots more. At the same time, the section on Emily Dickinson could easily have been expanded.

If you know a lot of about psychological theories, this book will probably not add a lot for you. If you don't try very hard to avoid things, this book will probably not be very interesting. For those who strenuously avoid and would like to know more, this is a pretty low-key introduction into seeing the possible meaning behind patterns of avoidance through self-questioning.

What are the implications of your avoidance? Can you embrace what you care about in healthy ways? How well is your seeking out or avoiding behavior serving you and others?

Find ways to serve others, give love, and enjoy life!