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A former Psych Major, this is isn't required reading yet I find all of his books entertaining and applicable in day to day life, highly enjoyable, well thought out, intelligent and amusing, all good reads.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
In the Preface to this collection of essays Phillips comes right out and describes the duo of language and psychoanalysis as warp and woof. Without one, the other loses form - and meaning. Each and both are his focus here, and he manages in this book to ably wear two hats: that of an enthusiastically literary (he read English as an undergraduate) psychotherapist, and also an essayist on literary topics who is - not at all by accident - unapologetically psychoanalytically-oriented. He is playful and he writes with clarity and precision. You never puzzle out a Phillips sentence; you reread because you were pleased the first time. In addition his clinical experiences (as a child psychotherapist) inform some of the pieces. Sometimes he is elegantly simple - to set the hook, and is almost epigrammatic, as when he asserts, "One way of describing growing up would be to say that it involves a transition from the imperative to the interrogative - from 'Food!' to 'I want' - to 'Can I have?'" In addition, the Phillips knack for successfully and bracingly arguing both sides of a story is out in full force. Some of the subjects under discussion are poetry and psychoanalysis; narcissism (not such a bad thing); anorexia nervosa; clutter (as "the obstacle to desire" and the "object of desire"); agoraphobia; poet Frederick Seidel's one book of published poems; grief and melancholy; jokes, and an appreciation of Martin Amis (which jauntily starts out, "For three words once, in 1987, Martin Amis sounded like D.H. Lawrence.") Several (among them "Christopher Hill's Revolution and Me") are autobiographical, and all are thoroughly engaging. There are 28 essays. Some are book reviews. Some discuss writers or thinkers I'd never read.Read more ›
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Adam Phillips takes the title of his book -- PROMISES, PROMISES -- from the last entry in this collection of essays, where he outlines the underlying theme of his collection. He says, "For me - for all sorts of reasons - there has always been only one category, literature, of which psychoanalysis becomes a part." He says in reading, one carries out a solitary act, a meditation of sorts. In reading literature -- whatever that is, and the lines have become clouded in recent years -- one engages a person who is not present in the room. On the other hand, psychoanalysis where one engages someone who is in the room is "literature restored to practicality -- the absolute antithesis of art for art's sake..." All these essays deal with some aspect of psychoanalysis and frequently Phillips uses the published word - 'literature' - to illustrate his point. Sometimes, an essay is a "talk" Phillips has given to a group, such as "On Translating a Person" originally presented as the Gwyn Jones Memorial Lecture in Cardiff Wales in 2000. In this essay, Phillips refers to a book by Raymond William entitled 'Materialism and Culture', about Welsh society. Because Phillips is from Wales (and Jewish), he is interested in how Williams "translates" the Welsh culture. Phillips says "What Williams is alerting us to is that what he calls the emergence of 'structures of feelings' depend upon the culture forms available for use. And each of those forms carries with it a history and a class consciousness." Phillips applies this idea to psychoanalysis where he says the individual has a "consciousness of history, a consciousness of alternatives, a consciousness of aspirations and possibilities: a wish for translation.Read more ›
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
In the Preface to this collection of essays Phillips comes right out and describes the duo of language and psychoanalysis as warp and woof. Without one, the other loses form - and meaning. Each and both are his focus here, and he manages in this book to ably wear two hats: that of an enthusiastically literary (he read English as an undergraduate) psychotherapist, and also an essayist on literary topics who is - not at all by accident - unapologetically psychoanalytically-oriented. He is playful and he writes with clarity and precision. You never puzzle out a Phillips sentence; you reread because you were pleased the first time. In addition his clinical experiences (as a child psychotherapist) inform some of the pieces. Sometimes he is elegantly simple - to set the hook, and is almost epigrammatic, as when he asserts, "One way of describing growing up would be to say that it involves a transition from the imperative to the interrogative - from 'Food!' to 'I want' - to 'Can I have?'" In addition, the Phillips knack for successfully and bracingly arguing both sides of a story is out in full force. Some of the subjects under discussion are poetry and psychoanalysis; narcissism (not such a bad thing); anorexia nervosa; clutter (as "the obstacle to desire" and the "object of desire"); agoraphobia; poet Frederick Seidel's one book of published poems; grief and melancholy; jokes, and an appreciation of Martin Amis (which jauntily starts out, "For three words once, in 1987, Martin Amis sounded like D.H. Lawrence.") Several (among them "Christopher Hill's Revolution and Me") are autobiographical, and all are thoroughly engaging. There are 28 essays. Some are book reviews. Some discuss writers or thinkers I'd never read.Read more ›
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This item: Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature
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