The Life You Want

‘Every mind-blowing book from Adam Phillips suspends all the certainties we are most attached to and somehow makes this feel exhilarating’ Deborah Levy What does it mean to ‘get a life’ in a culture in which there is so much to want? And why do the lives we think we need so often fail to satisfy? With his characteristic curiosity, warmth and perceptiveness, Adam Phillips addresses one of the key perplexities of modern life, which is that we are all the products of the families or social groups we grow up in: they shape us selectively and guide us to their preferred ways of living; but we then spend our lives haunted by the aspects of ourselves that they have ignored. We conform and yet we rebel. So, the lives we want for ourselves are likely to be a difficult mixture of the all too familiar and the experimental. And, necessarily, we all must make things up as we go along. What is to be done? The answer, Adam Phillips suggests, is to pay especially close attention to what interests us, excites us and frightens us; to make an experiment of living; and thereby to discover the life we want – and whether it is viable. 'One of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time' John Banville

‘Every mind-blowing book from Adam Phillips suspends all the certainties we are most attached to and somehow makes this feel exhilarating’ Deborah Levy What does it mean to ‘get a life’ in a culture in which there is so much to want? And why do the lives we think we need so often fail to satisfy? With his characteristic curiosity, warmth and perceptiveness, Adam Phillips addresses one of the key perplexities of modern life, which is that we are all the products of the families or social groups we grow up in: they shape us selectively and guide us to their preferred ways of living; but we then spend our lives haunted by the aspects of ourselves that they have ignored. We conform and yet we rebel. So, the lives we want for ourselves are likely to be a difficult mixture of the all too familiar and the experimental. And, necessarily, we all must make things up as we go along. What is to be done? The answer, Adam Phillips suggests, is to pay especially close attention to what interests us, excites us and frightens us; to make an experiment of living; and thereby to discover the life we want – and whether it is viable. 'One of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time' John Banville

Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, plays with ideas about the lives we want. Where do we get ideas about the lives we want? And, what do we do--and fail to do--about actually getting them? In The Life You Want , Adam Phillips uses psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed by the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy rather than merely endure, tolerate, or make the most of. Through a series of interlinked essays, Phillips explores the difficulties we have around the whole idea of enjoying--and fashioning--our lives in cultures that insistently promote enjoyment while making it very difficult for so many people. Exploring the personal and political overlap in the issue of our lives, The Life You Want is a profound examination of our ambivalence about enjoyment, and indeed, wanting.

Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, plays with ideas about the lives we want. Where do we get ideas about the lives we want? And, what do we do--and fail to do--about actually getting them? In The Life You Want , Adam Phillips uses psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed by the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy rather than merely endure, tolerate, or make the most of. Through a series of interlinked essays, Phillips explores the difficulties we have around the whole idea of enjoying--and fashioning--our lives in cultures that insistently promote enjoyment while making it very difficult for so many people. Exploring the personal and political overlap in the issue of our lives, The Life You Want is a profound examination of our ambivalence about enjoyment, and indeed, wanting.