Adam Phillips (19 September 1954"Phillips, Adam", ''Who's Who 2012'', A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011; online edn, Nov 201
accessed 9 July 2012
/ref>) is a British

psychoanalytic PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk the ...

psychotherapist Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of Psychology, psychological methods, particularly when based on regular Conversation, personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase hap ...

and essayist. Since 2003, he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

. He is also a regular contributor to the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...

''. Joan Acocella, writing in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', described Phillips as "Britain's foremost psychoanalytic writer", an opinion echoed by historian

Élisabeth Roudinesco Élisabeth Roudinesco (; born 10 September 1944) is a French scholar, historian and psychoanalyst. She conducts a seminar on the history of psychoanalysis at the École Normale Supérieure. Roudinesco's work focuses mainly on psychiatry, psycholo ...

in ''

Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...

''.

Life

Phillips was born in

Cardiff Cardiff (; ) is the capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of in and forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area officially known as the City and County of Ca ...

, Wales, in 1954, the child of second-generation

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...

. He grew up as part of an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins and describes his parents as "very consciously Jewish but not believing". As a child, his first interest was the study of tropical birds and it was not until adolescence that he developed an interest in literature. He was educated at

Clifton College Clifton College is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in the city of Bristol in South West England, founded in 1862 and offering both boarding school, boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18. In its early years, unlike mo ...

.Adam Phillips: a life in writing , Books , The Guardian
/ref> He went on to study English at

St John's College, Oxford St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979.Communication from Michael Riordan, college archivist Its foun ...

, graduating with a third class degree. His defining influences are literary; he was inspired to become a psychoanalyst after reading

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

's autobiography and he has always believed psychoanalysis to be closer to poetry than medicine: "For me, psychoanalysis has always been of a piece with the various languages of literature—a kind of practical poetry." He began his training soon after leaving Oxford, underwent four years of analysis with Masud Khan and qualified to practice at the age of 27. He had a particular interest in children's psychological well-being and began working as a child psychotherapist: "one of the pleasures of

child psychotherapy Child psychotherapy, or mental health interventions for children refers to the psychological treatment of various mental disorders diagnosed in children and adolescents. The therapeutic techniques developed for younger age ranges specialize in ...

is that it is, as it were, psychoanalysis for a non-psychoanalytic audience." From 1990 to 1997, he was principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London. Phillips worked in the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

for seventeen years, but became disillusioned with its tightening bureaucratic demands. He currently divides his time between writing and his private practice in

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a wikt:cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan and multiculturalism, multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting ...

. For a number of years, he was in a relationship with the academic

Jacqueline Rose Jacqueline Rose (born 1949) is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. She is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. Life and work Rose ...

. He has been a visiting professor at the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

English department since 2006.

Literary presence

Phillips is a regular contributor to the ''London Review of Books''. He has been described by ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' as "the

Martin Amis Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and '' London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Mem ...

of British psychoanalysis" for his "brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling" work, and by

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, Literary adaptation, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Marcel Proust, Proust, via Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov", ...

as "one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time."Nicholas Fear
"The New Statesman Profile"
''New Statesman'', 23 April 2010 His approach to the new

Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...

edition is consistent with his own ideas about psychoanalysis, which he considers to be a form of rhetorical persuasion. He has published essays on a variety of themes, including the work of literary figures such as

Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764� ...

Walter Savage Landor Walter Savage Landor (30 January 177517 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose ''Imaginary Conversations,'' and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contempora ...

and

William Empson Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his firs ...

, as well as on philosophy and psychoanalysis; he has also written ''Winnicott'' in the

Fontana Modern Masters The Fontana Modern Masters was a series of pocket guides on writers, philosophers, and other thinkers and theorists who shaped the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. The first five titles were published on 12 January 1970 by Fontana ...

series. In an essay for ''The Baffler'', Sam Adler-Bell described Phillips' style as "uniformly short, allusive, and elusive, preoccupied with contradiction and wordplay" while his work is motivated by an "impulse to trouble the norms, rules, models, and expectations that make us feel stuck, unable to think, or unable to want." Adler-Bell notes that Phillips' writing reflects his psychoanalytical ideals, particularly an interest in the qualities of free association: that is, "provisionality, curiosity, promiscuity, improvisation, and play." Phillips is deeply opposed to any attempt to defend psychoanalysis as a science or even as a field of academic study, rather than simply, as he puts it, "a set of stories about how we can nourish ourselves to keep faith with our belief in nourishment, our desire for desire"—"stories

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

will sustain our appetite, which is, by definition, our appetite for life." His influences include D. W. Winnicott,

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...

Stanley Cavell Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, ...

and

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, ...

Assessment

Phillips has been described as "perhaps the best theorist of the modes and malfunctions of

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

psychology". For his intellectual resources, Phillips "draws from philosophy, literature, politics amongst others. However, whilst this affords Phillips the opportunity to be expansive it also makes him a maverick", and others "suspicious of his work", so that he has been called "ludic and elusive and intellectually slippery." Indeed, "To his critics ... Phillips is little more than a charlatan about whom an alarming cult of personality is developing." He himself was opposed to "the idealization that is a refusal to know someone", and even in the appraisal of the psychoanalytic greats thought that alongside "thoughtful consideration ... puerile consideration would not be the end of the world", in accordance with his enduring scepticism "about psychoanalysis ... it should be the opposite, the antidote to a cult."

On psychoanalysis

Phillips constantly refuses to "claim" any particular patch of psychoanalytic territory or even defend the value of psychoanalysis itself. "For me", he has said, "psychoanalysis is only one among many things you might do if you're feeling unwell—you might also try aromatherapy, knitting, hang-gliding. There are lots of things you can do with your distress. I don't believe psychoanalysis is the best thing you can do, even if I value it a great deal." He has also been alert to the possibility that "psychoanalysis ... disempowers in the name of knowing what's best ... at its worst it forces a pattern. It can make the links that should have been left to find their way." In the end, he claims, "Psychoanalysis cannot enable the patient to know what he wants, but only to risk finding out."K. J. Connolly/M. Martlew eds., ''Psychologically Speaking: A Book of Quotations'' (1999) p. 190 On psychoanalysis and science he says, "I don't think psychoanalysts should have bought into the scientific model with such eagerness. I don't think psychoanalysis is a science or should aspire to be one."

Works

References

External links

Review of The Beast in the Nursery
at Complete review
Discussion with Adam Phillips about Monogamy

Profile
in the ''

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

''
Audio: Adam Phillips in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show
''The Forum''
Fisun Gunar Q&A:Adam Phillips 17.4.2010

Audio, transcript of 2009 interview with British journalist Jennifer O'Mahony

Audio of interview with Leonard Lopate on WNYC radio on February 26, 2013
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips, Adam 1954 births 21st-century British essayists British non-fiction writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature British child psychologists Living people People educated at Clifton College Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Analysands of Masud Khan People from Cardiff British people of Polish-Jewish descent British male essayists