PHILLIPS, Adam

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Pantheon Books, 201 East 50th St., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Psychoanalyst, literary critic, author, and editor. Charing Cross Hospital, London, England, principal child therapist; Wolverton Gardens Child and Family Consultation Center, London, principal child psychotherapist.

WRITINGS:

Winnicott, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1988.

On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

On Flirtation: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Uncommitted Life, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

Terrors and Experts, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

Monogamy, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1996.

The Beast in the Nursery: On Curiosity and Other Appetites, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1998.

Darwin's Worms, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape, Pantheon Books (New York, NY) 2001.

Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Equals (essays), Basic Books (New York, NY), 2002.

EDITOR

Charles Lamb, Selected Prose, Penguin (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England), 1985.

(And author of introduction) Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1986.

(And author of introduction) Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1990.

Michael Eigen, The Electrified Tightrope (essays), Jason Aronson (Northvale, NJ), 1993.

(With Hugh Haughton and Geoffrey Summerfield) John Clare in Context, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1994.

SIDELIGHTS: The prolific and witty Adam Phillips has made his mark as both a psychotherapist writing on that discipline and, earlier, as a literary critic devoted to such British classics as John Clare, Charles Lamb, and Walter Pater. During the 1990s Phillips became known to the educated general public as "the Oliver Sacks of psychoanalysis," in the words of Dwight Garner of Salon.com, or "the Will Self of thought," according to Linda Grant in the New Statesman.

Phillips's first book on psychotherapy, Winnicott (1988), was dubbed an "elegant" study of the British analyst D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) by Sherry Turkle in the London Review of Books. Winnicott, according to Times Literary Supplement contributor Peter L. Rudnytsky, was "the most important native-born English psychoanalyst." A specialist in children (as is Phillips), he was best known for his theory of the "good enough mother": the mother who, although by definition imperfect, provides a secure and stable enough bond in the earliest years, thereby allowing the child to grow as an independent person. Rudnytsky found Phillips's study to be "a distinguished addition to the growing body of literature" on Winnicott, and "especially illuminating on Winnicott's life." That reviewer faulted Phillips, however, for accusing Winnicott of a "flight from the erotic" and a "flight into infancy." Nevertheless, Rudnytsky admired "the spirit of independent thinking that Winnicott himself fostered" in a volume whose author joined "the sensibility of a practitioner with that of a man of letters." For New Statesman contributor Daniel Pick, "Phillips's own style nicely replicates something of the gentle charm and the occasionally startling phrase-making to be found in Winnicott's writing. . . . [We] are left, above all, with an image of Winnicott's exceptional good humour."

Phillips next produced On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (1993), which Sarah Boxer, in the New York Times Book Review, called "poetic." Boxer observed that the general theme of the essays is that of "[the] fear of letting oneself go," and that Phillips values boredom as a stage of preliminary waiting for something unknown: a stage that requires the freedom to let go. New Statesman contributor Adrianne Blue labeled the book "brilliant," admiring especially the chapter on obstacles, which, for Phillips, are the screens for unconscious desire. D. J. Enright, in the London Review of Books, wrote a respectful essay in which he called On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored "a peculiarly difficult book to review because it reviews itself as it goes along and is hardly to be described in other than its own words." Enright enjoyed, however, Phillips's "sparkling apophthegms," the effect of which he claimed is "not unlike being hit repeatedly on the head by a small, pointed hammer." Among these apophthegms are descriptions of psychoanalysis as "a circus with many acts," "a story—and a way of telling stories—that makes some people feel better," and "a conversation that enables people to understand what stops them from having the kinds of conversation they want."

Phillips collected more essays, as well as lectures and book reviews, into his 1994 book, On Flirtation: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Uncommitted Life. He views flirtation as "the game of taking chances"—a way, in other words, of establishing a "contingent self" which, in contrast to the traditional psychoanalytic view of the self, does not always know what it desires. Fittingly, the collection itself treats briefly a wide number of subjects, including Freud, John Clare, Good and Evil, and, once again, Winnicott. Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Susan Salter Reynolds remarked that this is "not a flirtatious treatment of flirtation." R. H. Balsam, in Choice, felt that Phillips's opinions are "extremely interesting" and that his "style dazzles in originality, elegant paradox, and aphorism. He is a master of the arresting opening sentence." Janet Malcolm, in the New York Times Book Review, called the collection "interestingly strange" for its "tension between Mr. Phillips's attraction to and revulsion from psychoanalysis, an ambivalence that runs through it like a red thread."

Phillips examines the field of psychoanalysis again in his 1996 book Terrors and Experts, a brief collection of six essays. The terrors mentioned in the title are the fears that beset children and adults; and the experts are the therapists. Phillips takes issue with the "mystique of expertise," which he feels many therapists suffered from, and offers a brand of therapy that tries to be interesting—and to make life itself interesting—rather than important or true. For this reason, critic David Herman, in the New Statesman, called Phillips himself "an interesting figure" who "has started to put present-day psychoanalysis on the map—who has ditched the old baggage . . . and offers a psychoanalysis which is surprising." Herman felt that the book, at times, needs "some greater ballast . . . solid ground." But he admired Phillips's "striking . . . intellectual confidence" and noted that "few analysts since Freud have written as well as Phillips." Reviewing the slim volume in Salon.com, Garner hailed Phillips as "a charming and casually profound essayist," and his books, on the whole, as "wonderful (and wonderfullytitled)." In Library Journal, contributor E. James Lieberman applauded Phillips's "provocative, aphoristic style," and added, "This lean book sparkles with ideas, many jewellike." Reviewer Judith Shulevitz of the New York Times appreciated Phillips as "a miniaturist, magnifying the apparently trivial or often overlooked," and averred, "In Mr. Phillips's hands, psychoanalysis becomes an instrument of reproducible magic, a poetics you can use at home." And a Publishers Weekly contributor gave the nod to Terrors and Experts as "lucid" and "comprehensible" to the layperson.

Phillips followed Terrors and Experts with another brief volume, Monogamy, in which he examines the related questions of the functions of monogamy and of infidelity, beginning by asking what would happen if the human race were commanded not to be monogamous for more than three weeks. Novelist Linda Grant, in the New Statesman, responded archly that such an experiment had been tried out in San Francisco's gay community in the 1970s and early 1980s, with the result that later decades of gay men flocked back toward monogamy as an ideal. Grant called Monogamy "the season's sexy must-read," but criticized it for being "intensely irritating, smug, and pleased with itself," and lacking in a felt sense of human life and relationships. Phillips's ideas, Grant believed, are sometimes "genuinely thought-provoking," and sometimes merely showy witticisms. The book is arranged into 121 very short essays, each occupying one page or less; this prompted Publishers Weekly to label it an "iconoclastic meditation" and to compare it with Zen koans and some of the writing of Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing. "Full of irony and paradox, spiked with psychoanalytic insights, these . . . [essays] titillate but rarely satisfy," the Publishers Weekly contributor commented. Melanie Du Bois Custer, reviewing Monogamy for the Washington Post Book World, compared its disorderly thematic development to that of Shakespeare's sonnets. "Reading this book is like consulting an oracle; its enigmatic, disconnected statements offer stimulation, not advice," Custer said. "If you are not irritated by the gnomic manner, you may be fascinated."

In 1998 Phillips explored psychoanalysis through the lens of childhood in The Beast in the Nursery: On Curiosity and Other Appetites. Here, he presents psychoanalysis as a potential tool for restoring people to the sense of curiosity, wonder, and desire—the sense of appetite, according to the title—that a civilized upbringing often destroys. Wrote Stephen Greenblatt in the New York Times, "The restoration of a vigorous, wide-ranging interest in life is an admirable goal, and Phillips addresses himself to the task with wit, humane intelligence and a sensitivity to the insights of Shakespeare, Blake, Keats, and Henry James, alongside those of Freud and D. W. Winnicott." Publishers Weekly approved of the book as "lively and engaging. . . . well written and accessible," on a subject that is of paramount importance in daily life as well as psychoanalysis.

In Darwin's Worms, Phillips argues that two pioneers of biological and social thinking, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, were focused primarily on ideas of death. Phillips examines their theories and life stories to determine how Darwin and Freud dealt with the "implications and consequences" of their theories, wrote a critic on the Complete Review Web site. This interest was manifested in Darwin's ideas of the extinction of species central to Darwin's ideas, and "the individual's pursuit of his own happiness and death for Freud," the Complete Review critic wrote. "Phillips's ideas may not convince," the Complete Review critic concluded, "but they are interesting ideas to entertain, and Phillips presents them fairly well."

In 2002's Equals, Phillips offers a collection of essays and reviews centering around the practice of psychoanalysis and the idea of psychoanalysis as a representation of democracy in microcosm. "What could we learn if we took the relationship between therapist and patient as an exercise in democracy? he wonders," related Emily Eakin in New York Times. "Could psychoanalysis tell us something about why, in a society formally wedded to the notion of equality, we invest so much energy creating hierarchies of power and prestige?" Further, Nicholas Fearn, writing in the Spectator, noted that "the best means yet devised of dealing with the tumult of voices in public life is democracy. So why, asks the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his fascinating books, should the same model not be applied to the private life of the mind?" Psychoanalysts such as D. W. Winnicutt and Phillips himself assert that during the psychoanalytic process, the patient and the analyst are both individuals of equal status in the therapeutic relationship. Phillips also argues such points that since therapy is intended to help patients deal with inner conflict, it is a type of democratic process since conflict (and the need to hear all sides of an issue) is "an essential side effect of democracy; everyone has a voice," Eakin wrote. "Despite such promising ammunition and his considerable rhetorical skill, however, Phillips's vision of 'democratic psychoanalysis' never amounts to much more than vague, rose-tinted fantasy," Eakin concluded.

Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape is "a readable and thought-provoking short treatise on the notion of escape," wrote Raj Persaud in the British Medical Journal. Phillips "argues that much of our behavior can be properly understood only as reflecting an unconscious desire to run away from something that we want to avoid in our lives," Persaud remarked. Combining detailed case histories with an in-depth analysis of a literal and symbolic master of escape, Harry Houdini, Phillips lays out his theories of escapism and how it manifests itself in the lives of psychiatric patients and those without psychological impairments. The deeply rooted need to escape may be manifested in such behavior as frequent job changes as well as failing to know what one wants until he escapes from it, as was the case with one of Phillips's patients. In addition to what BookPage reviewer Alan Prince called "an intellectual autopsy on Houdini," Phillips offers the idea that "our lives are largely shaped by what he calls exits, elsewheres, and avoidances," Prince remarked. "Escape, Phillips suggests, is an end in itself," wrote Gaby Wood for the Guardian Unlimited, "and more of a foundation myth for our lives than we might suppose." Notions of escape appear in our literature, our classical mythology, and our philosophy, continually surrounding us with the idea of escape and giving us basic ideas of how to achieve it. Phillips even interprets one of Christendom's fundamental stories, that of Adam and Eve, as a story of escape.

Critics such as Persaud caution against a wholesale acceptance of Phillips's ideas of escape, noting that "it is not always helpful to conclude that everything means something else." A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed, "Although Phillips writes elegantly, and is capable of provocative analytic insights, he sometimes lapses into banal aphorisms or puzzling digressions." Guardian Unlimited critic Wood found Phillips's approach more straightforward, however. "Though Phillips's territory is complication, he reports back from his travels in the simplest of words," the Guardian reviewer observed. "He is perhaps single-handedly continuing the tradition of the world's best essayists, yet there is nothing arch or highfalutin about his writing. I would recommend it to anyone who ever liked to entertain a thought."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape, p. 1953.

British Medical Journal, October 13, 2001, Raj Persaud, review of Houdini's Box, p. 873.

Choice, May, 1995, p. 1528.

Economist, April 21, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 81.

Entertainment Weekly, March 30, 2001, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 63; August 3, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 63.

Globe and Mail, January 13, 2001, review of Darwin's Worms, p. D6.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 727.

Library Journal, March 1, 1996, p. 94; February 15, 2001, review of Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature, p. 168.

London Review of Books, November 23, 1989, pp. 13-14; March 25, 1993, p. 14; November 11, 1999, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 7.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 13, 1994, p. 6.

New Statesman, February 24, 1989, p. 46; July 23, 1993, p. 41; November 17, 1995, pp. 39-40; September 20, 1996, pp. 47-48; November 29, 1999, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 78; April 16, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 56; July 15, 2002, Hugo Barnacle, review of Equals, pp. 49-50.

New York Times, June 30, 1996; February 22, 1998; February 18, 2001, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 32; October 13, 2002, Emily Eakin, review of Equals, section 7, p. 16.

New York Times Book Review, May 16, 1993, p. 19; November 6, 1994, p. 11; May 9, 1999, review of The Beast in the Nursery: On Curiosity and Other Appetites, p. 42; August 12, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 30.

Observer (London, England), October 31, 1999, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 12; January 31, 1999, review of The Beast in the Nursery, p. 14; November 23, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 5.

Publishers Weekly, February 12, 1996, p. 68; November 4, 1996, p. 58; December 22, 1997, p. 46; June 11, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 71.

Readings, September, 2001, review of Promises, Promises, p. 33.

Spectator, July 13, 2002, Nicholas Fearn, "The Harmony of Discord," review of Equals, pp. 40-41.

Times Educational Supplement, November 5, 1999, review of Darwin's Worms, p. 9.

Times Literary Supplement, July 7-13, 1989, p. 751; September 6, 2002, Vincent Deary, "Sunk in Doubt," review of Equals, p. 10.

Washington Post Book World, February 9, 1997, p. 6; July 29, 2001, review of Houdini's Box, p. 9.

ONLINE

Adequacy,http://www.adequacy.net/ (November 20, 2003), review of Houdini's Box.

BookPage,http://www.bookpage.com/ (November 20, 2003), review of Houdini's Box.

Complete Review,http://www.complete-review.com/ (November 20, 2003), review of Darwin's Worms.

Guardian Unlimited,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (December 2, 1999), Stephen Moss, review of Darwin's Worms; (April 22, 2001), Gaby Wood, review of Houdini's Box; (June 30, 2002), Sean O'Hagan, review of Equals.

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (June 23, 1998).*