Adam Phillips (psychologist)

Last updated
Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips. Photogr. by Bracha L. Ettinger.jpg
Adam Phillips in 2012
Born (1954-09-19) 19 September 1954 (age 69)
NationalityBritish
Partner(s)Judith Clark, formerly Jacqueline Rose
Children3
Scientific career
FieldsPsychoanalysis, Literary Criticism

Adam Phillips (19 September 1954 [1] ) is a British psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist.

Contents

Since 2003 he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of Sigmund Freud. He is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books .

Joan Acocella, writing in The New Yorker , described Phillips as "Britain's foremost psychoanalytic writer", [2] an opinion echoed by historian Élisabeth Roudinesco in Le Monde . [3]

Life

Phillips was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1954, the child of second-generation Polish Jews. 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". [4] 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. [5]

He went on to study English at St John's College, Oxford, [1] graduating with a third class degree. [6] His defining influences are literary; he was inspired to become a psychoanalyst after reading Carl Jung'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." [7] 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. [8] 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 is that it is, as it were, psychoanalysis for a non-psychoanalytic audience." [9]

From 1990 to 1997, he was principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London. [1] Phillips worked in the National Health Service for seventeen years, but became disillusioned with its tightening bureaucratic demands. [10] He currently divides his time between writing and his private practice in Notting Hill. For a number of years, he was in a relationship with the academic Jacqueline Rose. [5] He has been a visiting professor at the University of York English department since 2006. [1]

Literary presence

Phillips is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. He has been described by The Times as "the Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis" for his "brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling" [11] work, and by John Banville as "one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time." [12] His approach to the new Freud 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, Walter Savage Landor and William Empson, as well as on philosophy and psychoanalysis; he has also written Winnicott in the Fontana Modern Masters series. [13]

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." [14]

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" [15] —"stories [that] will sustain our appetite, which is, by definition, our appetite for life." [16] His influences include D.W. Winnicott, Roland Barthes, Stanley Cavell and W.H. Auden.

Assessment

Phillips has been described as "perhaps the best theorist of the modes and malfunctions of modernist psychology". [17] 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", [18] so that he has been called "ludic and elusive and intellectually slippery." [19] Indeed, "To his critics ... Phillips is little more than a charlatan about whom an alarming cult of personality is developing." [12] He himself was opposed to "the idealization that is a refusal to know someone", and even in appraisal of the psychoanalytic greats thought that alongside "thoughtful consideration ... puerile consideration would not be the end of the world", [20] in accordance with his enduring scepticism "about psychoanalysis ... it should be the opposite, the antidote to a cult." [21]

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." [22] 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 own way." [23] In the end, he claims, "Psychoanalysis cannot enable the patient to know what he wants, but only to risk finding out." [24]

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." [5]

Works

Further reading

See also

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory that, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.

Perversion is a form of human behavior which deviates from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although the term perversion can refer to a variety of forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are considered particularly abnormal, repulsive or obsessive. Perversion differs from deviant behavior, in that the latter covers areas of behavior for which perversion would be too strong a term. It is often considered derogatory, and, in psychological literature, the term paraphilia has been used as a replacement, though this term is controversial, and deviation is sometimes used in its place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Freud</span> Austrian–British psychoanalyst (1895–1982)

Anna Freud CBE was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian–Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Hermine Hug-Hellmuth and Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology.

Free association is the expression of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and colleague, Josef Breuer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Winnicott</span> English pediatrician and psychoanalyst

Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytical Society, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society twice, and a close associate of Marion Milner.

Neo-Freudianism is a psychoanalytic approach derived from the influence of Sigmund Freud but extending his theories towards typically social or cultural aspects of psychoanalysis over the biological.

The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on 30 October 1913. It is one of two organisations in Britain training psychoanalysts, the other being the British Psychoanalytic Association.

André Green was a French psychoanalyst.

Fixation is a concept that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Strachey</span> British psychoanalyst

James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, "the international authority".

A training analysis is a psychoanalysis undergone by a candidate as a part of her/his training to be a psychoanalyst; the (senior) psychoanalyst who performs such an analysis is called a training analyst.

Psychoanalytic sociology is the research field that analyzes society using the same methods that psychoanalysis applies to analyze an individual.

Neville Symington was a member of the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts which argues that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification. He published a number of books on psychoanalytic topics, and was President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society from 1999 to 2002.

In psychology, narcissistic withdrawal is a stage in narcissism and a narcissistic defense characterized by "turning away from parental figures, and by the fantasy that essential needs can be satisfied by the individual alone". In adulthood, it is more likely to be an ego defense with repressed origins. Individuals feel obliged to withdraw from any relationship that threatens to be more than short-term, avoiding the risk of narcissistic injury, and will instead retreat into a comfort zone. The idea was first described by Melanie Klein in her psychoanalytic research on stages of narcissism in children.

Christopher Bollas is a British psychoanalyst and writer. He is a leading figure in contemporary psychoanalytic theory.

Good enough parent is a concept deriving from the work of Donald Winnicott, in his efforts to provide support for what he called "the sound instincts of normal parents...stable and healthy families".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Eigen</span> Psychologist and psychoanalyst

Michael (Mike) Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is the author of 26 books and numerous papers. He has given a private seminar on Winnicott, Bion, Lacan and his own work since the 1970s. Eigen is known for his work with patients "who had been given up on by others", including people who experience psychosis.

David Howell Morgan is a psychoanalyst and consultant psychotherapist who has worked at the Portman Clinic London and Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust for 25 years.

Patrick Casement is a British psychoanalyst and author of multiple books and journal articles on contemporary psychoanalytic technique. He has been described as a pioneer in the relational approaches to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology. His book 'Learning from Our Mistakes' received a Gradiva award for its contribution to psychoanalysis, and his book 'Learning Along the Way: Further Reflections on Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy' was listed in the top 100 psychotherapy books of all time by BookAuthority.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Phillips, Adam", Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011; online edn, Nov 2011 accessed 9 July 2012
  2. "The Real World of Adam Phillips". The New Yorker . 18 February 2013.
  3. "La meilleure des vies". Archived from the original on 5 October 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2013. Adam Phillips, surnommé le " psychothérapeute des mondes flottants ", est le psychanalyste le plus célèbre et le plus iconoclaste de Grande-Bretagne
  4. "That way sanity lies: interview with Adam Phillips". the Guardian. 13 February 2005. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 Adam Phillips: a life in writing | Books | The Guardian
  6. The New Statesman Profile - Adam Phillips
  7. Adam Phillips, On Flirtation, London: 1994, p. xi
  8. Adam Phillips: A Life in Writing, Guardian interview
  9. Phillips, Flirtation p. xi
  10. An Interview With Adam Phillips, Jill Choder Goldman
  11. "The Other Freud (the Wild One); New Translation Aims to Free the Master From His Disciples' Obsessions". New York Times
  12. 1 2 Nicholas Fearn "The New Statesman Profile", New Statesman, 23 April 2010
  13. Phillips, Flirtation paratext
  14. "Good Enough | Sam Adler-Bell". The Baffler. 1 April 2024. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
  15. Adam Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery (London 1998)
  16. Adam Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery (London 1998) p. 3
  17. E. P. Commentale/A. Gasiorek, T. E. Hulme and the question of modernism (2006) p. 228
  18. Vicki Clifford, Freud's converts (London 2008) p. 102
  19. Q&A:Adam Phillips
  20. Phillps, Flirtation p. 95
  21. Q&A:Adam Phillips
  22. A Meeting of Minds, Conversation with Alain de Botton, The Telegraph, 7 April 2001
  23. Phillips, Flirtation p. 149; Adam Phillips, "The Disorder of Uses" in Sara Dunn et al. eds., Mind Readings (London 1996) p. 157.
  24. K. J. Connolly/M. Martlew eds., Psychologically Speaking: A Book of Quotations (1999) p. 190