Are we too obsessed with excess?
What can childhood teach us about bad behaviour?
And should we be happy, or is there something better we might be?

In On Balance, acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips explores a variety of urgent concerns related to how we attempt to manage our conflicting desires, needs and motives.

In essays on excess, childhood development, fairy tales and the pursuit of happiness, Phillips provides exhilarating arguments, witty wordplay and much intellectual and emotional food for thought on literature and life.

About the Author
Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, In Writing, Unforbidden Pleasures and Missing Out. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations, and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews
The best living essayist writing in English
Phillips is a wonderful writer, his prose limpid and exact, and this is a deep and stimulating book * Sunday Times *
Intriguing and radical questions about the vital information strong responses and desires provide, and how we might use this to identify what we want * Guardian *
His writing is a lively source of provocation, repetition, self-renewal. * Scotsman *
Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored
He's brilliant
Phillips radiates infectious charm * Sunday Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780241143896
Author Adam Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 234g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 20mm