From the author of Missing Out and On Kindness, Britain's pre-eminent psychoanalyst examines how the things we don't mean, or mean perhaps to forget, prove to be those that are often most telling about our unconscious lives.


Side effects are things we do not intend. Phillips intends for us to question our conscious pursuit of happiness, explaining that, in refusing to admit and explore life's down sides, we can only be living half lives. And through his unique and incisive exploration of literature, Phillips also demonstrates what the great novelists have to tell us about ourselves.

Both illuminating and fascinating on literature as well as life, Side Effects maps our edges as human beings, and, in doing so, goes some way to helping give shape to our lives.

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
He's brilliant
Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored * Observer *
Though Phillips's territory is complication, he reports back from his travels in the simplest of words. He is perhaps single-handedly continuing the tradition of the world's best essayists
Phillips radiates infectious charm * Sunday Times *
Phillipsian' would evoke a vivid, paradoxical style that led you to think that you had picked up an idea by the head, only to find you were holding it by the tail. * Guardian *



Book Information
ISBN 9780141012506
Author Adam Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 232g
Dimensions(mm) 199mm * 129mm * 22mm