In the style of his earlier books, "On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored" and "On Flirtation", the author discusses ways in which we may be terrorized by experts, and the idea of expertise itself. He challenges the conventional idea of the "self" as something to be known, and sets out to show how self-knowledge is the problem rather than the solution. By examining our wish to believe things - and people (including psychoanalysts) - the book offers a revision of psychoanalysis itself. For to take psychoanalysis seriously, Phillips suggests, is to be unable to take gurus seriously.

About the Author
Adam Phillips was born in Cardiff in 1954. He is the author of numerous works of psychotherapy and literary criticism, including Winnicott, On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, Going Sane, Side Effects, On Kindness, co-written with Barbara Taylor, On Balance, Missing Out, One Way and Another and Becoming Freud. Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Observer and the New York Times, and he is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations. His most recent book is Unforbidden Pleasures.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571175840
Author Adam Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 115g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 128mm * 12mm