On Balance
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
In this absorbing and provocative new book from one of Britain's most elegant and original prose stylists, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips addresses a variety of urgent concerns - many centred around the idea of balance.
When might we know that enough is enough? Does the road of excess ever lead to the palace of wisdom? What is the role of the parent, the teacher and of psychoanalysis itself in the development of children's minds? Should we be happy, or is there something better we can be? And what can we learn from the tales of Jack and the Beanstalk or Cinderella?
With his trademark combination of open-minded enquiry and exhilarating argument, drawing primarily on the twin worlds of literature and psychoanalysis, Adam Phillips will delight readers old and new in this much anticipated new book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British psychologist, philosopher, and literary critic Phillips (Going Sane) casts his net widely in this collection of lectures, broadcasts, articles, and unpublished essays, of varying lengths. Phillips examines our paradoxical desire for balance in all things and impulse toward imbalance. His, his themes and sources are so disparate, making this book a hard balancing act indeed. Working from a strongly Freudian point of view, Phillips is good at getting to the heart of existence; in terms of unbalance, he cites Freud saying that overreaction is impossible; he discisses how the reasonable liberal in matters of religion ironically creates a climate in which they desire to eradicate the believers, which means the destruction of his or her own belief system. Also enriching the book is the range of subjects alluded to, from literature (for example W.H. Auden) to fairy tales (Cinderella), and photography (Diane Arbus). Though often brilliant in the individual pieces, perhaps a third of the way through the book the pathway becomes less structured, as essay after essay is yoked together . Readers who pick and choose will come away enlightened and satisfied, rather than exhausted.
