On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life

by Adam Phillips

In this collection of psychoanalytic essays on a wide range of relatively unexplored subjects, the author evolves his own distinctive version of psychoanalysis as part of a wider cultural conversation. The essays combine literary and philosophical commentary with clinical vignettes.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Essays, Science, Academic

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Adam Phillips is a British psychotherapist and essayist.

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.

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". 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 went on to study English at St John's College, Oxford, graduating with a third class degree. 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.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

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" work; and by John Banville as "one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time."

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psychoanalysis loves metaphors; therefore, I'll offer a metaphor for reading my first book of psychoanalytic essays.

Ahem.

Reading Adam Phillips' psychoanalytic essays is like sitting on the ground at a fireworks display, looking up at the sky. It's dark, it's damp, and the air is filled with unfamiliar sizzling and booming sounds, strange goings-on that you can't interpret. And then, once a page or so, a streak of brilliance darts across the sky. It lights up your face and brings a smile to your lips, before the rumbling in the dark begins again.

Which is to say that for me, 'On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored' functioned largely as a collection of tasty nuggets of insight, floating in a broth of psychoanalytic terms and concepts that don't necessarily ring a lot of bells for me.

I really enjoyed the book, though, and appreciated the free-wheeling yet serious excursions through states, like worrying, and boredom, that we experience frequently but usually overlook in favor of more 'extreme' experiences when we're writing, doing philosophy, or otherwise trying to make sense of the world. I want to say that Phillips is uniquely skilled in teasing a lot of meaning out of seemingly mundane topics, but then it occurs to me that that's precisely what a good analyst is supposed to do.

[C.M. Subasic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I adore this writer. He has inspired my writing, dramaturgy of other writers and the moments of my days. Despite its intriguing title, this book is more a compilation of academic journal articles, not really intended for a general audience. If you are a true Philips fan and have a smidgen of academic to your literary tastes, you will find value in some of these pieces. If not, I recommend another book of his, Going Sane.

[elif kalafat · Rating 5 out of 5]

bence günün sonunda elimizde tek bir soru kalıyor: freud haklı olabilir mi?

tüm denemeleri okumadım, okuduklarım içinde "öpüşme üzerine senaryolar" en beni şaşırtan, düşündüren oldu. sırf o deneme için bile beş yıldız. phillips okuyacağım, diğer kitapları buna nazaran çok daha fazla beğeniliyor hem.

[sezen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, life-changing book. (After all, how many of them are there, especially in one's thirties?)

[Μαρία · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Το φιλί εικονίζει την αμοιβαιότητα, όχι την κυριαρχία."
"Όταν φιλάμε, καταβροχθίζουμε το αντικείμενο χαϊδεύοντάς το-το τρώμε, με μια έννοια, αλλά διατηρούμε την παρουσία του."
"Το φίλημα επιβεβαιώνει το πώς έβλεπε τη ναρκισσιστική πρόθεση, τη δυσφορία στη ρίζα της σεξουαλικότητας: δηλαδή μια δυσφορία που εξαρτάται από το σωρευτικό τραύμα που είναι η ανθρώπινη ανάπτυξη. Η επιθυμία, όπως ο Φρόυντ θέλει να γνωρίζουμε, είναι πάντα περισσότερη από την ικανότητα του αντικειμένου να την ικανοποιήσει."

[Mina Herz]

Reading psychoanalytical theory is, to a large extent, cognitive masturbation for me. I don’t think a lot of it is necessarily true. And there is something very grating to me about the sweeping statements that are made without any substantiation - I can’t get away with such boldness in law or science. But that’s probably why I like it so much. It’s interesting and boring at the same time. I still prefer Darian Leader, this is longest I’ve stuck with one of Phillip’s book’s.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

The unexamined life might not be worth living, but it sure frees up time to get more done. I’ve moved away from meaning lately, probably because I can’t find it and it’s easier to throw up my hands and say, “So what?” But maybe the backstory that I bemoan when thrown at me in literature is something worth examining, at least in my own life. Psychiatry, however, feels arbitrary to me. There’s a system of belief, and like any belief, there are practitioners who do it well and those who don’t. Impactful psychoanalysis feels somewhere between an art and a science. I get the art part, it’s the science that I’m woefully unequipped to understand. In ON KISSING, TICKLING AND BEING BORED: PSYCHOANALYTIC ESSAYS ON THE UNEXAMINED LIFE, author and analyst Adam Phillips explores those unexplored regions of the human condition that his field has neglected. It’s interesting stuff, a bit dense and perhaps too academic for my consumption, but helped me pick up a rock I long ago used to cover the creepy-crawlies of my psychic makeup. Maybe I need to examine my life and make some decisions about what it is and who I am. No one else is qualified. The trouble is, when I do look deeply at myself and my choices, I’d disappointed. Is Phillips taking on any new patients?

[Bengisu Çaygür]

Tamam metnin iskeletini oluşturmak, fikrini desteklemek için birçok alıntı kullanırsın, kimi düşünceler ile başlayıp kendi fikrini sunarsın anlarım. Fakat okuduğum bölüme kadar (s64) neredeyse %80i alıntılanmış -ki birebir alıntı kullanımı çok az genelde Freud böyle düşünüyordu, Klein söyle düşünüyordu... gibi aktarımlar var, yer yer de bu aktarımlar karşılaştırmalar şeklinde yapılmış-, eser miktarda da kendi düşüncelerine yer vermiş Phillips. Bu aktarım durumu beni itti -belki bu sebepten önyargı oluşmuş da olabilir- ve odaklanamadım. Kaldı ki düşünceleri ilk elden okumayı tercih ediyorum.
Fakat içerikte yer verilen psikanalistleri, düşünürleri, düşünceleri daha önce okumamış biri için bu yolda açılan bir pencere olabilir(?). Okura kalmış.

[Emre Akaltın · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bir bütünlük varmışçasına sunuluyor kitabın adı dolayısıyla. Orijinal edisyonu da böyle. Ama çok fazla iyi çerçevelendirilmemiş, keyfiyetle eklenmiş çeşitli konularda denemeler bunlar. Çerçeve yine -tabii ki- Winnicott.

Bence Phillips'in biraz daha kendini güncellemesi gerekiyor birtakım konularda. Psikanaliz Winnicott ya da nesne ilişkileri kuramında ibaret değil. Bunun şunun için söylüyorum: çok ilgi çekici, nasıl yazması gerektiğini bilen biri Phillips. Keşke biraz daha çeşitlendirse yazdığı alanları.

Ha bir de, bazı noktalarda terminolojik seçimlerde çevirmeni çok başarılı bulmadığımı belirtmem gerekiyor. Psikanaliz literatüründe çok daha yerleşikleşmiş bazı terimleri yanlış tercüme etmiş olduğunu düşünüyorum.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oooooo!!! Here are some quirky gems that weave together several common and also elusive aspects of psychoanalysis into a digestible yet engrossing form. Despite the seemingly silly nature of this book I've found it more thought-provoking than any other of my summer reads. He brings psychoanalysis into the realm of speculative rhetoric/literature about life's tangles... and celebrates the process of unravelling those intricate knots. "The aim of psychoanalysis is not to cure people but to show them that there is nothing wrong with them." Recommended for bed sides tables everywhere.

[asif-wtv-getthepictureduh]

"The analyst, Lacan says, is the one who is supposed to know, but it is a false belief. So we are left with a paradox that is integral to our present subject. With the discovery of transference Freud evolved what could be called a cure by idolatry; in fact, potentially, a cure of idolatry, through idolatry. But the one thing psychoanalysis cannot cure, when it works, is belief in psychoanalysis. And that is a problem." WOW.

[Simoneblanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting rehashing of uncle Siggie Freud's theories. I read it for a book review project I did in my social work course. My prudish professeur suggested that I had problems with my superego.

[Beyza · Rating 5 out of 5]

İnanılmaz keyifli bir yolculuğa çıkarıyor Adam Phillips bu kitabıyla. Psikanalizle ilgilenen kişilerin mutlaka okuması gerektiğine inanıyorum. Hiç fark ettirmeden kişiyi kendi içine bakmaya yönlendiriyor. Doyamadım, o yüzden yine bir Adam Phillips kitabıyla devam edeceğim.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am already an expert on one of these things and one of them I'm not that interested in. As for the other one, the book was of no practical use.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"First Hates" is a magnificent title.

[Giovanni Generoso · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not an easy read - and I must admit that did not read all of the essays, the main reason being that some of them were over topics that, in all honesty, didn't hold my interest. What I did read, though, I found provocative and stimulating. Phillips clearly isn't the type of writer who pushes for systematic coherence or nit-picking precision, so I don't feel guilty about not finishing the entire thing. He is more of a playful writer, and (on his own account) more interested in saying phrases and sentences in an interesting way than in a supposedly "true" or "factual" way. He hopes (though he admits that this doesn't usually happen) that his readers will take away what they find interesting, rather than walk away thinking, "This is what Adam Phillips thinks about X."

With that, I leave you with a thought I've been chewing on which was inspired by this book: What if there are no experts on the "good life." What if there is no desired "normality" to be imposed on each other for ethical, religious, societal, or developmental purposes? What if psychoanalysis (and ethics more broadly) was conceived not as a trans-historical developmental plan for the ages in which we can easily point at individual persons and label them "developed" or "undeveloped," "sane" or "insane," but rather, as ways of talking with one another, ways of listening and learning from ourselves and each other, that help us discover, firstly, that none of us actually know what the hell we are talking about when it comes to life - not in any definitive or all-encompassing sense; and secondly, what if psychoanalysis could allow us to sit with this unknowing, maybe work with it, allow it to inspire us toward further creativity and passion, risk and play. Couldn't psychoanalysis (and ethics) forego talk of certainty and instead confess that nobody is an expert on life, how to live, how to live a good life. What if coherence is an unacknowledged idol, and improvisation an untried virtue? If we start from here, in a place of improvisation, and then try out different conceptions of the good life - by talking about feeling-states, experiences, aliveness, how actions and emotions feel, how others make us feel, etc. in community - in a non-dogmatic, open way we might find that our capacities for life, our ability to taste spices and flavors unknown to us before, unimagined before, are now available and even a crucial element to our sensitive and multifaceted beings. We might also find that, with time, we can learn to value, even cherish, what we at one point most hated about ourselves - learn to love that which we once despised. Phillips, and others, especially within the psychoanalytic tradition of Winnicott, Bion, Eigen and others, aspire to be open to emotional reality, to the mysteriousness of aliveness, to all of our capacities, utilizing parts of us that we are repressing, without necessarily foreclosing this openness. This sort of activity is not easy, not comfortable, sometimes (even oftentimes) very painful. But with time, our emotional maturity will grow, like a muscle. One might find that one experiences oneself as most alive when always living dangerously, living explosively, letting the unconscious desires pull one in different directions - at the same time. One might find at first that one experiences oneself as most alive when reading, painting, calmly, cooly, in silence - and this is all one can take. We must each decide how much of ourselves, how much of our emotional reality, we can handle. And that is different for each of us. What I love about Phillips and these other psychoanalytic thinkers is that they try to open up a space for persons to do that, to experience their own experiencing, to live out of their own capacities, to sit with the dark feelings, the emotional storms, to make friends with our demons, and see what the hell comes of it - hopefully, and, against what seemed to be all odds, something beautiful does come from the struggle, from the emotional storms inside of us that we fear will tear us apart, like tornados tear roofs, and planks of wood, and sofas, and cows, and cherished possessions all over the neighborhood, sometimes all over the town. Maybe these tornados that threaten to tear us apart might be the very force, catalyst, for ripping us away from our chains, setting us free from a more deeper despair. Who knows? What I glean from Phillips is that one might let oneself die, taste death, sit in the emotional storm, break down, so that one might come back to life again, laugh, hug, and dance - carrying in oneself a more rich experience and awareness after the fact.

Somewhere in the book, Phillips claims that psychoanalysis, among other things (this caveat is so important since psychoanalysis isn't some "one" thing at all), allows us to say things that we didn't know we were capable of saying. When I read that, I thought, YES! That's exactly right! There is so much more to our feeling, such emotional depths - Jung called it "the depths" - housing so much more insight, so many more ways of feeling, thinking, talking, living that we sadly forego because we are so utterly fixated on "one" way of being, one cure. The virtue of psychoanalysis is that it thinks our ideas of a "cure" are part of the problem. Psychoanalysis and ethics can't fix anybody. But perhaps they can offer us creative ways of exploring how we want to live, how we want to die, and why we want what we want. I take Phillips to be one of those pomo psychoanalysts who is in the business (not that this is anything like a business - it isn't) of helping people discover what their own good life looks like. Phillips resists normopathy altogether. And hopefully a large portion of that "good life" will be made up of an open-endedness that is alive for experience, alive toward our fundamentally mysterious and infinite emotional reality and capabilities. There are many conceptions of the good life, many ways of living good lives. Let's go discover them, talk about them, learn from them, and live them again and again together.

It should be noted that Phillips says in the Introduction that he thinks this more experimental style of psychoanalysis should not refute or overtake the more systematic, developmental styles of psychoanalysis. There should be no one style of psychoanalysis at the center stage. We need all of the schools to be in constant dialogue without reductionism. As Nietzsche thought, we are both Apollonian and Dionysian, white swan and black swan, calm and chaos, coherence and incoherence. There should be no unchanging and fixed center, no one-directional way of thinking or being, no arresting of the play (Derrida). Eigen describes the process of expanding one's psychic tastebuds. Indeed, there is so much to work with here, so many possibilities, such texture and flavor to be savored.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man has a very complex structure both in the physiological sense and in the mental sense. That is why theory, theory, hypothesis, whatever has been put forward about man has always remained incomplete. In the light of this fact, author Adam Phillips also criticized Freud's psychoanalysis, which is considered the most important method of the department of Psychology, and explained how inadequate it is in analyzing and making sense of a person.

Starting from this point, the author, who reveals the outlines of his own view, tries to define living more than a person by considering human momentary situations such as kissing, tickling, being bored, loneliness, anxiety.

Adam Phillips explains man with his consciousness. On the other hand, by considering consciousness not at the point of potential, but at the point of limits, it reveals the result that human barriers are as much as. Therefore, he directs his psychoanalysis to life. Hence to an. He also found the only way for a person to cope with the problems of life by creating more acceptable obstacles in front of him, and he aimed to get him out of the well into which he had fallen in this way. At this point, a fundamental question arises, how to create a better, more acceptable barrier? Here, too, "qualified loneliness" appears as a solution way in the book. Every moment we surpass ourselves and prove it to ourselves, the moment the quality increases, the point at which your consciousness limits will reach an incalculable level when you integrate the right changes into your life in a life where change does not stop. The book is quite encouraging for qualified loneliness. It may have a trigger function for readers at this point. It is a very beautiful book and does not contain any big claims. I say definitely read it. Especially for readers who will make a final decision in their life at the point of loneliness...

[sevdah]

A compilation of essays on things that bring everyday pleasure and fear, to children and to adults - worrying, kissing, solitude, anticipation. Written in the no-man's land between Freud and Winnicott, and conversing in turns with both, Phillips finds a curious thing of his own to say about most of those topics. Requires a more in-depth knowledge on psychotherapy - was probably meant for academics?

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of essays. Phillips writes with a genuine curiosity and openness that is psychoanalysis at its best. That is to say with a recognition that the unconscious is the saboteur of simplistic intelligibility and normative life stories. I can’t recommend this one enough, it’ll be sticking with me for a while.

And if you want a taste of Phillip’s writing and style I’d recommend checking out this LRB essay (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n...#)

[Dpdwyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Phillips is a very fine writer, but in this book I found too much psychoanalytic minutiae for my interests. I did find a number of statements that I am still happily pondering:
---"People have traditionally come for psychoanalytic conversation because the story they are telling themselves about their lives has stopped, or become too painful, or both.
---"...the aim of psychoanalysis is not to cure people but to show them that there is nothing wrong with them."
---"Worrying implies a future, a way of looking forward to things. It is a conscious conviction that a future exists, one in which something terrible might happen, which is of course ultimately true. So worrying is an ironic form of hope."
---"What people do to their dreams effortlessly---that, forget them---people have to try to do to their worries. To remember a worry is as easy as to forget a dream."
---Oscar Wilde: "One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead."
---"Boredom is integral to the process of taking one's time."
---"It is difficult to enjoy people for whom we have waited too long."
---"Adulthood, one could say, is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life."
---Freud: "A correct and well-timed interpretation in an analytic treatment give a sense being held physically that is more real (to the non-psychotic) than if a real holding or nursing had taken place."

[Vika Kirchenbauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book since I'm researching 'tickling'. As the author rightly points out "it is curious from a psychoanalytic point of view that this common, perhaps universal experience has rarely been thought about; and not surprising that once we look at it we can see so much."

"So much" constitutes an entirety of three pages worth of text in this case, in which the author manages to contradict himself profoundly by characterising 'tickling' to have both no climax - and a page later - for its climax to be frustration. To feature a topic in a book title's when the reader is only offered three pages of loose and ill-conceived ideas on it is indeed quite misleading...

Most of the book's essays are written in ways that associatively connect spontaneous thoughts without much care for coherence. There are interesting ideas in it nevertheless, and in a sense I find it almost endearing that in his writing/associative ramble the author likens himself more to an analytic patient than to an analyst.

Many of his more general assumptions, especially around phobia and fear, suggest unfamiliarity with trauma patients. His argument that people develop phobias as substitutes for (ostensibly necessary) experiences of "proper fear" I can only read as pure ignorance of a world in which violence and fear structure very many people's lives in private and/or in public.

[Ipek Atalay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bir klinik psikolog olarak psikanalizi neden sevmediğimi unutmuştum; bu kitap sağolsun bana hatırlattı. Ortaya atılan cümleler arasında hiçbir korelasyon ve açıklama yok; sadece kavramlarla ilgili rastgele ifadeler sıralanmış. Bir bütünlük yok. "Tabii bu işin bencesi" tekniğiyle yazılmış metinlerden oluşuyor (ki zaten psikanaliz de bu teknik üstüne kurulu).

Okurken defalarca bırakmak istedim ama sırf hakkını verebilmek için kitabı bitirdim. Yalnızca endişe ve öpüşmek üzerine olan bölümler biraz daha okunabilir; çünkü en azından kısmi bir bütünsellik içeriyorlar. Türkçe çevirisinin zayıf olduğunu, kopukluk hissinin bundan kaynaklandığı yazılmış, ben kitabı orijinal dilinde okudum; sorun çeviride değil arkadaşlar, sorun kitabın kendisinde (ve psikanalizde).

[Ertuğrul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Psikanalizin neden bir bilim olmadığını kolay yoldan anlamak için okunması gereken bir kitap. Kitabın çıkarımları hiçbir yerde veriye dayanmıyor. Veriyi geçtim, bireysel yaşanmışlığa dayanan çıkarımlar bile azınlıkta. "Freud böyle der, Winnicott böyle der, öyleyse bu böyledir" cümlesi kitabın kısa özeti yerine geçebilir. Yazarın psikanalizi zaten böyle gördüğü ve kitabın insan psikolojisi üzerine "kendini iyi hissettiren bir sohbet" olarak tanımlanması bile bu kitabı kurtarmaya yetmez. Çünkü okuyucuyu ikna edebilecek örnekler vermeyen, savlarını somutlaştırıp bir temele oturtmayan bir metin insanın kendini iyi hisseteceği bir sohbet olmaktan çıkıyor.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In spite of the embarrassing title, this book is AYMAYZING. Cross-disciplinarian, eloquent, devoid of all the icky stickiness of psychoanalysis but full of thoughtful suppositions about what it is to be human, this book completely sucked me in. Poetic and thoughtful, but grounded. Favorite chapters include "Worrying and It's Discontents," "On Risk and Solitude" and "First Hates." The intro about the history of psychoanalysis is pretty fascinating as well.

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of essays on often neglected topics in psychoanalysis--kissing, tickling, boredom--and thus the most desired topics to be psychoanalyzed?

For many of these essays, a more than passing familiarity with the developmental theories of Klein and Winnicott would yield more depth. Therefore, I would recommend beginning with the last essay in the collection, Psychoanalysis and Idolatry.

[Ferhat Elmas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psikolojik teorilerin (Freud, Jung, Winnicott, Adler, vd.) alinti/karsilastirma -lariyla yuklu, her gun yuzyuze kaldigimiz problem/durum/duygu-larla alakadar (psikologi ne ki; insansiysa biliyorum), bir bakista kendini acik etmeyecek kadar yogun makaleler. Kolay bir okuma degil ama deger.

[Beyza Alımcı · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book leads to deep thougths and extends one’s way of thinking to the limits. However, I should admit that I didn’t understand it that well. There needs to be some good knowledge of psychoanalysis to understand it well. Definitely will read it again later in the future.

[Brendan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've abandoned this book. It's a dense, academic, boring read with a sexy title. Yawn.

[Kassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is extremely dry.

[Randy Elrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need to know extensive psychoanalytic history and terms, or research a great deal, but worth the effort. Very interesting.