Equals

by Adam Phillips

If the best thing we do is look after each other, then the worst thing we do is pretend to look after each other when in fact we are doing something else. Psychoanalysis teaches us the dangers of this paradox -- and, in doing so, gives us fair warning about the perils of all social endeavors. In one way, the talking cure can be seen as a kind of listening cure. And learning to listen and be listened to is a skill upon which democracy itself depends. Written in his beloved epigrammatic and aphoristic style, Equals extends Phillips's essayistic probings into the psychological and the political, bringing his trenchant wit to such subjects as the usefulness of inhibitions and the paradox of permissive authority. He explores why citizens in a democracy are so eager to establish levels of hierarchy when the system is based on the assumption that every man is created equal. And he ponders the importance of mockery in group behavior and the psyche's struggle as a metaphor for political conflict.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 8, 2002

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

[Aaron Ambrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could read Adam Phillips every day, and it would make me a more capable, kind and adventurous person. Thematically, this collection isn't as defined as many of his other books. The big takeaway for me was the idea that self-consciousness will only get you so far, and it's probably better to seek a kind of post-self-consciousness that starts to resemble a self-mysteriousness. That frees us up to improvise and - for example - not try to be "Aaron" all the time, which can be constricting, and isn't really a cohesive thing to begin with.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A psychoanalytic look at how we conceive of and relate to each other, as well as ourselves.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book took FOREVER to get through, because it was actually pretty stiff and dry. Its writing was probably aimed towards Phillips's contemporaries in Psychoanalysis, which is a career that requires more years in school than just about any other that I know about. So, his writing his very academic here. There were some parts I want to take with me for later, though:

Phillips praises Ghent for adding the perspective to psychoanalysis that we may only realize we've been living with an unmet need until the need is suddenly met one day. EM Forster once said "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?"
Ghent says: 'how can I know what I need until someone responds to something I do?" (23.)

"To be ashamed of oneself is to be in a state of total conviction; a state of conviction so absolute that it would seem impossible and silly to wonder just how one had acquired such certainty about the nature of one's actions. It is shocking to realise just how opportunistic one's scepticism can be. Our scepticism seems to be no match for our self-punishment, or indeed our punishing of others" (94).


Phillips mentions a quote by Oscar Wilde here: "The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised" (109).

There's another interesting point made here about trauma and childhood. . "The relatively untroubled periods of the child's lived life are of no interest; interest is not required to make them into experiences. It is one of the perils of so-called child analysis that it can traumatise the child by foisting interest upon him; that is to say, making meaning out of those things that don't need it (154). He's saying that where we make meaning is where there was trauma...