On Balance

by Adam Phillips

“Balancing acts,” writes Adam Phillips, “are entertaining because they are risky, but there are situations in which it is more dangerous to keep your balance than to lose it.” In these exhilarating and casually brilliant essays, the philosopher and psychoanalyst examines literature, fairy tales, works of art, and case studies to reveal the paradoxes inherent in our appetites and fears. How do we know when enough is enough? Are there times when too much is just right? Why is Cinderella’s biggest problem not the prince but other women? What can Richard III’s furious sense of his own helplessness tell us of our own desires? On Balance shows Phillips’s bravura gift for linking disparate ideas and the dreamers that dreamed them into something beautiful, revelatory, and essential.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Psychoanalysis, British Literature

336 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2010

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

[Sean Goh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nonsensically dense.

We can only really be realistic after we have tried our optimism out.

It is only our fantasies that are excessive, our appetites are sensible. (generally.)

There is always a magical belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our need for it.
And having it all means not having to make choices.

People know they are in a relationship when they become a problem to each other.

The hell of a narcissist is the tyranny of his need for others.

Helplessness is the precondition for human bonds, to be helped you have to be helpless.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has all the faults and benefits of a collection of smaller essays brought together to make a book.

Some of the pieces are startling good, enough to make the purchase of the book worthwhile, while others are utterly boring unless you are an academic fascinated with academic opinion on the opinions of dead poets.

Adam Phillips is an interesting intellectual. Of East European Jewish heritage but fully British (actually adoptive Welsh) in his outlook, he uses a Freudian psychoanalytic platform alongside his studies of literature to make wise observations on the human condition.

I am suspicious of Freudianism (as I am of Marxism and of all grand intellectual projects) and I am often suspicious of the Jewish intellectual need to think the world through such systems as if all might be understood through the rabbinical project.

However, Phillips (however he uses it elsewhere) uses Freudianism here as a form of poetics rather than ideology. He uses it to build up our ability to understand ourselves and others through little stories. We need narratives, little tales, and such narratives often have to have a framework.

Although many of the pieces require some effort and Phillips is perhaps over-entranced by his own word play at times, the Freudian framework does work in opening the mind to possibilities without obliging you to accept them.

Above all, these pieces indicate a humane man, if perhaps one trapped by the text-based culture into which he has been led by historical circumstance.

His humane approach reminded me of another Jewish-British intellectual, the recently deceased Tony Judt, whose naïve politics were not mine but whose decency and good faith rose above the framework to offer perspectives unavailable elsewhere.

His essays on Daniel Mendelsohn’s ‘The Lost’ and on W.G Sebald are startling in their insights into what we cannot know and into the structural miserabilism of the European literary intelligentsia. Again, Judt’s account of the same class, especially the Jewish element, spring to mind.

In many ways, as Judt forced out an admission of unintended Jewish intellectual complicity in the rise of radical nationalism in the post-1917 period, so his essay on ‘The Lost’ challenges the appropriation of the Holocaust by succeeding generations.

There is something in the British-Jewish secular intellectual tradition that refuses to deny its text-based origins but uses it creatively to be honest about its own history and origins that is a standing reproach to the cultural fanaticism of many of their American-Jewish counterparts.

Mendelson, of course, is an American gay Jewish writer whose thoughtful views on appropriation help in the transformation of recent Jewish culture from one of eternal victimhood and suppressed resentment to one of ‘balance’.

The murderous behaviour of people in Poland in the 1940s is returned by Mendelsohn and Phillips to the responsibility of the murderers and the actual murdered are given life as persons and not as symbols.

Their stories are told as particular and individual stories and are no longer owned and manipulated and falsified by the collective.

The dead weight of history can thus slowly be removed from a people, much as many of us Gentiles are removing the dead weight of bad family histories from ourselves so as not to pass on the story to the next generation.

There is certainly no reason why those from bad families need to make those who had good families feel guilty or do our will as recompense. In short, ‘deal with it’.

Phillips may not agree but this is the lesson I took from his essay. Psychoanalysis is not just about persons but their histories and History.

Interesting though many of the essays are (and I warn you that some are a little heavy-going to the extent that you just know that he could have made his point more effectively and succinctly), the Freudian ruminations are less interesting than the early pieces on excess and for the Guardian.

The first 100 pages are worth the price of the book alone. He deals with transgression and sexuality, with adolescence and with fundamentalism with both wisdom and humanity.

Each short talk or essay appears to stand against the judgmental idiocies of the anxious adult and for personal growth through experience. None of the pieces simply mouths certainty or conventional wisdom.

The item on fundamentalism has the courage both to give fundamentalists their due and to end on questions rather than moralistic assertions.

We are left with making our own choices about our attitude to those fellows who will not be argued with rather than simply be expected to accept demands to challenge the intolerant and risk our own tolerance. No easy answer is offered and this is good.

These are 100 pages that reassure me as a parent and which I would quite like to be read and understood by every parent and every member of that ‘autism for two’ (not his phrase), the couple, in the country. I wish he had offered us more on contemporary sexual neurosis.

I am perhaps less persuaded by his essays on, say, helplessness but I understand the argument and the complaint is not what he said but that he did not say more to clarify his position. There are moments when the Freudian framework obfuscates more than assists.

Finally, at the end, are two accounts of fairy tales (a common interest of psychoanalysts) – Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella. These essays were written originally for the Guardian and are truly masterful insights into our condition through our story heritage.

I would urge any ‘boy’ to read his account of ‘Jack’ and any ‘girl’ his account of ‘Cinderella. I suspect the former will just tell most men what they know already but struggle to implement.

The latter may, however, be truly liberatory for many women working against a very real biological clock.

There is a real problem with the book. It is a hodge-podge of essays for very different audiences and Phillips is an excellent craftsman who can write precisely for his audience in each case. His Editor has attempted to pull them together into themes but it does look a little forced.

If his audience is the intelligent amateur or the Guardian reader, then he adds value, but when he is writing for other Freudians or for academics in English Literature, then he is wasting the time of most of us.

I doubt whether very many of us really care about WH Auden’s anxiety-driven Christianity and padding out the book with conference papers is unfair to the purchaser. It is no accident that the finest material in the book was originally produced for Radio 3, a major newspaper and the LRB.

Still, even the conference papers can be insightful (the excellent questioning piece on fundamentalism was such) and, so, on balance, the book is highly recommended.

[Abol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of insights on excess and our frustrations, on helplessness and its moral value, on fundamentalism (how we all harbour one), on children being difficult to test their parents worth, on the authenticity issue, on getting away with having sex without having to have sex, on getting lost and its merits (what is it you're at a loss about?). Those were some of the headlines, what is great about it is that you can read it in Hyde Park or Dianna' Fountain, or even under a tree when it rains and you can still be wrapped in your own past and how you came about to be reading this in the rain.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a difficult read. Some of the insights were worth pondering, but it took a lot of plowing through dense prose to uncover them.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book On Balance, I don't think it was achieved. The focus was on excess and I can accept that excess is the opposite of balance and understanding excess produces an understanding a balance. The author did a solid argument as to why excess is necessary. Then things devolved (in my opinion) to psychobabble and Freudian-focused at that. I did gain some insight and realized when reading this, that persecution of the Jewish people in Europe even during Freud's lifetime must have influenced his work, which probably would have still had a heavily sexual bent but the persecution adding to the twisted, not being accepted theme. That just goes to show how terrible racism and its results are. Drawing from Freud's and one of his daughter's, Anna Freud, works, I found myself grateful that the author was not my psychoanalyst (not that I use one). For example, the last part of the book was examining fairy tales like Jack in the Beanstalk and Cinderella. Granted, these presented his interpretation but perhaps how an adult (who obviously wrote them) would interpret. Personally, I think these are tales for children about obedience, mischief that happens when one does not follow instructions, and since it's a fairy tale, all ends well. This author sees it quite a bit differently such as erections can be considered magic to a child (that puts a whole new spin in that beanstalk doesn't it). I was really glad to finally finish this book.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought some of the essays were outstanding, some were difficult to follow, and some were of no interest to me. Overall, Adam Phillips uses the lens of psychoanalysis to explore ideas and ways of thinking that we never thought were worth examining.

In one chapter I was fascinated by his discussion of how we interpret situations that make us feel guilty for getting away with something (like stealing and not getting caught). There is also a great discussion of Diane Arbus’ black and white photos of freaks and her comments about photography and life, such as “The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination.”

In a long section on “inattention,” Phillips explored two interesting points: 1) how we buy souvenirs to remember a place or event but we wind up remembering the souvenirs; and 2) how celebrating is a kind of play-acting and how it de-historicizes things, such as celebrating silk while workers lived awful lives making it.

Overall this book shows how psychoanalysis is more than a type of therapy, it is a way of looking at human thought and behavior.

[Ben Thurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really interesting but uneven collection of essays. There are some phenomenal pieces full of insight and consistently uncommon-sense angles, generally derived from Phillips' psychoanalytic background. Phillips writes engagingly and with a punning wit that opens up weighty topics for multifaceted reflection. I particularly found the essays on excess and fundamentalism thought-provoking.

Other pieces though, particularly those written for academic conferences and/or focused on the minutiae of a poet, photographer or theorist, felt strained and out of place in what pitches itself as a work of general interest.

[Tom King · Rating 2 out of 5]

Either too deep or trying to be too deep for me.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard slog at times but littered with exquisite gems.

[Judy Frabotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love everything Adam Phillips writes. The only problem is you read a sentence and then you want to go away and think about it for a week. Not a fast read.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts with a topic on "excess"
Whether excess stays inside of enough or vice-versa.
We want excess in everything because we fear we may lose them in the process or may not be available in future.
What is fundamental? And 'children behaving badly' is a nice topic to read.
Topics like "Negative capabilities" and "On getting away with it" are really good and interesting
Finally finishing with the fairytale was decent
A nice book to read once...

[Maria Ayoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books leave a lasting profound effect on you, leave you wanting to carve their words inside your mind, to live by and to ponder over everyday. This book is one of them. Adam Phillips is a prodigy, and despite his tendency to be repetitive while elaborating on a topic in other books of his, this one flows perfectly and is relatively easier to follow and grasp.

[Boone Bolinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first 90-100 pages were interesting, challenging, and insightful. The final ~200 pages were difficult to get through unless you enjoy lengthy, dry essays about authors and poets. An inconsistent book with little cohesion. Some wonderful moments, but too few to justify the 300+ page format.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're already confused and sceptical about the topics discussed in the book, you're gonna have to be patient to gain anything out of it.
As someone who has been grappling with issues such as balance or unbalance, happiness, authenticity, reason,... I was sometimes impatient with how the author seemed to ramble and digress, instead of offering a distilled argument. It often seemed like the most important insight has been removed or is always out of reach. Considering that none of the essays try to explain or give final answers, it seemed that it was going to be an unrewarding read.
But I was patient, and didn't find the essays completely unrewarding, although it could've been shorter and more concise.
The writing relies much on quotes from other writers and artists, and many memorable and interesting quotes can be extracted from it as well. I'd say a 50 page summary of the book, would be more worthwhile to read, and just as thought-provoking.

[Farshad · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب رو باید با یک فاندیشن لکانی بخونید بدون دانش لکانی کتاب بی ارزشیه

[fiver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the essays on fundamentalisms and authenticity

[Hafen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly the kind of psychoanalytic reading I enjoy. Also glad that it's the 1000th book I've logged on Goodreads.

[Rand · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Getting lost is what you do — is what the dawdler does — when he is in no way lost; when he knows exactly where he is going, and how to get there. Getting lost, the creation of the labyrinth, is the work done when there is an object of desire. You get lost because you are not lost. So we can say: we are lost when there is no object of desire; and we make ourselves lost when there is an object of desire. We get lost . It is something we get."

The preceding bit of counter-intuitive reasoning riffs on Walter Benjamin's essay "Central Park" and exemplifies the rhetoric of these essays—meandering to a certain point which draws a map of human limitations.

This book is unbalanced—not jutt the skewed cover design or the penny-farthing "O" in the title, but as a whole. ANd that's the point of it all, really. That it is OK to be unbalanced, to live a life of excess, to dawdle—but only insofar as one is aware of one's personal imbalance and how we, as individuals, relate to the larger whole. Because without looking at the bigger picture (however you want to do that, with religion or humanism or art or some other means of escaping/transcending the self) we cannot grow.

At least, that's my rather unbalanced, selective skimming of these essays. I wanted to finish reading all of it but overextended the allotment of time in which I was allowed to borrow this volume from my library.

The prose was quite good, peppered with many examples from history, literature (the essay about Auden was good and the one on W. G. Sebald made me want to read him) , art, psychoanalysis.

At times it gets confusing, but so's life, right?

[Abul Kalam · Rating 1 out of 5]

His theories are based on sigmund freud, which is ridiculous as he is one of the few fathers of any profession that has been proven wrong on nearly everyone of his theories.

Second as a Muslim I find there are a few anti Islamic comments and slights placed in, which if it was pointed towards Jewish people there would be instant cries of anti semitism.

The opening chapter discuss how you cannot have a dialect with anyone who is extreme. But what he never touches on is how could such a dialect be achieved, which is what we really need in this day and age. When black people stood up for the right to be who they were they were called extreme same for women when the suffragette’s stood up for women’s rights. Unfortunately most people will ignore the down trodden until they do something completely over the top. We need to find a way to communicate with all types of people.

The book itself seems to be a number of essays placed together, and I feel the author spends a lot of time trying to be clever, rather than actually showing any real kind of wisdom.

This book left me feeling somewhat hurt and very disappointed

[Barbaraw - su anobii aussi]

Noi e le mappe

Dalla poesia citata "Breve riflessione sulle mappe" di Miroslav Holub:
Un giovane tenente di una piccola unità ungherese sulle Alpi
inviò una squadra di ricognizione sui ghiacci.
Improvvisamente
si mise a nevicare, nevicò per due giorni e la squadra
non fece ritorno. Il tenente era angosciato: aveva mandato
i suoi uomini a morire.

Ma il terzo giorno la squadra di ricognizione tornò indietro.
Dov'erano stati? Com'erano riusciti a ritrovare la strada?
Bé, spiegava l'uomo, pensavamo senza dubbio di esserci
persi e aspettavamo la nostra fine. Quando d'un tratto uno dei nostri
trovò in tasca una mappa. Ci sentimmo sollevati.
Preparammo un bivacco, aspettammo che smettesse di nevicare, e poi con la mappa
trovammo la direzione giusta.
Ed eccoci qui.
Il tenente chiese di vedere quella mappa straordinaria per poterla
studiare. Non era una mappa dell Alpi
ma dei Pirenei.

Ecco. per chi, come me, non sa leggere le mappe, questo è molto ma molto rassicurante

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection of essays less focused than other books I've read by Phillips. There is some fascinating and thought-provoking rumination about human excess, the need for sleep (to be away from ourselves and our being just too much for ourselves), the questionable desire--even intentions--of adults that children be happy at school, and about the western world's approach to (Islamic) fundamentalism (from a psychoanalytic perspective). In one section of the text, Phillips provides commentary on the works of W.G. Sebald, memoirist Daniel Mendelsohn, and W.H. Auden. Having minimal familiarity with the works of these writers, I only skimmed these sections. The value in the text is that readers can dip into sections that interest them. The essays mostly stand alone. Some are decidedly less connected to the theme of balance than others.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

An apotheosis of kind of essay technique that is both fantastic and practical. Challenging, dashing essays on the constellation of behaviors involving balance and stability: excess, authenticity, disenchantment, truancy, sleep, getting away with things, and, most impressively, helplessness.

The writing is especially aware of how desire exists in language, and is often a literary reading of mental behavior. It tells the stories of how we think and act through the torque, texture, and friction of words. The writing is dynamic, sensitive to much movement and evolution. If Phillips explains a desire, he explains both its usefulness and its risks. He also accepts ambiguity, explaining the how and why of behaviors rather than passing judgment.

[Anna Sternberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always with adam Phillips, a thought provoking read, even though certain essays float away from my ability to intellectually grasp them at present. never the less satisfied by those that informed and gave me new ways of seeing.

[mark mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of his very best and a great place to start exploring his brilliant thoughts and writing.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vital read, very persuasively and cogently argued..

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-starting ember.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great essays, though they don't all tie into the theme of balance. I like his love of paradoxes and suppressed impulses. However, if you aren't a fan of Sigmund Freud, you probably should avoid.

[Anne]

On Balance was a charmingly eclectic range of somewhat abstract essays in the field of psychoanalysis. For the absolute layman like myself, who can't tell id from ego, the texts may be a bit of a challenge sometimes, but if you simply look up the terms you should be able to follow his argument well enough. I enjoyed every topic Phillips discussed, and it was very interesting to read a couple of psychoanalytical perspectives on literature.