Promises, Promises

Adam Phillips

As an essayist Adam Phillips combines the best of two worlds: a mastery of psychotherapy as both practitioner and theorist and a reputation as one of the best literary writers around. In this collection of essays he brings these two gifts to bear upon each other speculating on the relative merits of psychoanalysis and literature and on the connections between them. In his quirky epigrammatic style Phillips shows us how psychoanalysis and literature at their best share the goal of shedding light on human character the most fascinating of disorders. Promises Promises reveals Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse into art novels poetry and history. This collection gives us insights into Martin Amis's Night Train Nijinsky's diary Tom Stoppard and A. E. Housman Amy Clampitt the effect of the Blitz on Londoners and a case history of clutter. It confirms Phillips as a writer whose work in the words of the Guardian "hovers in a strange and haunting borderland between rigour and delight.">