On Giving Up

'A wise, generous book' Washington Post From acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, a meditation on what we must give up to feel more alive. To give up or not to give up? The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple. Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable. There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment - an attempt to make a different future. In On Giving Up, acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up, and helps us to address the central question: what must we give up in order to feel more alive? 'One of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time' John Banville 'The best living essayist writing in English' John Gray

About the Author :
Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Giving Up, On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, In Writing, Unforbidden Pleasures and Missing Out. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations, and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

Review :
Adam Phillips promotes curiosity, improvisation and conflict as antidotes to the deadening effects of absolute certainty . . . Phillips sidles up to his subjects, preferring the gentle mode of suggestion to the blunt force of argument. His writing has a way of sneaking up on you, like a subterranean force A wise, generous book . . . There is a sense — quite a satisfying one, in fact — of circling around ideas, of each essay being ostensibly on a different theme from the others, but really treating the same concerns from a slightly different starting point . . . These essays won’t cure us, but they may make us curious This short, subtle and nuanced book is a fast and stimulating read: an account of how giving up is a form of progress, and how giving up is a form of loss Phillips invokes Freud, Kafka, Musil and Thomas Mann as helpmeets in illuminating knotty issues . . . This is not a book that provides answers but rather prompts the reader to question their own motivations and what different choices might mean This roving collection of writings fuses the lexicon of psychotherapy with literary criticism to upend conventional ideas about common emotional experiences—among them repression, longing, and loss The prolific writings of Adam Phillips epitomise this modern day humanistic expression of psychoanalytic thinking . . . Phillips’s style throughout the book is almost effortlessly fluent and erudite . . . Invariably Phillips unearths layers of convolution that common sense overlooks. In true psychoanalytic fashion, what we think we want is unmasked as self-deception and what seems like pain has its pleasures. The stories we tell ourselves protect us from our fears and our adult preoccupations mask childish concerns An introspective look at the psychology of letting things go and aims to give readers some insight into their own lives in the process