“Promises, Promises” by Adam Phillips

In this collection of essays Phillips contrasts his two loves- psychoanalysis and literature. He states that “the writer, unlike the psychoanalyst, is the person who has not been dominated by someone else’s vocabulary.” Indeed, Phillips seems to envy the freedom of the writer compared to the constraints of the analyst. “The poet is at once the source of profound insight and a rival in terms of the methods for acquiring such insight.” Freud readily saw the similarities between the two fields when he made “the assumption that a piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.” Freud sees writers as his predecessors. “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious, what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.” Phillips’ own essays run the gamut from exploring the analysis of Winnicott, Wittels, and Lacan to reviewing literary works from the likes of Pater, Pessoa, and Amis. He also devotes some short pieces to topics as varied as the usefulness of clutter, the London blitz, smiling, eating (or not), the role of jokes in society, and narcissism.  In the end, Phillips sees psychoanalysis as a part of the greater tradition of writing. “There has always been only one category, literature, of which psychoanalysis became a part. I think of Freud as a late romantic writer, and I read psychoanalysis as poetry, so I don’t have to worry about whether it is true or even useful, but only whether it is haunting or moving or intriguing or amusing- whether it is something I can’t help but be interested in.” He concludes, in typical style, by deprecating his own chosen vocation, “why have an analysis when you can read?”