“One Way and Another” by Adam Phillips

Phillips is truly the master of the essay. Whether primarily about psychoanalysis, literature, or just the quirks of life, he combines pithy epigrams, keen observations, and beyond-the-surface commentary in a succinct and funny way. His essays allow him to ramble, to meander, and to explore a subject, while always circling back to the heart of the matter, in a thoroughly enlightening trip. In this collection of essays Phillips writes deeply about the craft of analysis and the process of psychoanalysis, while referencing the points of view of both the analyst and the analysand. He quotes Freud on the unconscious, “everything conscious was subject to a process of wearing away, while what was unconscious was relatively unchangeable.” He discusses the theory of the Self, “one’s history, of course, never begins with oneself.” On the subjectivity of memory, “memory is reprinted, so to speak, in accordance with later experience.” On childhood, “every child grows up in the climate of his parents’ mostly unconscious history.” On the Self as seen by the Other, “other people see us in ways that we cannot anticipate; we cannot know ourselves because we cannot be everyone else in relation to ourselves.” On self-betrayal, “people who believe too much in compromise believe too much in not getting what they want.” On the purpose of dreaming, “awake or asleep we do not want to be awakened to, or by, our wishes, the wishes that represent our unconscious forbidden desire. Dreams just help us to stay asleep when we are asleep.” On our ideals, “we are tyrannized by our picture of ourselves as we would prefer to be; we organize our lives around it.” On the nature of our preoccupations, “our preoccupations are the way our pasts go in search of a future.” On the role of accidents in interpreting life, “it may not be that all accidents are meaningful, but that meaning is made out of accidents.” On imagining one’s inhibitions, “if we can’t to some extent imagine it- whether consciously or unconsciously- we wouldn’t know not to do it, or how to go about avoiding doing it.” On what failing in life actually means, “to fail at one thing is to succeed at another.” Each essay muses on a different subject matter, but the book is held together by the process of exploring the Self as a continual project that may or may not be helped through analysis. He does not judge and hopes the reader does not judge either.