READING ADAM PHILLIPS
ICP Fall, 2015
Instructor: David James Fisher, Ph.D.
djamesfisher@aol.com
(310) 552-0868
This seminar surveys the selected writings of Adam Phillips. It will cover his
approach to psychoanalytic, clinical, and theoretical issues, as well as his incisive
grasp of how philosophical, literary, and moral issues impinge on the clinical. We
will look at his early book on Winnicott, with special attention to his understanding
of this seminal thinker and his methodology in writing an intellectual biography.
We will look at his explication of the history of psychoanalysis, highlighting his
emphasis on an inclusive, pluralistic, non-polemical understanding of various
schools of psychoanalytic thinking from Freud to Winnicott to Lacan. Of particular
interest will be his writings on the unconscious, sexuality, aggression, gender,
development, compassion, madness and sanity. In grasping the plurality of lives we
want to live, he introduces a plurality of perspectives. As one of the most prominent
stylists of the contemporary era, a self-conscious writer among our analytic
authors, we will explore dimensions of his style, form, content, process, and tone.
Phillips has a knack for focusing on issues of critical importance to psychoanalytic
clinicians and to sensitive individuals attempting to construct a post-modern ethics.
We will sample his writings on sexuality and love, on literature and psychoanalysis,
several of his case studies, his understanding of monogamy and the ambivalence of
love, and lastly his explication of the dialectic of aggression and compassion in his
essay on kindness. We will play with his paradoxes, his aphorisms, his irony and
skepticism, his fascinating insights into the dynamics of character. Phillips clinical
forms of knowledge become integral to how he weaves his narratives and
constructs his critical analysis. We will explicate how his analytic understanding
operates without reductionism and without excluding the mystery and fundamental
elusiveness of knowing a person.
Week I Early Influences: Winnicott and Khan
Phillips, Winnicott (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 98-126,
133-152.
Phillips, ‘Returning the Dream: In Memorium Masud Khan,” In Phillips, On Kissing,
Tickling, and Being Bored (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1993, pp.
59-67, 125-126.
Week II Optics on Psychoanalysis and the History of Psychoanalysis
Phillips, “Psychoanalysis and Idolatry,” in Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, pp. 109121, 129.
Phillips, “Anna Freud,” in On Flirtation (Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass.,
1994), pp. 88-99.
Phillips, “Freud and Jones,” in On Flirtation, pp. 109-121.
Phillips, “Erich Fromm,” in On Flirtation, pp. 131-137.
Phillips, “The Manicuring of Jacques Lacan,” in Promises, Promises: Essays on
Psychoanalysis and Literature (Basic Books: New York, 2001,), pp. 107-112.
Week III Toward A Biographical Approach to Freud
Phillips, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Yale University Press: New
Haven, Conn., 2014), pp. 80-162.
Week IV On Rage, Love, Truth, Boredom, Translation, and the Clinical
Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery (Pantheon: New York, 1998), pp. 121-155.
Phillips, “On Being Bored,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, pp. 68-78.
Phillips, “Plotting for Kisses,” in On Kissing, pp. 93-100.
Phillips, “Clutter: A Case History,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 59-81.
Phillips, “On Translating A Person,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 125-147.
Week V Psychoanalysis and Literature
Phillips, “Promises, Promises,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 364-375.
Phillips, “The Pragmatics of Passion,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 296-309.
Phillips, “Philip Roth’s Patrimony,” in On Flirtation, pp. 167-174.
Phillips, “Sane Now,” in Going Sane (Harper: New York, 2005), pp. 175-199.
Week VI Sexuality and Monogamy
Phillips, Monogamy (Vintage: New York, 1996), pp. 1-121.
Phillips, “Sex Mad,” in On Balance (Picador: New York, 2010), pp. 21-30.
Phillips, “Sane Sex,” in Going Sane, pp. 88-121.
Week VII The Dialectic of Compassion and Aggression
Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness (Ferrar, Straus, Giroux: New York, 2009),
pp. 47-114.