Side Effects

by Adam Phillips

Book Overview

Psychoanalysis works by attending to the patient's side effects, what falls out of his pockets once he starts speaking. Undergoing psychoanalytic therapy is always a leap into the dark--like dedicating our hearts and intellect to a powerful work of literature, it's impossible to know beforehand its ultimate effect and consequences. One must remain open to where the side effects will lead.

Erudite, eloquent, and enthrallingly observant, Adam...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007155387
• ISBN13: 9780007155385
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A great book by a great author, at once highly informative and deeply pleasurable

Adam Phillips is a favorite author of mine, a wonderful essayist and prose stylist. His writing expresses clarity in the face of obscurity, precision in confronting ambiguity and complexity. If you have any interest in Freud and psychoanalysis generally, or if you wonder about patterns and tendencies, both in yourself and in the culture, which you intimate but can't quite pinpoint or articulate, then I definitely recommend his work. "Side Effects" is very good, but I think his best may be "On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored" - a truly beautiful book.