Adam Phillips British psychotherapist and essayist Date of Birth: 19.09.1954 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips, a British psychotherapist and essayist, has been the editor of the new series of translations "Penguin Modern Classics" since 2003, focusing on the works of Sigmund Freud, and a regular contributor to the "London Review of Books". Known as the "leading psychoanalytic writer in Britain," Phillips has been praised for his brilliant and touching works by critics such as Joan Acocella of "The New Yorker".

Phillips was born on September 19, 1954, in Cardiff, Wales, to second-generation Polish Jewish parents. He grew up in a large family, surrounded by uncles, aunts, and cousins. While he describes his parents as being aware of their Jewish roots, they were not religious. During his childhood, Phillips developed a fascination with tropical birds, but it wasn't until his teenage years that he developed an interest in literature. He received his education at Clifton College and continued his studies in English language at St. John's College, Oxford University.

After reading Carl Jung's autobiography, Phillips became deeply interested in becoming a psychoanalyst. He saw psychoanalysis as closer to poetry than medicine, stating that for him, psychoanalysis had always been a part of various literary languages. After leaving Oxford, he began his training in psychoanalysis, studying with Masud Khan, a Pakistani-British psychoanalyst. Four years of immersion in the subject led him to become a practicing psychoanalyst at the age of 27. Phillips had a particular interest in working with children and became a child psychoanalyst. He found pleasure in psychoanalyzing a non-psychoanalytic audience, as he believed it was a way to support and foster their desire to live.

From 1990 to 1997, Phillips served as the principal child psychoanalyst at Charing Cross Hospital in London. He worked in the National Health Service for 17 years but grew disenchanted with the increasing bureaucratic demands. Currently, Phillips divides his time between his writing career and his private practice in Notting Hill. He is a regular contributor to the "London Review of Books" and has been praised by "The Times" as the "Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis" for his brilliant and often surprising works. Irish writer John Banville considers Phillips "one of the best prose stylists of our day, an Emerson of our time."

Phillips' approach to the new edition of Freud's works aligns with his own views on psychoanalysis, which he sees as a form of rhetorical influence. He has published essays on various topics, including works by literary figures such as Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and William Empson. Phillips has also written philosophical and psychoanalytic works, including a book on Donald Woods Winnicott, a prominent figure in object relations theory, as part of the "Fontana Modern Masters" series. Phillips strongly opposes any attempts to defend psychoanalysis as a science or even as a field of scientific inquiry. He sees psychoanalysis as a collection of stories that help us sustain our faith in support and preserve our desire to desire, essentially stories that enhance our appetite for life.

Influenced by Winnicott, poststructuralist philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes, Stanley Cavell, and Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden, Phillips is considered the "probably the best theorist of the forms and distortions of modernist psychology." He draws intellectual resources from philosophy, literature, politics, and more. However, his extraordinary ability to expand the horizons of his own and others' knowledge has made him an individualist, and some view his works with suspicion. Consequently, Phillips is also perceived as playful, elusive, and intellectually slippery. Critics have accused him of being little more than a charlatan around whom a troubling cult of personality has formed. Phillips himself is against the idealization that comes with avoiding genuine engagement with others, and his enduring skepticism regarding psychoanalysis serves as an antidote to such cults.

Phillips consistently refuses to "guard" any specific area of psychoanalytic territory or even defend the value of psychoanalysis itself. He believes that psychoanalysis is just one of many things one could turn to when feeling distressed, comparing it to aromatherapy, knitting, or hang gliding. He does not believe that psychoanalysis is the best thing one can do, despite his high regard for the theory.

He is even willing to acknowledge the threat that psychoanalysis can lose its power when used in pursuit of knowledge that is considered better. In such cases, the worst that can happen is the emergence of patterns. Phillips believes that psychoanalysis should only provide hints necessary for individuals to discover their own paths.

For several years, Phillips had a relationship with Jacqueline Rose, a British scholar and professor of humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Since 2006, he has been an honorary professor in the Department of English at the University of York.