THE LIFE YOU WANT

You can’t always get what you want.

The British psychoanalyst Phillips recognizes that, while psychotherapy may not be a flawless science, it offers a means of coping with the world and understanding the relationship between desire and happiness. This collection of essays brings together the legacies of Sigmund Freud and the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, both of whom were concerned with integrating human needs into a fulfilling social life. The result is a self-help book of a very high order, rich with quotations and explications of literary and philosophical texts phrased in an aphoristic style. “People always do things for good reasons, even though often they do not know what these reasons are. Psychoanalysis is there to help us work out what our reasons might be, and what we think about them.” The reader will work hard to find such clear statements, though. Much of the book delves deep into the work of thinkers such as D.W. Winnicott and Gilles Deleuze, trying to find concord between those who focus on the unconscious and those who focus on everyday lived life. “The psychoanalyst is an essentialist who believes in the unconscious…the pragmatist is an anti-essentialist, unwilling to believe in determinisms and committed to human agency and choice-making.” Psychoanalysis begins with resistance; pragmatism begins with acceptance. If you take Phillips at his word, you will go into psychoanalysis to struggle with unfulfilled desire while recognizing that the life you want will not be provided by others but found for yourself, both inside your head and outside in the world. Not a book for the casual reader.

A sophisticated, mind-stretching argument for psychoanalysis as a way of understanding why we want a good life.