Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life - Paperback

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Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
  • Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life - Paperback

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life - Paperback

by Adam Phillips
$20.00
$20.00

Book Overview

by Adam Phillips (Author)

From the leading psychoanalyst Adam Phillips comes Missing Out, a transformative book about the lives we wish we had and what they can teach us about who we are

All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short.

But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from the equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires.

In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of D. W. Winnicott and William James, to suggest that frustration, not getting it, and and getting away with it are all chapters in our unlived lives--and may be essential to the one fully lived.

Author Biography

Adam Phillips is one of the foremost psychoanalysts practicing in the world today, and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of many books, including On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored; and On Balance. He is also coauthor, with the historian Barbara Taylor, of On Kindness.

Number of Pages: 224
Dimensions: 0.59 x 8.33 x 5.47 IN
Publication Date: December 31, 2013
ISBN9781250043511
Author Adam Phillips
PublisherPicador USA
GenreSelf-help & personal development and Philosophy
FormatPaperback
PublishedDecember 2013
LanguageENG- English
Pages224
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Nonfiction Philosophy Psychology

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More by Adam Phillips

On Kindness

On Kindness - Paperback

On Kindness - Paperback

By Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor

About Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips, formerly a principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practicing psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including Missing Out, Unforbidden Pleasures, In Writing, Attention Seeking, On Wanting to Change, On Getting Better, and On Giving Up. He is also the general editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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