Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

(Paperback)

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In Missing Out acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the gap between who we are and who we are not, to discover whether not getting what we want may be the unlikely key to the fully lived life. Missing Out is a meditation on reality and opportunity by Adam Phillips. We all have two lives - the life we live and the life of our fantasies. But it is the life unlived - the person we have failed to be - that can trouble and even haunt us. In Missing Out acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the gap between who we are and who we are not, to discover whether not getting what we want may be the unlikely key to the fully lived life. Praise for Adam Phillips- '"Phillipsian" would evoke a vivid, paradoxical style that led you to think that you had picked up an idea by the head, only to find you were holding it by the tail' Lisa Appignanesi, Guardian 'He's brilliant' John Carey 'Phillips radiates infectious charm' Sunday Times Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of several previous books, all widely acclaimed, including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Going Sane and Side Effects. His most recent book is On Kindness, which was co-written with historian Barbara Taylor.

Reviews

The best living essayist writing in English
Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored * Observer *
He's brilliant
Phillips radiates infectious charm * Sunday Times *
Playfully digressive style... He is the finest living decipherer of affective life [and] the Bob Dylan of psychoanalysis * Daily Telegraph *
'Phillipsian' would evoke a vivid, paradoxical style that led you to think that you had picked up an idea by the head, only to find you were holding it by the tail. * The Guardian *
Phillips is a wonderful writer, his prose limpid and exact * Sunday Times *
His prose is always elegant... such lively intelligence wins over the reader and makes Phillips's work addictive
Praise for Adam Phillips * -- *
Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored * Observer *
Phillips radiates infectious charm * Sunday Times *
His writing is a lively source of provocation, repetition, self-renewal * Scotsman *

Author Bio

Adam Phillips was born in Cardiff in 1954. He is the author of numerous works of psychotherapy and literary criticism, including Winnicott, On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, Going Sane, Side Effects, On Kindness, co-written with Barbara Taylor, On Balance, Missing Out, One Way and Another and Becoming Freud. Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Observer and the New York Times, and he is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations. His new book, Unforbidden Pleasures, comes out in November 2015 and is published by Hamish Hamilton.