The Life You Want
$35.75
- Hardcover
160 pages
- Release Date
28 January 2026
Summary
From acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, a meditation on how to achieve the lives we want.
Where do we get ideas about the lives we want? And, what do we do - and fail to do - about actually getting them?
In The Life You Want, Adam Phillips uses psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed by the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy rather than merely endure, tolerate or make the most of.
Through a series of interlinked essa…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780241766118 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0241766117 |
| Author: | Adam Phillips |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Hamish Hamilton Ltd |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 160 |
| Release Date: | 28 January 2026 |
| Weight: | 274g |
| Dimensions: | 18mm x 144mm x 223mm |
You Can Find This Book In
Critics Review
[Reading The Life You Want] is like having a deep chat with your brainiest friend … Writing like this opens things up, broadens life out - it is the antidote to scrolling through endless January wellbeing advice. Go on, I dare you: pick it up and take your brain for a spin * The Times *
Adam Phillips wages a playful war on the strictures of traditional talk therapy … Phillips has spent decades translating specialized concepts for general audiences—demystifying transference and projection, peeking under the hood of everyday occupations such as tickling and being bored, drawing on classic works of literature to illustrate the relevance of his field to ordinary experience * New Yorker *
Phillips offers a subtle but devastating critique of the notion that we 21st-century decadents can be fulfilled by things – Stuart Jeffries * Telegraph *
If psychoanalysis has a rock star, it’s Adam Phillips. The London-based shrink is the quiet confessor to the city’s artists and writers—and a cultural figure in his own right—best known for books with titles that sound suspiciously enjoyable for someone paid to dissect the psyche: Going Sane, On Giving Up, On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored. His latest, The Life You Want, offers no five-step plan to happiness. Instead, it asks the irritatingly good question: Why are you so desperate for a better life in the first place? – Hermione Lee * Interview Magazine *
A sophisticated, mind-stretching argument for psychoanalysis as a way of understanding why we want a good life * Kirkus Reviews *
Phillips asks what it means to want to live at all—and what happens to wanting under conditions that increasingly dictate what a life should be * Cultured *
Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising 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 most recently The Life You Want, On Giving Up, and On Getting Better.
He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations, and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Returns
This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.