Volumes have been dedicated to madness, but sanity is rarely mentioned. We can define the mad, but how do we classify the sane? In Going Sane, psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips delves deep into history, philosophy, literature and his own experiences to address questions that we rarely ask about ourselves, taking us on an engrossing journey in which we learn many things - including some of what it takes to be happy in the modern world.

Has psychoanalysis failed to keep its promise? What are psychoanalysis and literature good for? And what, if anything, have they got to do with each other? 'Promises, Promises' is a delightful new collection of essays which sets out to make and break the links between psychoanalysis and literature. It confirms Adam Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse into art, drama, poetry and history. This collection gives us insights into anorexia and cloning, the work of Tom Stoppard and A.E. Housman, the effect of the Blitz on Londoners, Nijinsky's diary and Martin Amis's Night Train, and provides a case history of clutter. In a final essay, the author turns to the question - why sign up for analysis when you could read a book? Promoting everywhere a refreshing version of a psychoanalysis that is more committed to happiness and inspiration than to self-knowledge or some absolute truth, 'Promises, Promises' reaffirms Adam Phillips as a writer whose work, in the words of one reviewer, 'hovers in a strange and haunting borderland between rigour and delight.'