Side effects are things we do not intend. And, in this collection of essays, Adam Phillips examines how the things we don�t mean, or mean perhaps to forget, prove to be those that are often most telling about our unconscious lives. Phillips also intends for us to question our conscious pursuit of happiness, explaining that, in refusing to admit and explore life�s down sides, we can only be living half lives. And through his unique and incisive exploration of literature, Phillips also demonstrates what the great novelists have to tell us about ourselves. Both illuminating and fascinating on literature as well as life, Side Effects maps our edges as human beings, and, in doing so, goes some way to helping give shape to our lives.

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.'

Psychoanalysis as a form of therapy works by attending to the patient's side effects, that is, 'what falls out of his pockets once he starts speaking'. Undergoing psychoanalytic treatment is in many ways like reading a powerful work of literature - a leap into the dark, an opportunity to think the strangeness of your own thoughts. It is impossible to know beforehand the effect it will have. All we can do, as the essays in this book suggest, is see where the side effects will lead us. And that is part of the excitement of being alive. Adam Phillips guides the reader in this fascinating journey into the links between psychoanalysis, literature and the living of our everyday lives.

Contains essays in which the author examines the contradictory aspects of a person's fears and desires, discussing examples from literature, fairy tales, works of art, and case studies.

Includes lectures and an interview