Adam Phillips

Kindness is the foundation of the world's great religions and most-enduring philosophies. Why, then, does being kind feel so dangerous? If we crave kindness with such intensity, why is it a pleasure we often deny ourselves? And why-despite our longing-are we often suspicious when we are on the receiving end of it? In this brilliant book, the eminent psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and the historian Barbara Taylor examine the pleasures and perils of kindness....

"Becoming Freud is the story of the young Freud-Freud up until the age of fifty-that incorporates all of Freud's many misgivings about the art of biography. Freud invented a psychological treatment that involved the telling and revising of life stories, but he was himself skeptical of the writing of such stories. In this biography, Adam Phillips, whom the New Yorker calls "Britain's foremost psychoanalytical writer," emphasizes the largely and inevitably...

"Chuck Restic has achieved the American dream: a successful career with a large corporation, his own home, and the best health care insurance and retirement package money can buy ... but he's crumbling inside. Twenty years in Human Resources have pushed Chuck Restic into an existential crisis. Only when he sets out to find a missing employee from his L.A. firm does he feel alive again. Applying his HR skills and wit to his moonlight detective work,...

"A new book from the acclaimed psychoanalytic writer Adam Phillips on giving up to feel more alive"--