What do you think?
Rate this book
Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
A transformative book about the lives we wish we had and what they can teach us about who we are.
All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what it might be that we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling short.
But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from this equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires.
In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of Donald Winnicott and William James, to suggest that missing out, getting away with it, and not getting it are all chapters in our unlived lives--and may be essential to the one fully lived.
All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what it might be that we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling short.
But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from this equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires.
In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of Donald Winnicott and William James, to suggest that missing out, getting away with it, and not getting it are all chapters in our unlived lives--and may be essential to the one fully lived.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
654 people are currently reading
8615 people want to read
About the author
Adam Phillips
125 books658 followersAdam Phillips is a British psychotherapist and essayist.
Since 2003 he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of Sigmund Freud. He is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
Phillips was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1954, the child of second-generation Polish Jews. He grew up as part of an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins and describes his parents as "very consciously Jewish but not believing". As a child, his first interest was the study of tropical birds and it was not until adolescence that he developed an interest in literature. He went on to study English at St John's College, Oxford, graduating with a third class degree. His defining influences are literary – he was inspired to become a psychoanalyst after reading Carl Jung's autobiography and he has always believed psychoanalysis to be closer to poetry than medicine.
Adapted from Wikipedia.
Phillips is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. He has been described by The Times as "the Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis" for his "brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling" work; and by John Banville as "one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time."
Since 2003 he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of Sigmund Freud. He is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
Phillips was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1954, the child of second-generation Polish Jews. He grew up as part of an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins and describes his parents as "very consciously Jewish but not believing". As a child, his first interest was the study of tropical birds and it was not until adolescence that he developed an interest in literature. He went on to study English at St John's College, Oxford, graduating with a third class degree. His defining influences are literary – he was inspired to become a psychoanalyst after reading Carl Jung's autobiography and he has always believed psychoanalysis to be closer to poetry than medicine.
Adapted from Wikipedia.
Phillips is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. He has been described by The Times as "the Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis" for his "brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling" work; and by John Banville as "one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 417 reviews
April 12, 2013
Adam Phillips is one of my favorite writers, though I understand why he drives some people crazy. He doesn't write self-help books, per se, so much as psychological and philosophical essays made with the idea that to better understand the nature of the self and the world results in a kind of self help -- you live better and in greater harmony with events, or, as he might put it, in greater harmony with your occasional disharmony when you operate from a more sophisticated understanding of your world. At the very root of what he does is always paradox. If he could be said to have discovered one thing about life which applies to all his work it is that the truth exists in the middle of a contradiction and can only be understood in that sense, so therefore almost everything we tend to believe about life is actually the opposite of what truly is -- like looking into the world through a mirror. Occasionally, when he's not thinking as deeply as he usually does, this approach comes across as an affectation. But when he's at his best he is often on to something and in this book he is in high form. One thing, in particular, that's interesting in this set of essays is the idea that we are all experts on experiences we don't have: we tend to give more credence to beliefs we have about projected futures than thought to the actual past experiences we've lived. Maybe this helps us make decisions about what to do next, but it does nothing to tell us what the likely outcome of those choices are going to be. His work is erudite, playful and speculative, littered with far more questions than answers. There's nobody out there, that I've seen, writing and thinking quite like this. it's beautiful as well as maddening.
June 11, 2013
**Missing it on Missing Out**
My head is still spinning from this book. And, unfortunately, not in a productive way.
Similar to the experience of other reviewers, I had expectations that this book would offer a useful exploration of how looking at the yet-unlived aspects of our lives can help guide us towards more meaningful lives. Perhaps I was lured by the subtitle of “In praise of the unlived life” and the reviews on the back, which, in retrospect, were more about the undelivered promises found in the prologue of the book. (I’m kind of thinking these reviewers never actually made it through the remainder of the book.)
To me, the book (following the promising prologue) was a series of mental ramblings thrown together that provided a tour of the author’s own personal intellectual pet projects. Much of the book consisted of the author’s exploring ad nauseam the concepts and definitions of the words and phrases of "frustration," “not getting it,” “getting away with it,” “getting out of it,” “satisfaction,” and “madness” with a dizzying array of citations from Freud and Shakespeare. Maybe I was missing out (subtitle pun intended) on something, but I did not find these mental wanderings to be interesting or useful. It felt like the author was not writing for an audience, but for himself.
Some readers may love the content, style, and impressive attempts to marry psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, but, it just didn’t work so well for me.
On the bright side, I need not wonder if I was missing out by not reading _Missing Out_.
My head is still spinning from this book. And, unfortunately, not in a productive way.
Similar to the experience of other reviewers, I had expectations that this book would offer a useful exploration of how looking at the yet-unlived aspects of our lives can help guide us towards more meaningful lives. Perhaps I was lured by the subtitle of “In praise of the unlived life” and the reviews on the back, which, in retrospect, were more about the undelivered promises found in the prologue of the book. (I’m kind of thinking these reviewers never actually made it through the remainder of the book.)
To me, the book (following the promising prologue) was a series of mental ramblings thrown together that provided a tour of the author’s own personal intellectual pet projects. Much of the book consisted of the author’s exploring ad nauseam the concepts and definitions of the words and phrases of "frustration," “not getting it,” “getting away with it,” “getting out of it,” “satisfaction,” and “madness” with a dizzying array of citations from Freud and Shakespeare. Maybe I was missing out (subtitle pun intended) on something, but I did not find these mental wanderings to be interesting or useful. It felt like the author was not writing for an audience, but for himself.
Some readers may love the content, style, and impressive attempts to marry psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, but, it just didn’t work so well for me.
On the bright side, I need not wonder if I was missing out by not reading _Missing Out_.
January 25, 2022
والله الكتاب حلو والمعاني التي فيه رائعة، وأحياناً قد تقع منه على سطر فيه فكرة ذكية يغنيك عن شرح طويل.
لا أدري لو كان ينفع تصنيفه تحت كتب علم النفس أو علم الاجتماع أو علم فقه اللغة، لأني رأيته مشتملاً على هذه المواضيع في طيّات الكتاب، وبعض الأفكار فيه لدرجة بساطتها وعمقها غابت عن كثيرين ( كتحليل النكتة، وكيف أن الحسد أحياناً يكون ضرورياً لفهم سياقات أخرى من النفس البشرية).
لا أزعم أني فهمتُه كله، واظن الترجمة العربية ظلمته قليلاً فقد كانت شاقة عليّ.
شكراً حنان على الترشيح وشكراً خلود لقد قرأته بنسختك المصوّرة.
لا أدري لو كان ينفع تصنيفه تحت كتب علم النفس أو علم الاجتماع أو علم فقه اللغة، لأني رأيته مشتملاً على هذه المواضيع في طيّات الكتاب، وبعض الأفكار فيه لدرجة بساطتها وعمقها غابت عن كثيرين ( كتحليل النكتة، وكيف أن الحسد أحياناً يكون ضرورياً لفهم سياقات أخرى من النفس البشرية).
لا أزعم أني فهمتُه كله، واظن الترجمة العربية ظلمته قليلاً فقد كانت شاقة عليّ.
شكراً حنان على الترشيح وشكراً خلود لقد قرأته بنسختك المصوّرة.
March 18, 2022
این کتاب مثل همصحبتی با دوست خردمندیست که میتوانی از او چیزهای زیادی بیاموزی. تا ببینی چقدر چیزهایی که نمیدانی، میتواند بر نگاهت به زندگی تاثیر بگذارد. به نظرم بیشتر از همه چیز، تمام تلاشِ نویسنده پیشکش کردن نگاهی نو برای نگریستن به جهان است.
Read
July 4, 2022نکاتی که قبل خوندن این کتاب بهتره بدونید:
یک) عنوان کتاب گمراهکنندهست. این کتاب درباره حسرت نیست. بیشتر دربارهی "اشتیاقداشتن" هست شاید؟ یا "میلورزیدن"، "خواستن"، "سرخوردگی از بهدستنیاوردن". "ترسیدن از ازدستدادن و نرسیدن"، "انتظارات و خیالپردازیهای آرزومندانه غلط دربارهی خواستههامون که بعدا باعث مشکلات زیاد میشه و backfire میکنه."
ولی بازم کاملا نه. چون کتاب متشکل از پنجتا مقاله + یه ضمیمه هست و واقعا نمیتونید انتظار داشته باشید که درباره چی قراره حرف بزنه؛ چون پراکندهست و بعضی جاها انگار نویسنده داره بلند بلند فکر میکنه و افسار افکارش از دستش خارج شده.
دو) کتاب سختخوان و frustrating هست. خودم خیلی جاها رو نفهمیدم و اول فکر کردم مشکل من یا مشکل ترجمهست، اما ریویوها رو که خوندم، فهمیدم سبک نویسندهست و در واقع هیچکس نفهمیده!
سه) اگه اتلو، هملت و مکبث رو خونده باشید، احتمالا کتاب رو بهتر متوجه بشید. چون کتاب تئوریهاش رو ربط میده به شخصیتهای این نمایشنامهها. (رشته نویسنده هم ادبیات بوده و هم روانکاوی)
البته من خودم نخونده بودم اینا رو.
اگه با نظریههای فروید و باقی روانکاوها هم آشنایی داشته باشید، بازم کمک میکنه به فهمیدن بیشتر. (که اینا رو هم باز خودم نخونده بودم و اطلاع نداشتم)
ولی اشتباه نکنید. حتی اگه اینا رو بدونید، بازم قرار نیست واقعا بفهمید. چون حرفهای کتاب واقعا پیچیده و دیوونهکنندهست!
(تجربهی خودم از خوندن کتاب:
ده بیست صفحه اول واقعا سرم رو میخواستم بکوبم به دیوار از بس هیچی نمیفهمیدم و متن آشفته بود، بعد تا صفحه پنجاه اسکیپ کردم و دیگه میخواستم کتاب رو دراپ کنم که یه جمله خوندم و گفتم هوم، جالبه. و باعث شد به خوندن ادامه بدم. و خوشحالم که دووم آوردم و ادامه دادم.
با اینکه خیلی جاها رو نفهمیدم و متوجه نشدم (و واقعا عصبانیکننده بود. هوووف) اما اونجاهایی رو که متوجه شدم، واقعا واقعا جالب و زیبا و تفکربرانگیزناک بود. یعنی کتاب برای من حرفهای واوبرانگیز زیاد داشت که زیرشون خط کشیدم.)
حالا نکتهی چهار) این کتاب قرار نیست راهحل بده. حتی قراره بیشتر از جواب، سوالهای بیشتر ایجاد کنه و بعضی جاها آدمو گیج کنه. و نویسنده هیچ قطعیتی نسبت به حرفهاش و نظریههاش نداره و تقریبا آخر هر مقاله مینویسه "و این جای تامل دارد". یعنی میخوام بگم این کتاب هیچی برای اثبات، و هیچ نقشهای برای نجات و هیچ راهحلی برای ارائه نداره. فقط نظر و فکره.
و بله، این ممکنه عذابآور باشه، ولی نه عذابآورتر از کتابها و نویسندههایی که فکر میکنن راز زندگی و جهانی رو پیدا کردن و میخوان به هر زوری اینو برای خوانندهها اثبات کنن. راز زندگی و جهانی که واقعا اونقدرها هم ازش نمیدونیم و پره از عدم قطعیتها، سردرگمیها، گیجیها، روانیشدنها، چراها، نمیدونمها، نمیفهممها، سوالهای بیجواب و...
چون به قول فرانسوا ویون (و خیر اصلا نمیدونم ایشون کی هست و چی کاره بود و اسمش رو هم حفظ نیستم، فقط این نقلقول ازش رو اول کتاب «مهمانسرای دو دنیا» خوندم):
«از نظر من هیچچیز مطمئنتر از نامطمئن نیست.»
با وجود اینها، کتاب برای من خیلی مفید بود و اگه توی زمان درست خونده بشه و صبر زیادی داشته باشید، میتونه براتون مفید باشه؛ اون درصد اندکی که از این کتاب فهمیدم خیلی کمککننده بود و باعث شد نسبت به خودم و احساساتم و مشکلاتم (اون دسته از احساسات و مشکلاتی که کتاب دربارهشون صحبت کرد) شناخت بیشتری داشته باشم، بیشتر به ریشه اونها و approachم نسبت به بعضیهاشون فکر کنم و احساس بهتر و آرومتری نسبت بهشون داشته باشم.
یک) عنوان کتاب گمراهکنندهست. این کتاب درباره حسرت نیست. بیشتر دربارهی "اشتیاقداشتن" هست شاید؟ یا "میلورزیدن"، "خواستن"، "سرخوردگی از بهدستنیاوردن". "ترسیدن از ازدستدادن و نرسیدن"، "انتظارات و خیالپردازیهای آرزومندانه غلط دربارهی خواستههامون که بعدا باعث مشکلات زیاد میشه و backfire میکنه."
ولی بازم کاملا نه. چون کتاب متشکل از پنجتا مقاله + یه ضمیمه هست و واقعا نمیتونید انتظار داشته باشید که درباره چی قراره حرف بزنه؛ چون پراکندهست و بعضی جاها انگار نویسنده داره بلند بلند فکر میکنه و افسار افکارش از دستش خارج شده.
دو) کتاب سختخوان و frustrating هست. خودم خیلی جاها رو نفهمیدم و اول فکر کردم مشکل من یا مشکل ترجمهست، اما ریویوها رو که خوندم، فهمیدم سبک نویسندهست و در واقع هیچکس نفهمیده!
سه) اگه اتلو، هملت و مکبث رو خونده باشید، احتمالا کتاب رو بهتر متوجه بشید. چون کتاب تئوریهاش رو ربط میده به شخصیتهای این نمایشنامهها. (رشته نویسنده هم ادبیات بوده و هم روانکاوی)
البته من خودم نخونده بودم اینا رو.
اگه با نظریههای فروید و باقی روانکاوها هم آشنایی داشته باشید، بازم کمک میکنه به فهمیدن بیشتر. (که اینا رو هم باز خودم نخونده بودم و اطلاع نداشتم)
ولی اشتباه نکنید. حتی اگه اینا رو بدونید، بازم قرار نیست واقعا بفهمید. چون حرفهای کتاب واقعا پیچیده و دیوونهکنندهست!
(تجربهی خودم از خوندن کتاب:
ده بیست صفحه اول واقعا سرم رو میخواستم بکوبم به دیوار از بس هیچی نمیفهمیدم و متن آشفته بود، بعد تا صفحه پنجاه اسکیپ کردم و دیگه میخواستم کتاب رو دراپ کنم که یه جمله خوندم و گفتم هوم، جالبه. و باعث شد به خوندن ادامه بدم. و خوشحالم که دووم آوردم و ادامه دادم.
با اینکه خیلی جاها رو نفهمیدم و متوجه نشدم (و واقعا عصبانیکننده بود. هوووف) اما اونجاهایی رو که متوجه شدم، واقعا واقعا جالب و زیبا و تفکربرانگیزناک بود. یعنی کتاب برای من حرفهای واوبرانگیز زیاد داشت که زیرشون خط کشیدم.)
حالا نکتهی چهار) این کتاب قرار نیست راهحل بده. حتی قراره بیشتر از جواب، سوالهای بیشتر ایجاد کنه و بعضی جاها آدمو گیج کنه. و نویسنده هیچ قطعیتی نسبت به حرفهاش و نظریههاش نداره و تقریبا آخر هر مقاله مینویسه "و این جای تامل دارد". یعنی میخوام بگم این کتاب هیچی برای اثبات، و هیچ نقشهای برای نجات و هیچ راهحلی برای ارائه نداره. فقط نظر و فکره.
و بله، این ممکنه عذابآور باشه، ولی نه عذابآورتر از کتابها و نویسندههایی که فکر میکنن راز زندگی و جهانی رو پیدا کردن و میخوان به هر زوری اینو برای خوانندهها اثبات کنن. راز زندگی و جهانی که واقعا اونقدرها هم ازش نمیدونیم و پره از عدم قطعیتها، سردرگمیها، گیجیها، روانیشدنها، چراها، نمیدونمها، نمیفهممها، سوالهای بیجواب و...
چون به قول فرانسوا ویون (و خیر اصلا نمیدونم ایشون کی هست و چی کاره بود و اسمش رو هم حفظ نیستم، فقط این نقلقول ازش رو اول کتاب «مهمانسرای دو دنیا» خوندم):
«از نظر من هیچچیز مطمئنتر از نامطمئن نیست.»
با وجود اینها، کتاب برای من خیلی مفید بود و اگه توی زمان درست خونده بشه و صبر زیادی داشته باشید، میتونه براتون مفید باشه؛ اون درصد اندکی که از این کتاب فهمیدم خیلی کمککننده بود و باعث شد نسبت به خودم و احساساتم و مشکلاتم (اون دسته از احساسات و مشکلاتی که کتاب دربارهشون صحبت کرد) شناخت بیشتری داشته باشم، بیشتر به ریشه اونها و approachم نسبت به بعضیهاشون فکر کنم و احساس بهتر و آرومتری نسبت بهشون داشته باشم.
February 23, 2020
Някои смятат, че думата „кенгуру“ означава „не разбирам“ на езика на местни аборигенски племена в Австралия. Това симпатично объркване произлиза от навярно напълно измислена случка, свързана с Джеймс Кук и изследването му на тази част от света. Предполагам това, както и много други заблуждения, във и с които живеем, са плод на нечий имагинерен живот.
“History is not merely what happened; it is what happened in the context of what might have happened.”
Есето на Адам Филипс е кристална решетка, наподобяваща творбите на Мориц Ешер или пък онази сцена с невъзможните стълбища в „Лабиринт“ (с Дейвид Боуи, да), където гоблинският крал Джаред елегантно отбягва прекрасната си жертва. С помощта на няколко основни концепции и анализ основно на Шекспирови пиеси и фройдистки заключения Филипс с известна нотка надменност ни разкрива тъжната истина за нас самите – съжалението ни, че се проваляме да бъдем хората, които бихме искали да сме. И че споделяме живота си с тези хора – поне във въображението си. Страданието, според психоаналитика Джоузеф Сандлър, е именно пропастта между Аз-а и идеала за Аз-а.
Ние не сме нищо специално, наравно с мравките и нарцисите, твърди Филипс, но нашата култура активно се е заела да ни накара да се почувстваме специални. Как иначе ще понесем тегобата на собствената си незначителност във великолепния пъзел на сътворението? Тази си нищожност се опитваме да надбягаме, когато водим двойствения си живот – онзи, реалния, и другия, който протича само в ума ни. Представяме си какво бихме искали и как ще се чувстваме, ако го получим. Невъзможни сценарии сред картонените декори на живота. Литературата и киното също отдавна се занимават с идеята за паралелните реалности (вече позастарелият сериал “Fringe” е страхотен пример). Всъщност алтернативните ни животи не са бягство от истинските, а неизменна част от тях, ще ви покаже Адам Филипс, докато ви разхожда из фрѐската на размислите си.
“You must lose your life in order to find it.”
Филипс педантично изследва идеята за постигането на удовлетворение, за „главозамайването от свободата“, както го нарича Сартр. Пътищата, по които вървим, за да го постигнем, лъкатушат и имат множество разклонения. Често се развличаме с незначителни удоволствия, неспособни да утолим жаждата си за нещо повече. Може и да знаем какво не искаме, но това не означава, че сме съвсем наясно какво искаме. Представяме си сбъднатите си желания и постигаме моментно и смътно удовлетворение, без да рискуваме. Уаби-саби – несъвършени, преходни същества в един несъвършен, непостоянен свят.
“All the world’s a stage and there are no other worlds. We are always and only acting, and the question asked in Twelfth Night – ‘Are all the people mad?’ – has been answered in the affirmative. Madness is part of our potential.”
Според някои теоретици има няколко вида интелигентност, не само една. Видът, който мен ме интригува най-много, е екзистенциалната. Тази, при която си задаваш въпроси като „Защо съществувам?“, „Защо умирам?“ и „Какво наистина се случва между тези две събития?“. Камю например счита, че единственият философския въпрос е дали да се самоубием или не. Фройд смекчава тази острота и пита „За какво си струва да се живее?“. Адам Филипс също задава (и отговаря) на някои доста добри въпроси в своята книга. Макар да e енигматичен и своенравен разказвач, ако сте търпеливи и внимателно надавате ухо, ще ви помогне да отчупите още няколко клона в гъстата гора на самопознанието.
“The only phobia is the phobia of self-knowledge.”
“History is not merely what happened; it is what happened in the context of what might have happened.”
Есето на Адам Филипс е кристална решетка, наподобяваща творбите на Мориц Ешер или пък онази сцена с невъзможните стълбища в „Лабиринт“ (с Дейвид Боуи, да), където гоблинският крал Джаред елегантно отбягва прекрасната си жертва. С помощта на няколко основни концепции и анализ основно на Шекспирови пиеси и фройдистки заключения Филипс с известна нотка надменност ни разкрива тъжната истина за нас самите – съжалението ни, че се проваляме да бъдем хората, които бихме искали да сме. И че споделяме живота си с тези хора – поне във въображението си. Страданието, според психоаналитика Джоузеф Сандлър, е именно пропастта между Аз-а и идеала за Аз-а.
Ние не сме нищо специално, наравно с мравките и нарцисите, твърди Филипс, но нашата култура активно се е заела да ни накара да се почувстваме специални. Как иначе ще понесем тегобата на собствената си незначителност във великолепния пъзел на сътворението? Тази си нищожност се опитваме да надбягаме, когато водим двойствения си живот – онзи, реалния, и другия, който протича само в ума ни. Представяме си какво бихме искали и как ще се чувстваме, ако го получим. Невъзможни сценарии сред картонените декори на живота. Литературата и киното също отдавна се занимават с идеята за паралелните реалности (вече позастарелият сериал “Fringe” е страхотен пример). Всъщност алтернативните ни животи не са бягство от истинските, а неизменна част от тях, ще ви покаже Адам Филипс, докато ви разхожда из фрѐската на размислите си.
“You must lose your life in order to find it.”
Филипс педантично изследва идеята за постигането на удовлетворение, за „главозамайването от свободата“, както го нарича Сартр. Пътищата, по които вървим, за да го постигнем, лъкатушат и имат множество разклонения. Често се развличаме с незначителни удоволствия, неспособни да утолим жаждата си за нещо повече. Може и да знаем какво не искаме, но това не означава, че сме съвсем наясно какво искаме. Представяме си сбъднатите си желания и постигаме моментно и смътно удовлетворение, без да рискуваме. Уаби-саби – несъвършени, преходни същества в един несъвършен, непостоянен свят.
“All the world’s a stage and there are no other worlds. We are always and only acting, and the question asked in Twelfth Night – ‘Are all the people mad?’ – has been answered in the affirmative. Madness is part of our potential.”
Според някои теоретици има няколко вида интелигентност, не само една. Видът, който мен ме интригува най-много, е екзистенциалната. Тази, при която си задаваш въпроси като „Защо съществувам?“, „Защо умирам?“ и „Какво наистина се случва между тези две събития?“. Камю например счита, че единственият философския въпрос е дали да се самоубием или не. Фройд смекчава тази острота и пита „За какво си струва да се живее?“. Адам Филипс също задава (и отговаря) на някои доста добри въпроси в своята книга. Макар да e енигматичен и своенравен разказвач, ако сте търпеливи и внимателно надавате ухо, ще ви помогне да отчупите още няколко клона в гъстата гора на самопознанието.
“The only phobia is the phobia of self-knowledge.”
June 22, 2016
British psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips, must have had enough of writing about life as we actually live it. He’s the author of On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored; Flirtation, etc. Now, he’s come out with a book that explores the life we have not lived, the effect of what we believe could’ve been. In the process of examining our fantasies, he illuminates reality.
Missing Out is written in non-technical language, but don’t attempt the book if you’re not up on Shakespeare. He relies far too much on the Bard’s tragic heroes to provide us with examples.
Let me attempt to summarize his main points without resorting to King Lear.
I’m hungry. If I have nothing to eat close at hand, I have a choice. I can work this frustration and use my hunger to motivate myself to score a meal. Getting satisfaction might be as easy as driving to McDonalds or as hard as preparing beef bourguignon. The harder it is, the more I’m going to need my imagination. The more I’ll have to tolerate frustration and hazard the rigors and risks of desire. I’ll have to be clever. Successful people tend to be flexible. If they have no burgundy in their wine rack, they settle for beef stew.
If I can’t eat, the other choice is to fantasize about a delicious meal. This can only take me so far, however. One cannot sustain life on fantasies.
It turns out these fantasies bedevil us in other ways that we never would’ve imagined. We can see this clearly in the phenomena of craving. When I crave beef bourguignon, I form a picture of myself eating it. The rich browns, the pungent smells, the complex tastes become almost real to me. My mouth waters. In this picture, I’m an omnipotent, satiated hedonist. In obtaining the beef bourguignon, in my fantasies I leap over obstacles and evade frustration, rather than modifying it. I replace uncertainty with certainty. I’m triumphant. This triumph is a form of magic. The original hunger is still there, there is only an illusion of triumph over it. I enact a childish view of what it means to be satisfied. I seem to triumph over my need for food.
The problem is, the more I crave beef bourguignon, the less I’ll be satisfied with anything else. I may not even enjoy the bourguignon, if I get it, because the actual dish can never compete with my fantasy of it, except for the fact that I can actually eat it.
I think I know more about the experiences I don’t have, my fantasies, than I know about the experiences I do have, the reality of hunger and cooking. The only time I entertain doubts about my craving, they tend to be about whether we can get the beef bourguignon, not about the nature of the satisfaction.
Craving begins as a flight from wanting, but it makes the wanting all the more problematic. Craving steals my hunger and pre-empts it with a ready-made, uncompromisable solution. The solution to hunger becomes more of a problem than hunger, itself.
I could go on, but I’m getting hungry.
For more book reviews and articles on mental health go to my blog, Madness 101.
Missing Out is written in non-technical language, but don’t attempt the book if you’re not up on Shakespeare. He relies far too much on the Bard’s tragic heroes to provide us with examples.
Let me attempt to summarize his main points without resorting to King Lear.
I’m hungry. If I have nothing to eat close at hand, I have a choice. I can work this frustration and use my hunger to motivate myself to score a meal. Getting satisfaction might be as easy as driving to McDonalds or as hard as preparing beef bourguignon. The harder it is, the more I’m going to need my imagination. The more I’ll have to tolerate frustration and hazard the rigors and risks of desire. I’ll have to be clever. Successful people tend to be flexible. If they have no burgundy in their wine rack, they settle for beef stew.
If I can’t eat, the other choice is to fantasize about a delicious meal. This can only take me so far, however. One cannot sustain life on fantasies.
It turns out these fantasies bedevil us in other ways that we never would’ve imagined. We can see this clearly in the phenomena of craving. When I crave beef bourguignon, I form a picture of myself eating it. The rich browns, the pungent smells, the complex tastes become almost real to me. My mouth waters. In this picture, I’m an omnipotent, satiated hedonist. In obtaining the beef bourguignon, in my fantasies I leap over obstacles and evade frustration, rather than modifying it. I replace uncertainty with certainty. I’m triumphant. This triumph is a form of magic. The original hunger is still there, there is only an illusion of triumph over it. I enact a childish view of what it means to be satisfied. I seem to triumph over my need for food.
The problem is, the more I crave beef bourguignon, the less I’ll be satisfied with anything else. I may not even enjoy the bourguignon, if I get it, because the actual dish can never compete with my fantasy of it, except for the fact that I can actually eat it.
I think I know more about the experiences I don’t have, my fantasies, than I know about the experiences I do have, the reality of hunger and cooking. The only time I entertain doubts about my craving, they tend to be about whether we can get the beef bourguignon, not about the nature of the satisfaction.
Craving begins as a flight from wanting, but it makes the wanting all the more problematic. Craving steals my hunger and pre-empts it with a ready-made, uncompromisable solution. The solution to hunger becomes more of a problem than hunger, itself.
I could go on, but I’m getting hungry.
For more book reviews and articles on mental health go to my blog, Madness 101.
September 16, 2023
به شخصه سخت خوان بود!
تنها ویژگیای که برای من داشت کتاب اتللو، هملت، تریسترام شندی رو اسپویل کرد :|
پ.ن: در باب کم نوشتن: واقعا کلیت کتاب رو به زور و بلا متوجه شدم، دو: حداقل دو هفته از تموم شدنش میگذره و عملا جزئیات رو به خاطر ندارم!
تنها ویژگیای که برای من داشت کتاب اتللو، هملت، تریسترام شندی رو اسپویل کرد :|
پ.ن: در باب کم نوشتن: واقعا کلیت کتاب رو به زور و بلا متوجه شدم، دو: حداقل دو هفته از تموم شدنش میگذره و عملا جزئیات رو به خاطر ندارم!
August 1, 2024
خیلی کم مونده که تمومش کنم اما دراپش میکنم.
نمفهممم پوینت حرفایی که تو جمع دوستاش میزنه رو کتاب کرده چیه.. .یسری کتابارو اسپویل میکنه بدون امادگی دادن ، ازین شاخم میپره به اون شاخه:/ برادر اهسته حداقل میرفت
نمفهممم پوینت حرفایی که تو جمع دوستاش میزنه رو کتاب کرده چیه.. .یسری کتابارو اسپویل میکنه بدون امادگی دادن ، ازین شاخم میپره به اون شاخه:/ برادر اهسته حداقل میرفت
May 28, 2016
Beklentimin altında kalan, ama okuduğuma pişman olmadığım bir eserdi. Özellikle alt başlığının yarattığı heyecanı karşılayamadı. Bunda benim Jungcu düşünceyi benimsemiş, kitabınsa Freud'u referans alan bir yapısının olmasının da etkisi olabilir. Yine de belirtmem gerek, kendi düşüncemle hemfikir olan eserleri değil de, farklı olanları okumayı severim.
Kaçırdıklarımız, benim için tatlı küçük notlar barındıran bir kitaptı; ancak bekleneni veremedi. Beklediğim kadar ufkumu açmadı ya da beklediğim ölçüde düşünce pistonlarımı çalıştırmadı. Çok güzel noktalara değindiği gibi, kimi yerlerde sözün gereksiz uzadığını düşünüyorum.
Psikanaliz kitaplarıyla haşır neşir olanlar için hafif kalacağına inanıyorum. Ama bu tarz kitaplara başlangıç için güzel bir nokta olabilir.
Son olarak, çeviri ve editörlük harikaydı. Metis bu konuda çizgisini bozmuyor ve beni çok mutlu ediyor.
Kaçırdıklarımız, benim için tatlı küçük notlar barındıran bir kitaptı; ancak bekleneni veremedi. Beklediğim kadar ufkumu açmadı ya da beklediğim ölçüde düşünce pistonlarımı çalıştırmadı. Çok güzel noktalara değindiği gibi, kimi yerlerde sözün gereksiz uzadığını düşünüyorum.
Psikanaliz kitaplarıyla haşır neşir olanlar için hafif kalacağına inanıyorum. Ama bu tarz kitaplara başlangıç için güzel bir nokta olabilir.
Son olarak, çeviri ve editörlük harikaydı. Metis bu konuda çizgisini bozmuyor ve beni çok mutlu ediyor.
May 27, 2025
"إننا لا يمكن أن نتخيل حياتنا بدون ما تحتويه من حيوات لم نعشها. إننا لدينا شعور دائم، وإن كان غامضًا وغريبًا، بأن الحيوات التي نعيشها تدفعها الحيوات التي تفوتنا. وتُعرّف حيواتنا بالفقدان، لكن فقدان ما كان يمكن أن يكون، فقدان أمور لم نجربها قط. وبمجرد أن تصبح الحياة الأخرى، الحياة الأفضل -الحياة الأكمل- هي هذه الحياة التي نحياها، تكون لدينا مهمة كبيرة بين أيدينا. وكأن شخصًا ما يطلب منا لا أن نعيش وحسب؛ بل على أفضل نحو ممكن. بل أن نعيش في رخاء، ليس مجرد حياة طيبة وحسب؛ بل على أفضل نحو ممكن، وهذا نوع مختلف من المطالب. وتصبح قصة حياتنا هي قصة الحيوات التي حرمنا عيشها."
يُقدم كتاب "فوائت الحياة: في مدح حياة لم نعشها" مجموعة من المقالات تتحدث عما يفوتنا من الحياة، وذلك لأسباب كثيرة، الاستحالة مثلاً، أو صعوبة المرور بهذه الحيوات وخياراتها المُتعددة، ويُعدد الكاتب "آدم فيليبس" الأسباب المُختلفة والمتنوعة التي تجعل تلك الحياة تفوتنا، منها الهروب مثلاً، واختيارك الشخصي ألا تمر بها، ألا تُنجب فلا تُصبح أباً بالتبعية، وغيرها من القرارات التي نتخذها، وحاول أن يقرب أكثر الصورة من خلال أمثلة من مسرحيات "شكسبير".
في الحقيقة، لا أنكر أن الكتاب أضاف لي، ولكن لم يضف الكثير، المقالات شعرت أنها مُتشابهة، فقط تختلف في التعقيد، أحياناً كانت الفقرات شديدة التعقيد، وأحياناً يسيرة الفهم، وفي الحالتين يؤدوا إلى نفس المعنى والغاية، فكان التكرار عاملاً أساسياً آثناء القراءة. وأظن السبب في ذلك، أن مقالات الكتاب نُشرت مُتفرقة فلما جُمعت في كتاب واحد، كان هناك العديد من الأفكار المُتشابهة. بالإضافة إلى أن الترجمة، لم تكن في أفضل أحوالها. ولكنها لا تزال تجربة مهمة لمن يُحب أن يقرأ في الموضوع.
July 1, 2024
من این کتابو مدتها توی لیستم داشتم و خیلی منتظر بودم که بخونمش اما متاسفانه باید بگم که واقعا بد بود، اینقدر بد که نمیدونم چی بگم. فقط خوشحالم که اتللو و لیرشاه رو قبل شروع این کتاب خونده بودم و نتونست برام اسپویلشون کنه.
این کتاب برای من مثالی خواهد بود از اینکه کتابو براساس اسمش انتخاب نکنم چون اسم این کتاب واقعا زیبا و وسوسه برانگیز بود ولی درونش واقعا چرند بود.
این کتاب برای من مثالی خواهد بود از اینکه کتابو براساس اسمش انتخاب نکنم چون اسم این کتاب واقعا زیبا و وسوسه برانگیز بود ولی درونش واقعا چرند بود.
October 12, 2023
همهٔ ما دو زندگی موازی داریم: زندگیای که فعالانه در حال زندگیکردن آن هستیم و زندگیای که احساس میکنیم باید میداشتیم یا میتوانستیم داشته باشیم. به همان اندازه که تلاش میکنیم در لحظه وجود داشته باشیم، زندگیِ زندگینشده حضوری اجتنابناپذیر در کنار ما پیدا میکند؛ سایهای در پشت سر ما. و این موضوع خود میتواند به داستان زندگی ما تبدیل شود؛ مرثیهای برای نیازهای برآوردهنشده و آرزوهای قربانیشده. تصور آنچه باید باشیم یا انجام دهیم، ما را تسخیر کرده است و این میتواند زندگی ما را از آنچه هست، کوتاهتر کند.
اما اگر ایدهٔ شکست را از معادله حذف کنیم چه اتفاقی میافتد؟ آدام فیلیپس، روانکاو تحسینشده، با توانایی و مهارت خود در نویسندگی و روانکاوی، برای این تعارض بزرگ وجود ما، پیشنهاد میکند که اگر ناامیدی را به عنوان راهی برای ترسیم آنچه واقعاً میخواهیم، بپذیریم، رضایت ناگهان ممکن میشود. ولعِ زندگی بدون ناامیدی، ولعِ زندگی بدون قدرت شناسایی و تحقق خواستههایمان است
اما اگر ایدهٔ شکست را از معادله حذف کنیم چه اتفاقی میافتد؟ آدام فیلیپس، روانکاو تحسینشده، با توانایی و مهارت خود در نویسندگی و روانکاوی، برای این تعارض بزرگ وجود ما، پیشنهاد میکند که اگر ناامیدی را به عنوان راهی برای ترسیم آنچه واقعاً میخواهیم، بپذیریم، رضایت ناگهان ممکن میشود. ولعِ زندگی بدون ناامیدی، ولعِ زندگی بدون قدرت شناسایی و تحقق خواستههایمان است
June 22, 2024
به زودی، بیشتر مینویسم ازش.
فعلا اما: معمولی و تقریبا همون چیزی که ازش انتظار داشتم. فصل آخر درخشان و ممنون ازش بابت حرف زدن از شاه لیر و اتللو.
فعلا اما: معمولی و تقریبا همون چیزی که ازش انتظار داشتم. فصل آخر درخشان و ممنون ازش بابت حرف زدن از شاه لیر و اتللو.
June 28, 2022
شروع کتاب، بیشتر شبیه به مراودات روانشناسی مبنی بر فلسفه روزمره عامیانه بنظر میرسه، اما رفته رفته بار فلسفی و ادبی به ایجاد سبک کتاب مبنی بر بسط اندیشه های فلاسفه و روانکاوان(مشخصا فروید و ژیژک و سارتر)، تا نمایشنامه های شکسپیر، منجر میشه و همین ویژگی، علاوه بر اینکه توجیه احتمالی حفظ روند ادبیاتی_نمایشی انتشارات بیدگل هست، سبکی جدید برای ارائه مطالب نه چندان یک دست، هم بنظر میاد.
در هر صورت، کتاب برخلاف عنوانش، مبانی میان رشته ای، ادبیات- نمایش و فلسفه را در برداره که بنظر میرسه گامی نه چندان کافی و جذابی، در توضیح عنوان فرعی بسیار جذاب (در ستایش زندگی نازیسته) هست.
در هر صورت، کتاب برخلاف عنوانش، مبانی میان رشته ای، ادبیات- نمایش و فلسفه را در برداره که بنظر میرسه گامی نه چندان کافی و جذابی، در توضیح عنوان فرعی بسیار جذاب (در ستایش زندگی نازیسته) هست.
May 9, 2023
Are you missing the joke of life? Are you ever satisfied? Do you seem to always live the life you don't have? Do fantasies seem more real than the world around you?
Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst who also spends his Wednesdays writing. Originally standing firmly in the Freudian camp, from essay to essay and book to book he has drifted into the world of philosophy. In this book he looks at:
Whew! Heady stuff.
And not written for the pleasure reader, either. Phillips has this annoying habit of using clauses within clauses within em dashes and brackets. This style makes some of his passages difficult going. For example:
Each sentence is itself a Russian doll, then each paragraph enters the realm of thought tornado, with so many ideas flying about it makes you dizzy. Luckily they are all thoughts packed with insight.
He is a fan and student of literature, particularly Shakespeare, and uses the verbal arts as a launching pad for many of his thoughts.
The back flap of the book promises that Phillips will explain how, "if we accept frustration as a means to finding out what we really want, satisfaction becomes possible." But I must admit, these plot points are made only through the subtextual connections in this book. Leaps of thought are required.
One can fault this book for its optimistic marketers who wanted to sell it to a mass audience, the inability of the editor to help refine the focus and for the copy editor letting Phillips get away with dense prose. But it does have immense value.
As a writer with a background in theatre and a keen interest in the origins and purposes of story, I found this book eminently thought-provoking.
I would recommend it to those who love Shakespeare, theatre, writers interested in delving into the depths of their characters and anyone who has looked at the world and wondered why they are not driven mad by its workings.
Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst who also spends his Wednesdays writing. Originally standing firmly in the Freudian camp, from essay to essay and book to book he has drifted into the world of philosophy. In this book he looks at:
* How we can never understand what we really want until we can recognize the nature of our frustration.
* How knowing what we don't want -- what we are running from -- may show us more about ourselves than what we think we want.
* How (in my view) our world has shifted from one where morality meant something to one where morality is a game, where the Good Person is replaced by the Impressive Person, and being caught lying is now the crime as opposed to lying itself.
* We always want to be somewhere other than now, and we spend our time searching for the escape. To paraphrase Anna Freud, fantasies are the one area of our life where we can have our eggs any way we want them but we cannot eat them.
* How our yearning, our striving, our continual hope for satisfaction is a game we play with ourselves to deal with the shifting sands of life. That frequently, our search for satisfaction is about revenge.
* Some thoughts on why we get pleasure watching the mad attempt to get what they want. About how the mad are actually those who are filled with the certainty of their view of the world, and how seeing them in character form helps us to face the madness of the world around us.
Whew! Heady stuff.
And not written for the pleasure reader, either. Phillips has this annoying habit of using clauses within clauses within em dashes and brackets. This style makes some of his passages difficult going. For example:
But one of the strange things about satisfaction is that its anticipation precedes its realization; that it happens twice -- not quite the first time as farce and the second time as tragedy -- but first wishfully (in fantasy) and then in reality if one is lucky.
Each sentence is itself a Russian doll, then each paragraph enters the realm of thought tornado, with so many ideas flying about it makes you dizzy. Luckily they are all thoughts packed with insight.
He is a fan and student of literature, particularly Shakespeare, and uses the verbal arts as a launching pad for many of his thoughts.
The back flap of the book promises that Phillips will explain how, "if we accept frustration as a means to finding out what we really want, satisfaction becomes possible." But I must admit, these plot points are made only through the subtextual connections in this book. Leaps of thought are required.
One can fault this book for its optimistic marketers who wanted to sell it to a mass audience, the inability of the editor to help refine the focus and for the copy editor letting Phillips get away with dense prose. But it does have immense value.
As a writer with a background in theatre and a keen interest in the origins and purposes of story, I found this book eminently thought-provoking.
I would recommend it to those who love Shakespeare, theatre, writers interested in delving into the depths of their characters and anyone who has looked at the world and wondered why they are not driven mad by its workings.
July 26, 2016
A very promising subject, but I never got past page 34. Here’s an example of Phillips’s occasionally repetitive, almost tongue-twister style: “Knowing too exactly what we want is what we do when we know what we want, or when we don’t know what we want.” (Starting to sound like Rumsfeld and his ‘known unknowns’ there!)
February 18, 2013
what the hell?
January 5, 2016
This book was mis-titled to say the least. It's about psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, not life choices and the like. (It appealed to me because one of my favorite lines in poetry is Eliot's "footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take.")
I think I read most of it despite this, but I was annoyed the whole time.
I think I read most of it despite this, but I was annoyed the whole time.
February 14, 2013
2/14/2013: Well. That was tough. I was looking forward to reading this book, as it got good reviews and I love the premise that we all have unlived lives that are actually part of our lived lives, and that we need to accommodate those unlived lives into our lives and not feel regret that we can't have lived them. (Or…something like that. At least that's what I gleaned from the reviews!)
But I was not expecting what I got, which was a dense academic psychoanalytic study of frustration, satisfaction, "getting it," "getting away with it," and "getting out of it." Reading the Prologue, I thought, uh-oh. I got kind of where he was going with the expected premise, but only barely. And the Prologue was the easiest part, and the closest he ever gets to discussing that premise--as far as I could tell.
The five subsequent chapters just kept reminding me of what it felt like shoveling all that snow last weekend: heavy, endless, and incomprehensible. I kept thinking, is this the sentence that I get to put in my review as the most baffling one in the book? And the next one would be more so! But every once in a while I'd get a glimmer of hope, as I understood the concept explained in one paragraph. Phillips brings literature into his arguments (Othello, King Lear, and Philip Larkin's poetry are his main texts), which sometimes helped me understand his points. And I think the book is well written, as clear as this kind of psychoanalytic theory can be. (Though I have no idea.) But sometimes I had to laugh at the earnestness and ease with which Phillips throws around the ideas and quotes from the Big Guys of Psychoanalysis. I'm not sure whom he is talking to in this book…but it isn't me, unfortunately.
But I was not expecting what I got, which was a dense academic psychoanalytic study of frustration, satisfaction, "getting it," "getting away with it," and "getting out of it." Reading the Prologue, I thought, uh-oh. I got kind of where he was going with the expected premise, but only barely. And the Prologue was the easiest part, and the closest he ever gets to discussing that premise--as far as I could tell.
The five subsequent chapters just kept reminding me of what it felt like shoveling all that snow last weekend: heavy, endless, and incomprehensible. I kept thinking, is this the sentence that I get to put in my review as the most baffling one in the book? And the next one would be more so! But every once in a while I'd get a glimmer of hope, as I understood the concept explained in one paragraph. Phillips brings literature into his arguments (Othello, King Lear, and Philip Larkin's poetry are his main texts), which sometimes helped me understand his points. And I think the book is well written, as clear as this kind of psychoanalytic theory can be. (Though I have no idea.) But sometimes I had to laugh at the earnestness and ease with which Phillips throws around the ideas and quotes from the Big Guys of Psychoanalysis. I'm not sure whom he is talking to in this book…but it isn't me, unfortunately.
May 20, 2024
54th book of 2024.
I was a sluggard in college and studied Psychology for a single year before getting an E and dropping it. This came as no surprise; the night before my exams, my parents asked me about my progress, and I admitted to them that I hadn’t started revising. However, since then, I’ve always had a vague interest in Psychology, that subject I fluffed. Coincidentally, it’s like imagining the life I didn’t lead where I revised, did well, and perhaps succeeded in my exams. Not just for Psychology, but all of my A-Levels (I didn’t try particularly hard in any of them). I saw this book on the shelf the other day and it sounded like it was somewhere between philosophy and psychology, with smatterings of literary criticism. What more could a reformed sluggard want?
For this book is marketed as such. It’s subtitle is “In Praise of the Unlived Life”, and the blurb says things like, ‘But it is the life unlived — the person we have failed to be — that can trouble and even haunt us.’ This I know too well: I’ve lived my life with my hyperactive imagination barring me from happiness at many turns. I’ve lived with my fair share of regret and jealousy, and self-loathing. Phillips starts his Prologue,
And ends the Prologue with this idea: ‘But the worst thing we can be frustrated of is frustration itself; to be deprived of frustration is to be deprived of the possibilities of satisfaction.’ Which isn’t so different from the idea that life has to be hard so we then appreciate the good. Rather empty sentiments in the wake of grief, heartbreak, etc., but repeated often enough all the same. The Prologue, actually, delivers the book’s fatal wound. It explores everything the book promises to explore, and then fails to deliver. The most focussed writing can be found in the first five pages. So, the short conclusion to this review is: it’s a failed promise. Phillips hardly writes a book on what is promised or expected, and for that, as with many other reviewers, it seems, he fails me as a reader.
Instead? Literary criticism. Mostly Shakespeare. The chapters are as follows, “On Frustration”, “On Not Getting It”, “On Getting Away With It”, “On Getting Out of It”, and “On Satisfaction”; and running through all of these chapters, are the plays: King Lear, Hamlet, Othello. He explores several novels too. The chapter “On Not Getting It” (‘it’ being anything, the poem, the joke, etc.) rambles on about Freudian ideas around childhood. As humans, we don’t like to ‘not get it’; so I was pleased (and amused), that the novels Phillips explores, I’ve read, such as Greene’s The End of the Affair and Huxley’s Antic Hay [1]. It was somehow hard to, well, get, what these ideas (getting it, getting away with it, getting out of it) had to do with the unlived life, which takes me back to the main gripe of the book. Phillips writes lots of maddening, long, digressionary sentences, like,
So when I found myself in the wrong mood, the book made me grumpy. Then, after talking about Shakespeare for 10 seemingly aimless pages, he explores an interesting idea (albeit still mostly unconnected from the book’s focus) and redeems himself. For example, in “On Getting Away With It” (which is more about artists and writers than unlived lives [2]):
And I suppose Phillips’s conclusion to this idea, jumping from Nietzsche, is,
So the book certainly gave me food for thought, and plenty of things to wonder about on long walks. And the psychoanalyst rears his head at times, for sentences like ‘we live as if we know more about the experiences we haven’t had than about the experiences we have had’, which sounds more like what the blurb promises us. Though Phillips hardly gives us guidance; perhaps that’s not his job? He, Phillips, enters the narrative properly only once, to describe a scene from one of his therapy sessions. A teacher came to see him, and for the first ten minutes sat in silence, like a scene in Good Will Hunting. Then,
Phillips then quotes from Walden and the idea of the bean-field. Doing something and why we do something. He gets close to unpacking, but seems to be generally opposed to it. After all, he calls a quote of Joseph Sandler’s (‘Suffering is a consequence of the distance between the ego and the ego-ideal, the distance between who I feel myself to be, and who I want to be’) ‘too neat’.
I instead engorged on the literary meat and tried to forget what I was promised. In the “On Not Getting It” chapter, Phillips uses a wide range of sources to discuss the concept behind art and ‘not getting it’. ‘When Ashbery was asked in an interview why his poetry was so difficult he replied that when you talk to other people they eventually lose interest but that when you talk to yourself people want to listen in. No one, other perhaps than Ashbery, talks to themselves in the way he writes poetry; but what Ashbery is suggesting in his whimsically shrewd way is that the wish to communicate estranges people from each other. If you talk to people, he suggests, they lose interest, if you ignore them — or, rather, if you ignore them by talking to yourself — they are engaged. As though curiosity might sometimes be preferred to consolation, listening in or overhearing preferred to communication or comprehension.
And ideas that so many readers on Goodreads will understand: ‘the pleasures of resistance’; but like me, you may ask what this has to do with an unlived life. Even after reading the book, I’d say, I don’t know. That, like the Buddhist expression, the obstacle is the path. That frustration, failure, not getting ‘it’, are all key aspects of living a full life. Phillips doesn’t give us a ‘neat’ answer for that other parallel, or in my case certainly, many parallel lives we imagine.
The other day, I was talking to P. about a mutual friend who had thrown his whole relationship away because he was constantly imagining relationships with girls he knew. They, in turn, rejected him, turned their backs, and he has been left with nothing. I made a facetious remark about how our friend doesn’t seem to realise these are intrusive thoughts, like seeing a girl in the airport and imagining, for three minutes, living your entire life with her, even though you know nothing about her and will never see her again. P., one of the most happily married men I know, surprisingly agreed with me. He said, Ted, that sort of thing never goes away. So, Phillips, whatever you write about Shakespeare, we have to live with that unlived life.
_________________________________
[1] This is something I was discussing the other day, too; the more you read, especially of the ‘canon’, the more you are drawn into its web. You begin to pick up on allusions more often. You are slowly drawn into the clique, the ‘know’. This writer is quoting this writer, referencing this writer, answering this writer. I’ve argued before that this has something to do with the pompousness of readers. They can’t help but flaunt how in the know they are. They are in the elite, the imaginary (but very real!) group. It’s like having a hundred inside jokes. What is Goodreads, then, but the sharing and bragging of inside jokes?
[2] Swann, my mentor, used to say to me, ‘Writing is about what you can get away with.’ He often pointed out a plot-hole in The Great Gatsby, and said, ‘Fitzgerald gets away with it, because he’s so good!’ Whilst I was reading Phillips, I was reminded of something from Ellmann’s biography of Joyce. After Ulysses was published, he supposedly got very drunk and was half-carried to a carriage by Nora. The very inebriated Joyce yelled into the street, “I made them take it,' presumably an angry brag that he had foisted 'Ulysses' upon the public’; this to me sounds akin to yelling, ‘I got away with it!’
I was a sluggard in college and studied Psychology for a single year before getting an E and dropping it. This came as no surprise; the night before my exams, my parents asked me about my progress, and I admitted to them that I hadn’t started revising. However, since then, I’ve always had a vague interest in Psychology, that subject I fluffed. Coincidentally, it’s like imagining the life I didn’t lead where I revised, did well, and perhaps succeeded in my exams. Not just for Psychology, but all of my A-Levels (I didn’t try particularly hard in any of them). I saw this book on the shelf the other day and it sounded like it was somewhere between philosophy and psychology, with smatterings of literary criticism. What more could a reformed sluggard want?
For this book is marketed as such. It’s subtitle is “In Praise of the Unlived Life”, and the blurb says things like, ‘But it is the life unlived — the person we have failed to be — that can trouble and even haunt us.’ This I know too well: I’ve lived my life with my hyperactive imagination barring me from happiness at many turns. I’ve lived with my fair share of regret and jealousy, and self-loathing. Phillips starts his Prologue,
The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realises how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not.
And ends the Prologue with this idea: ‘But the worst thing we can be frustrated of is frustration itself; to be deprived of frustration is to be deprived of the possibilities of satisfaction.’ Which isn’t so different from the idea that life has to be hard so we then appreciate the good. Rather empty sentiments in the wake of grief, heartbreak, etc., but repeated often enough all the same. The Prologue, actually, delivers the book’s fatal wound. It explores everything the book promises to explore, and then fails to deliver. The most focussed writing can be found in the first five pages. So, the short conclusion to this review is: it’s a failed promise. Phillips hardly writes a book on what is promised or expected, and for that, as with many other reviewers, it seems, he fails me as a reader.
Instead? Literary criticism. Mostly Shakespeare. The chapters are as follows, “On Frustration”, “On Not Getting It”, “On Getting Away With It”, “On Getting Out of It”, and “On Satisfaction”; and running through all of these chapters, are the plays: King Lear, Hamlet, Othello. He explores several novels too. The chapter “On Not Getting It” (‘it’ being anything, the poem, the joke, etc.) rambles on about Freudian ideas around childhood. As humans, we don’t like to ‘not get it’; so I was pleased (and amused), that the novels Phillips explores, I’ve read, such as Greene’s The End of the Affair and Huxley’s Antic Hay [1]. It was somehow hard to, well, get, what these ideas (getting it, getting away with it, getting out of it) had to do with the unlived life, which takes me back to the main gripe of the book. Phillips writes lots of maddening, long, digressionary sentences, like,
Knowing too exactly what we want is what we do when we know what we want, or when we don’t know what we want.
So when I found myself in the wrong mood, the book made me grumpy. Then, after talking about Shakespeare for 10 seemingly aimless pages, he explores an interesting idea (albeit still mostly unconnected from the book’s focus) and redeems himself. For example, in “On Getting Away With It” (which is more about artists and writers than unlived lives [2]):
The reason that believers don’t think of God as ‘getting away with it’ is that the phrase itself implies the existence of a higher authority. If it means breaking the rules with impunity — eluding the expected consequences, the usual constraints — it also acknowledges that there are rules […] Which is why, as we shall see, getting away with things is among our most confounding experiences. If, as Freud remarks, the child’s first successful lie against the parents is his first moment of independence — the moment when he proves to himself that his parents cannot read his mind, and so are not omniscient deities — then it is also the first moment in which he recognises his abandonment.
And I suppose Phillips’s conclusion to this idea, jumping from Nietzsche, is,
If God is dead it is not that everything is permitted — which would simply be his reappearance as the permitter rather than the forbidder — but that there will be no more getting away with it. I think it is worth wondering, if we can imagine such a thing, what kind of loss that might be.
So the book certainly gave me food for thought, and plenty of things to wonder about on long walks. And the psychoanalyst rears his head at times, for sentences like ‘we live as if we know more about the experiences we haven’t had than about the experiences we have had’, which sounds more like what the blurb promises us. Though Phillips hardly gives us guidance; perhaps that’s not his job? He, Phillips, enters the narrative properly only once, to describe a scene from one of his therapy sessions. A teacher came to see him, and for the first ten minutes sat in silence, like a scene in Good Will Hunting. Then,
‘If you look after me who will look after you?’ I asked, ‘Did you have to do a lot of looking after when you were growing up?’ And he replied, as though we were in the middle of a long conversation, ‘Yes, my mother was sick a lot and my dad was away.’ And I said, for no apparent reason, ‘When you were looking after your mother did anything really strange ever happen, anything you just didn’t get?’ There was a pause, and he said, ‘Often, very often, when I was getting up to fill the coal scuttle downstairs, my mother would shout down from her bedroom, “Can you fill the coal scuttle” . . . so I never know whether I’m doing it because I want to or because she’s telling me to.’ I remarked, ‘You said “know” as if it’s still happening now,’ and he replied, ‘It is happening now because I never really know if I’m doing what I want or whether I’m acting under instruction.’ I asked, ‘Is coming to see me an example of this?’ and he smiled and said, ‘Yes, and I think I’ll go now.’ He got up, walked towards the door, and as he opened it he said to me, ‘I am going back to my bean-field’; and I had this tremendously powerful feeling of affection for him, as if he had understood me, ‘Walden’ having been an important book in my life, though he had no way of knowing this.
Phillips then quotes from Walden and the idea of the bean-field. Doing something and why we do something. He gets close to unpacking, but seems to be generally opposed to it. After all, he calls a quote of Joseph Sandler’s (‘Suffering is a consequence of the distance between the ego and the ego-ideal, the distance between who I feel myself to be, and who I want to be’) ‘too neat’.
I instead engorged on the literary meat and tried to forget what I was promised. In the “On Not Getting It” chapter, Phillips uses a wide range of sources to discuss the concept behind art and ‘not getting it’. ‘When Ashbery was asked in an interview why his poetry was so difficult he replied that when you talk to other people they eventually lose interest but that when you talk to yourself people want to listen in. No one, other perhaps than Ashbery, talks to themselves in the way he writes poetry; but what Ashbery is suggesting in his whimsically shrewd way is that the wish to communicate estranges people from each other. If you talk to people, he suggests, they lose interest, if you ignore them — or, rather, if you ignore them by talking to yourself — they are engaged. As though curiosity might sometimes be preferred to consolation, listening in or overhearing preferred to communication or comprehension.
And ideas that so many readers on Goodreads will understand: ‘the pleasures of resistance’; but like me, you may ask what this has to do with an unlived life. Even after reading the book, I’d say, I don’t know. That, like the Buddhist expression, the obstacle is the path. That frustration, failure, not getting ‘it’, are all key aspects of living a full life. Phillips doesn’t give us a ‘neat’ answer for that other parallel, or in my case certainly, many parallel lives we imagine.
The other day, I was talking to P. about a mutual friend who had thrown his whole relationship away because he was constantly imagining relationships with girls he knew. They, in turn, rejected him, turned their backs, and he has been left with nothing. I made a facetious remark about how our friend doesn’t seem to realise these are intrusive thoughts, like seeing a girl in the airport and imagining, for three minutes, living your entire life with her, even though you know nothing about her and will never see her again. P., one of the most happily married men I know, surprisingly agreed with me. He said, Ted, that sort of thing never goes away. So, Phillips, whatever you write about Shakespeare, we have to live with that unlived life.
_________________________________
[1] This is something I was discussing the other day, too; the more you read, especially of the ‘canon’, the more you are drawn into its web. You begin to pick up on allusions more often. You are slowly drawn into the clique, the ‘know’. This writer is quoting this writer, referencing this writer, answering this writer. I’ve argued before that this has something to do with the pompousness of readers. They can’t help but flaunt how in the know they are. They are in the elite, the imaginary (but very real!) group. It’s like having a hundred inside jokes. What is Goodreads, then, but the sharing and bragging of inside jokes?
[2] Swann, my mentor, used to say to me, ‘Writing is about what you can get away with.’ He often pointed out a plot-hole in The Great Gatsby, and said, ‘Fitzgerald gets away with it, because he’s so good!’ Whilst I was reading Phillips, I was reminded of something from Ellmann’s biography of Joyce. After Ulysses was published, he supposedly got very drunk and was half-carried to a carriage by Nora. The very inebriated Joyce yelled into the street, “I made them take it,' presumably an angry brag that he had foisted 'Ulysses' upon the public’; this to me sounds akin to yelling, ‘I got away with it!’
November 22, 2023
کتاب خوبی بود و نکات خوب زیادی داشت، ولی اونقدری که انتظار داشتم من رو نگرفت. :)))
January 3, 2023
«بالطبع علينا أن نشبع رغباتنا بجعل الناس يساعدوننا في تلبية تلك الرغبات . إننا نمارس الضغط على العالم كي تسير الأمور لصالحنا . مع ذلك ، سرعان ما نلاحظ ومنذ الطفولة - إذ ربما يكون هذا أول شيء نلاحظه - أن تلبية احتياجاتنا ، وكذلك تحقيق أمنياتنا ، أمر لا يتحقق دائماً»
آدم فيليبس
آدم فيليبس
May 20, 2021
"Yaşam, insanlar öyle her istediklerini elde edemedi diye değil, arzuları kendilerine hasar vermeye başladığında, istedikleri şey katlanılmaz kayıplara gebe olduğunda trajik bir hal alır."
Hüsran,
Kavrayamamak,
Yanına kar kalmak,
Çıkıp gitmek,
Tatmin,
Deli rolü üzerine bildiklerimiz ya da bazen kaçırdıklarımız.
Yeniden yoğunlaştırıcı..
Hüsran,
Kavrayamamak,
Yanına kar kalmak,
Çıkıp gitmek,
Tatmin,
Deli rolü üzerine bildiklerimiz ya da bazen kaçırdıklarımız.
Yeniden yoğunlaştırıcı..
February 9, 2023
یک کتاب نظری که خوندنش یک سری پیش نیاز ها مثل آشنایی با نظریات فروید و لکان و همچنین مقدار کمی هم آشنایی به نمایشنامه های معروف داره .کتاب رویکردی تحلیلی داره که درک دریافتش به خودی خود اسون نیست به خاطر کثرت جزئیات اما خب مترجم هم خوب از پسش بر امده
April 12, 2023
كتاب مزعج وأسلوب كتابة ركيك وتحليل سخيف وسطحي لأعمال قرأت بعضها ونسيته والبعض الآخر ربما لم أسمع به يومًا، ولو للكتاب ميزة فهو أنه ذكرني ببعض ما قرأت أو نغص علي حياتي لعدم تذكري أي شيء مما قرأت بالفعل
تحليلات سمجة وسطحية في الغالب وطريقة الكتابة والأسلوب مزعجة ومملة، حقيقة أتمنى أن تختفي تلك الطريقة في الكتابة يومًا ما، تلك الطريقة القائمة على فكرة " من كل لون يا باطسطا" فالالتفاف حول الفكرة والتعريف المعجمي التاريخي لكل مصطلح أو كلمة فالسرد والاستطراد أو تطبيق مناهج علم النفس - لك أن تقول أساطيره - على أي شيء للخروج بموعظة ما أو تحليل ما لن يؤدي إلى إضفاء عمق ما أبدًا إن كانت الفكرة نفسها هراء
لم أتصور أن عنوان ومحتوى الكتاب كذلك، وربما هو خطأي من البداية أنني ظننته سيكون تحليل أعمق لمفهوم الحياة، ربما تحليل على طريقة كونديرا في روايته" الخفة غير المحتملة للوجود"
"لا يمكن للإنسانِ أبدًا أن يدرِكَ ماذا عليهِ أن يفعل، لأنهُ لا يملكُ إلا حياةً واحدة لا يسعه مُقارنتها بحيواتٍ سابقة، ولا إصلاحها في حيوات لاحقة "
تحليلات سمجة وسطحية في الغالب وطريقة الكتابة والأسلوب مزعجة ومملة، حقيقة أتمنى أن تختفي تلك الطريقة في الكتابة يومًا ما، تلك الطريقة القائمة على فكرة " من كل لون يا باطسطا" فالالتفاف حول الفكرة والتعريف المعجمي التاريخي لكل مصطلح أو كلمة فالسرد والاستطراد أو تطبيق مناهج علم النفس - لك أن تقول أساطيره - على أي شيء للخروج بموعظة ما أو تحليل ما لن يؤدي إلى إضفاء عمق ما أبدًا إن كانت الفكرة نفسها هراء
لم أتصور أن عنوان ومحتوى الكتاب كذلك، وربما هو خطأي من البداية أنني ظننته سيكون تحليل أعمق لمفهوم الحياة، ربما تحليل على طريقة كونديرا في روايته" الخفة غير المحتملة للوجود"
"لا يمكن للإنسانِ أبدًا أن يدرِكَ ماذا عليهِ أن يفعل، لأنهُ لا يملكُ إلا حياةً واحدة لا يسعه مُقارنتها بحيواتٍ سابقة، ولا إصلاحها في حيوات لاحقة "
May 10, 2020
عااااالی بود
شاید چون اولین کتاب روانکاوانهای بود که خوندم (کتابهای آلن دوباتن که روانکاوانه حساب نمیشن؟)
یه ایدههایی در مورد رفتارهام بهم داد که حین خوندن دو سه تاشون ضربان قلبم میرفت بالا!
از طرفی کتاب واقعا سنگین بود. هم از لحاظ ارجاع به تئاترهای مشهوری که من هیچ ایده ای در موردشون نداشتم، هم انتخاب کلمات، هم توضیح در توضیح داخل ویرگول بین جملات.
فرصت کنم بیشتر در موردش مینویسم.
بعد از این که دوست عزیزی (پریسا حسینی) آدام فیلیپس رو معرفی کرد، کتابهاش رو مرور کردم و دیدم این کتابی که در مورد «حسرت نداشتهها» و همچین چیزی هست تقریبا مچه با زندگی و فکرای فعلیم. بسیار راضیام که خوندمش و یکی از بهترین کتابهای زندگیم بوده تا حالا(:
شاید چون اولین کتاب روانکاوانهای بود که خوندم (کتابهای آلن دوباتن که روانکاوانه حساب نمیشن؟)
یه ایدههایی در مورد رفتارهام بهم داد که حین خوندن دو سه تاشون ضربان قلبم میرفت بالا!
از طرفی کتاب واقعا سنگین بود. هم از لحاظ ارجاع به تئاترهای مشهوری که من هیچ ایده ای در موردشون نداشتم، هم انتخاب کلمات، هم توضیح در توضیح داخل ویرگول بین جملات.
فرصت کنم بیشتر در موردش مینویسم.
بعد از این که دوست عزیزی (پریسا حسینی) آدام فیلیپس رو معرفی کرد، کتابهاش رو مرور کردم و دیدم این کتابی که در مورد «حسرت نداشتهها» و همچین چیزی هست تقریبا مچه با زندگی و فکرای فعلیم. بسیار راضیام که خوندمش و یکی از بهترین کتابهای زندگیم بوده تا حالا(:
February 25, 2023
خوندن این کتاب برای من خیلی طولانی شد و اگه مشغلهی ذهنی و زندگی شلوغ این روزها رو کنار بذاریم دلیل اصلیش میتونه این باشه که این کتاب من رو با واقعیتهایی مواجهه میکرد.
واقعیتهایی که یا خودم و یا آدمهای دورم تجربهش کردند و میون روزمرگی قاییمشون کردند.
هر بار که به یکی از این جملهها و تعاریف برخورد میکردم غرق در گذشته و حال خودم میشدم و یا یاد کسی میافتادم. کمی ناخوشایند بود اما قاعدتا تاثیر خود رو روی زندگیم میذاره.
واقعیتهایی که یا خودم و یا آدمهای دورم تجربهش کردند و میون روزمرگی قاییمشون کردند.
هر بار که به یکی از این جملهها و تعاریف برخورد میکردم غرق در گذشته و حال خودم میشدم و یا یاد کسی میافتادم. کمی ناخوشایند بود اما قاعدتا تاثیر خود رو روی زندگیم میذاره.
January 5, 2024
کتاب خیلی بدی نیست ولی به شدت سخت خوانه
این میتونه یا به خاطر متن خود کتاب باشه یا به خاظر ترجمه بد
ولی در کل اون چیزی که میخواستم رو نتونستم از کتاب استخراج کنم
در کل گول عنوان با شکوه و فهرست جذابش رو نخورید
این میتونه یا به خاطر متن خود کتاب باشه یا به خاظر ترجمه بد
ولی در کل اون چیزی که میخواستم رو نتونستم از کتاب استخراج کنم
در کل گول عنوان با شکوه و فهرست جذابش رو نخورید
August 29, 2014
Gave up on it. Pretentious, turgid and incoherent.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 417 reviews