Much as we feel about the incandescent David Berlinski of The Advent of the Algorithm and A Tour of the Calculus, Tyler Cowen likes all Adam Philips' books. The Guardian writes about him in a way that suggests we might, too, though Guardian-Politics(tm) squats heavily on some parts of the interview.
Next out in Phillips' ongoing project on Another Way of Looking at our Hopes for Ourselves is Going Sane, not yet published in the U.S. It appears this work is part of the recent notable shift in professional psychology toward studying what serves us happily and healthily, rather than the often inutile indirection of focus on pathology. [For the godfather and summarizer of this approach, see anything by or about Martin Seligman.]
We look forward to reading Phillips. Especially in the coaching enterprise, we are interested in this:
He may well be the most sceptical psychoanalyst practising today, and has famously said that, "for me, psychoanalysis is only one among many things you might do if you're feeling unwell - you might also try aromatherapy, knitting, hang-gliding. There are lots of things you can do with your distress. I don't believe psychoanalysis is the best thing you can do, even if I value it a great deal."
We value it, well-applied, too. Yet personal coaches meet people who carry complicated feelings about the failure to budge semi-practical problems, complaining of months or years in psychoanalysis with no discernable progress. That's just sad, we say.
It is entirely plausible that reconsideration of assumptions, the religious idea of repentance, of changing direction from the inside out, not just gaining our ill-considered desires, is a necessary step out of unhappiness.
What we think we want may not be what we really need - may, in fact, be distracting and diminishing.
The ability to be contented may be the key determinant of the sane life.
Add to that an analogy to the Hawthorne Effect of just making changes with intentional good will to see what happens, or perhaps the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and voila, new signs of life, clarity, momentum.
And it's always an inspiration to share the thoughts of someone who writes as well as he can about the things that matter to him, and is in partnership, not pedagagy, with his readers.
My wish is not to inform people, but to evoke things in them by the way the writing works. That, I value. Ideally, I want the books to return you to your own thoughts.
The reviews just did.
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