READING ADAM PHILLIPS ICP Fall, 2015 Instructor: David James Fisher, Ph.D. [email protected] (310) 552‐0868 This seminar surveys the selected writings of Adam Phillips. It will cover his approach to psychoanalytic, clinical, and theoretical issues, as well as his incisive grasp of how philosophical, literary, and moral issues impinge on the clinical. We will look at his early book on Winnicott, with special attention to his understanding of this seminal thinker and his methodology in writing an intellectual biography. We will look at his explication of the history of psychoanalysis, highlighting his emphasis on an inclusive, pluralistic, non‐polemical understanding of various schools of psychoanalytic thinking from Freud to Winnicott to Lacan. Of particular interest will be his writings on the unconscious, sexuality, aggression, gender, development, compassion, madness and sanity. In grasping the plurality of lives we want to live, he introduces a plurality of perspectives. As one of the most prominent stylists of the contemporary era, a self‐conscious writer among our analytic authors, we will explore dimensions of his style, form, content, process, and tone. Phillips has a knack for focusing on issues of critical importance to psychoanalytic clinicians and to sensitive individuals attempting to construct a post‐modern ethics. We will sample his writings on sexuality and love, on literature and psychoanalysis, several of his case studies, his understanding of monogamy and the ambivalence of love, and lastly his explication of the dialectic of aggression and compassion in his essay on kindness. We will play with his paradoxes, his aphorisms, his irony and skepticism, his fascinating insights into the dynamics of character. Phillips clinical forms of knowledge become integral to how he weaves his narratives and constructs his critical analysis. We will explicate how his analytic understanding operates without reductionism and without excluding the mystery and fundamental elusiveness of knowing a person. Week I Early Influences: Winnicott and Khan Phillips, Winnicott (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 98‐126, 133‐152. Phillips, ‘Returning the Dream: In Memorium Masud Khan,” In Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1993, pp. 59‐67, 125‐126. Week II Optics on Psychoanalysis and the History of Psychoanalysis Phillips, “Psychoanalysis and Idolatry,” in Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, pp. 109‐ 121, 129. Phillips, “Anna Freud,” in On Flirtation (Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass., 1994), pp. 88‐99. Phillips, “Freud and Jones,” in On Flirtation, pp. 109‐121. Phillips, “Erich Fromm,” in On Flirtation, pp. 131‐137. Phillips, “The Manicuring of Jacques Lacan,” in Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature (Basic Books: New York, 2001,), pp. 107‐112. Week III Toward A Biographical Approach to Freud Phillips, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 2014), pp. 80‐162. Week IV On Rage, Love, Truth, Boredom, Translation, and the Clinical Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery (Pantheon: New York, 1998), pp. 121‐155. Phillips, “On Being Bored,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, pp. 68‐78. Phillips, “Plotting for Kisses,” in On Kissing, pp. 93‐100. Phillips, “Clutter: A Case History,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 59‐81. Phillips, “On Translating A Person,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 125‐147. Week V Psychoanalysis and Literature Phillips, “Promises, Promises,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 364‐375. Phillips, “The Pragmatics of Passion,” in Promises, Promises, pp. 296‐309. Phillips, “Philip Roth’s Patrimony,” in On Flirtation, pp. 167‐174. Phillips, “Sane Now,” in Going Sane (Harper: New York, 2005), pp. 175‐199. Week VI Sexuality and Monogamy Phillips, Monogamy (Vintage: New York, 1996), pp. 1‐121. Phillips, “Sex Mad,” in On Balance (Picador: New York, 2010), pp. 21‐30. Phillips, “Sane Sex,” in Going Sane, pp. 88‐121. Week VII The Dialectic of Compassion and Aggression Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness (Ferrar, Straus, Giroux: New York, 2009), pp. 47‐114. .