On Balance
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Balancing acts," writes Adam Phillips, "are entertaining because they are risky, but there are situations in which it is more dangerous to keep your balance than to lose it." In these exhilarating and casually brilliant essays, the philosopher and psychoanalyst examines literature, fairy tales, works of art, and case studies to reveal the paradoxes inherent in our appetites and fears. How do we know when enough is enough? Are there times when too much is just right? Why is Cinderella's biggest problem not the prince but other women? What can Richard III's furious sense of his own helplessness tell us of our own desires? On Balance shows Phillips's bravura gift for linking disparate ideas and the dreamers that dreamed them into something beautiful, revelatory, and essential.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British psychologist, philosopher, and literary critic Phillips (Going Sane) casts his net widely in this collection of lectures, broadcasts, articles, and unpublished essays, of varying lengths. Phillips examines our paradoxical desire for balance in all things and impulse toward imbalance. His, his themes and sources are so disparate, making this book a hard balancing act indeed. Working from a strongly Freudian point of view, Phillips is good at getting to the heart of existence; in terms of unbalance, he cites Freud saying that overreaction is impossible; he discisses how the reasonable liberal in matters of religion ironically creates a climate in which they desire to eradicate the believers, which means the destruction of his or her own belief system. Also enriching the book is the range of subjects alluded to, from literature (for example W.H. Auden) to fairy tales (Cinderella), and photography (Diane Arbus). Though often brilliant in the individual pieces, perhaps a third of the way through the book the pathway becomes less structured, as essay after essay is yoked together . Readers who pick and choose will come away enlightened and satisfied, rather than exhausted.
