Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of ten previous books including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, On Flirtation and, most recently, Going Sane. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Observer and the New York Times, and is General Editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations.
The best living essayist writing in English He's brilliant Reading Phillips, you may be amused, vexed, dazzled. But the one thing you will never be is bored * Observer * Though Phillips's territory is complication, he reports back from his travels in the simplest of words. He is perhaps single-handedly continuing the tradition of the world's best essayists Phillips radiates infectious charm * Sunday Times * Phillipsian' would evoke a vivid, paradoxical style that led you to think that you had picked up an idea by the head, only to find you were holding it by the tail. * Guardian *