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Tickle a child, and she peals with laughter. Go on too long, and her laughter is sure to turn to tears. Where is that ticklish line between pleasure and pain? Why do we risk its being crossed? Does psychoanalysis possess the language to talk about such an extraordinary ordinary thing? In a style that is writerly and audacious, Adam Phillips takes up this subject and others largely overlooked by psychoanalysis - kissing, worrying, risk, solitude, and composure.
He writes about phobias as a kind of theory, a form of protection against curiosity; about analysis as a patient's way of reconstituting solitude; about "good-enough" mothering as the antithesis of "bad-enough" imperialism; about psychoanalysis as an attempt to cure idolatry through idolatry; and even about farting as it relates to worrying.
Psychoanalysis began as a virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine, but virtuosity has given way to the dream of science that only the examined life is worth living. Phillips shows that the drive to omniscience has been unfortunate both for psychoanalysis and for life.
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored is a set of meditations on underinvestigated themes in psyochoanalysis that shows how much one's psychic health depends on establishing a realm of life that successfully resists examination.
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1
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life
July 15, 1998, Harvard University Press
Paperback
in English
0674634632 9780674634633
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2
On kissing, tickling, and being bored: psychoanalytic essays on the unexamined life
1994, Harvard University Press
in English
- 1st Harvard University paperback ed.
0674634632 9780674634633
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3
On kissing, tickling and being bored: psychoanalytic essays on the unexamined life
1993, Faber and Faber
in English
0571169252 9780571169252
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4
On kissing, tickling, and being bored: psychoanalytic essays on the unexamined life
1993, Harvard University Press
in English
0674634624 9780674634626
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5
On kissing, tickling and being bored: psychoanalytic essays on the unexamined life
1993, Faber and Faber
in English
0571170226 9780571170227
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Book Details
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [123]-129) and index.
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