" Phillips is a figure for our therapy-soaked era , even if, for him, therapy feeds into and enables life, whereas we often seem to view life as feeding into and enabling therapy . [His] contrarianism, a commitment to reversing whatever expectation the reader might be imagined to hold, in an attempt to disarm and deprogram, possibly even cure her . The Life You Want is itself a sort of dream work , which synthesizes opposing elements into a poetic, if wishful, whole." --Katy Waldman, The New Yorker " If psychoanalysis has a rock star, it's Adam Phillips . The London-based shrink is the quiet confessor to the city's artists and writersand a cultural figure in his own rightbest known for books with titles that sound suspiciously enjoyable for someone paid to dissect the psyche: Going Sane , On Giving Up , On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored . His latest, The Life You Want , offers no five-step plan to happiness. Instead, it asks the irritatingly good question: Why are you so desperate for a better life in the first place? " --Hermione Lee, Interview Magazine "[Reading The Life You Want ] is like having a deep chat with your brainiest friend . The title may sound like classic January self-help, but let's be clear: Phillips is not actually going to teach you how to get the Life You Want.

Rather than giving us a list of improving life hacks he sets off interesting trains of thought about what a good life might look like, and leaves us to do with them what we will . Writing like this opens things up, broadens life out --it is the antidote to scrolling through endless January wellbeing advice. Go on, I dare you: pick it up and take your brain for a spin." -- The Times (London) "A sophisticated, mind-stretching argument for psychoanalysis as a way of understanding why we want a good life." -- Kirkus Reviews.