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On Wanting to Change

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the UK's foremost literary psychoanalyst, a dazzling new book on the universal urge to change our lives.

We live in a world in which we are invited to change - to become our best selves, through politics, or fitness, or diet, or therapy.

We change all the time - growing older and older - and how we think about change changes over time too.

We want to think of our lives as progress myths - as narratives of positive personal growth - at the same time as we inevitably age and suffer setbacks.

So there are the stories we tell about change, and there are the changes we actually make - and they don't always go, or come, together . . .

This sparkling book is about that fact.

© Adam Phillips 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Personal Development Personal Success Psychology Psychology & Mental Health

Critic reviews

Phillips at his most brilliant
One moment, the ideas are clear and thrilling; the next, multi-clause, ludic sentences snare the reader in a web of complexity . . . [Phillips] draws nimbly on a wide hinterland of authors - from the poetry of Wallace Stevens to the philosophy of Wittgenstein, from Howard's End to Moby Dick
A mediation on the powerful fantasy of change
An inspiring vision of psychoanalysis
A response to the times we live in . . . an urgent invitation for a different kind of conversation
His style of psychoanalytic writing refreshingly lacks the usual heaviness and homage to the master
All stars
Most relevant
Reading Adam Phillips is like turning an object over in your hands or circling around a sculpture and uncovering more and with every orbit. It is such a pleasure, and entirely absorbing. What a privilege it is to be able to read and listen to his (shared) thoughts.

You needn't have any prior knowledge of psychoanalysis or the mentioned literature to get something out of this, it isn't that sort of thing.

I was disappointed that Phillips didn't narrate this one (unlike Attention Seeking) but I imagine it is a lot of difficult work.

Note - This audiobook doesn't include the Preface which is interesting too. You will just have to get the accompanying VisualBook from Visuable.

Magnificent

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Very interesting and thoughtful ideas clearly explained in the psychoanalytical framework of thinking about change.

Excellent

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