Adam Phillips | On Getting The Life You Want: Psychoanalysis With Pragmatism
British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips aims to show the compatibility of psychoanalysis and American pragmatism. Pragmatism without psychoanalysis can seem naive, psychoanalysis without pragmatism can seem unduly coercive and essentialist.
Adam Phillips is a practicing psychoanalyst in London and an essayist, described by Joan Acocella in The New Yorker as “Britain’s foremost psychoanalytic writer.” He is the author of more than twenty books, most recently On Giving Up (2024) and On Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud (2024, co-authored with Stephen Greenblatt) and On Wanting to Change (2021). Since 2003 he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of Sigmund Freud. He is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
The discussions were moderated by Paul Kottman, Professor of Comparative Literature.
Date: Thursday, May 2, 2024, 5:00PM to 7:00PM (EDT)
Presented by the Henry H. Arnhold Forum on Global Challenges and the Program in Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research.
Below are the recorded versions of both events, on campus and over Zoom.