Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips quotes about
needs bears
Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.
needs belief destroying
There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
mother wish needs
The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as asults, to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.
solitude quests transgression
Transgression is a quest for solitude
assessment problem being-true
I am always true to myself, that is the problem. Who else could I be true to?
way monogamy minimum
Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
children mad feelings
The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality - to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting - but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail. It is as if to say: if these are not valued - if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing - are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.
happy-marriage possibility scandalous
There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden. There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
art secret want
The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
growing-up grows
To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
children might obstacles
The child can find out what the object ..might be only by finding ..obstacles to its access
hero mean pragmatists
Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
children long people
People change, but there really are limits. One thing you discover in psychoanalytic treatment is the limits of what you can change about yourself or your life. We are children for a very long time.
children independent self
The child..will try to make himself..independent of other people. .. Excesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’