Unforbidden Pleasures

Adam Phillips

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A great deal has been written of the pleasures that are forbidden to us. But what of the 'unforbidden' pleasures?

In his dazzling new book Adam Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the Unforbidden, from the fall of our 'first parents' Adam and Eve to the work of the great twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinkers.

Unforbidden pleasures, he argues, are always the ones we tend not to think about, yet when you look into it, it is probable that we get as much pleasure, if not more, from them. And we may have underestimated just how restricted our restrictiveness, in thrall to the forbidden and its rules, may make us.

Published: 5 November 2015
ISBN: 9780241964095
Imprint: Penguin eBooks
Format: EBook
Pages: 208

Categories:

Non-fiction prose

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Praise for Unforbidden Pleasures

The most interestingly subversive meditation on modern life I have read for many years... Phillips ranges over a wide field, including reflections on Hamlet and the tyrannical power of conscience. Elegant, forceful and rich in insight, this is a book that can be read again and again
New Statesman - Books of the Year 2015

[A] playfully digressive style... He is the finest living decipherer of affective life [and] the Bob Dylan of psychoanalysis
Daily Telegraph

There is a lot of philosophy and psychoanalysis packed into these 200 pages
Radar

Adam Phillips is single-handedly continuing the tradition of the world's best essayists
Observer

The best living essayist writing in English
John Gray

He's brilliant
John Carey

Phillips radiates infectious charm
Sunday Times

Publisher's description. Adam Phillips elegantly unfolds the concept of the 'unforbidden', from the Old Testament to Freud and beyond, exploring the philosophical, psychological and social complexities that govern human desire and shape our reality.
Penguin