In the video referenced below, Adam Phillips explores how one can change one's thinking about change and the way we talk about getting better. Phillips feels 'we should consider what we mean by the terms ‘change’ and ‘get better’, and how transformation and self-betterment have been mythologized'. His books On Wanting to Change and On Getting Better, examine and reorient the reader's thinking about change, 'the human mind and the tools we have to understand it.'

'... if you're lucky enough to have the right parents, you will become who you are in this story. Klein has a very interesting addition to this which is that there's a part of the self that wants to attack development, that hates the idea of growing, not only growing up but growing at all. That actually hates life and so it's as though we're fighting a part of ourselves that wants to make ourselves as inert, as anesthetized, as deathly as possible. Now you could see it's not as simple ... but you can see that in states of depression or inertia… there's a loss and a lack of vigour, a lack of Drive. You could construe this in lots of ways. One way would be that people have different constitutions in terms of instinct, but the other way of construing this, I think is more interesting and also gives us more freedom: is to say and to show that there's a part of ourselves that is really alert to the aliveness in ourselves and is actively and insidiously and subtly attacking it. So we might think we want to be more alive but actually there's a part of us that wants to be dead. And not only that, and this is where it gets even worse, is that we want to deaden other people as well so that we're on the case for aliveness. One of the ways the client develops is the idea of envy so that she and (Klein) say it's a very powerful developmental force … the brief story here is the child (this is a construction) … assumes that the mother has all the good things. the child is therefore absolutely dependent on the mother, but if the dependence becomes painful or unbearable in some way, which in some way it's always deemed to be, the child begins to feel envious and in its envious state it attacks all the good things, so the envious adult wants to spoil or mock or ruin or pollute or detract from anything of value. Wants to Create a world, in the cosmic sense, in a megalomaniac way, the envious person wants to create a world in which there is nothing to want. And if there's nothing to want then there's no risk of feeling alive. But it's a desolate vision obviously...'

'Well, what's really disappointing about these books and is really disappointing about psychoanalysis is that it doesn't give us a description of collective action because it's so privatized and it would seem to me really all life is group life and therefore all change means is group change really. I mean obviously, we live in very individualized cultures, but really we're talking about communal changes. Those would have to be the real ones, in other words creating the conditions with other people in which people can be different first of themselves and I think that the really difficult thing is to translate this into really viable political life so the project isn't self-realization, the project is how can we best look after each other, what can we do for each other. So the model is collaboration, not self-realization.'

Watch the video for more https://youtu.be/7Mo4KJfXyO4

The book: Adam Phillips, 2021. On Wanting to Change. Penguin

A review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/08/on-wanting-to-change-review-an-inspiring-vision-of-psychoanalysis

Image source: https://americanlibraryinparis.org/event/phillips23

In the video referenced below, Adam Phillips explores how one can change one's thinking about change and the way we talk about getting better. Phillips feels 'we should consider what we mean by the terms ‘change’ and ‘get better’, and how transformation and self-betterment have been mythologized'. His books On Wanting to Change and On Getting Better, examine and reorient the reader's thinking about change, 'the human mind and the tools we have to understand it.'

'... if you're lucky enough to have the right parents, you will become who you are in this story. Klein has a very interesting addition to this which is that there's a part of the self that wants to attack development, that hates the idea of growing, not only growing up but growing at all. That actually hates life and so it's as though we're fighting a part of ourselves that wants to make ourselves as inert, as anesthetized, as deathly as possible. Now you could see it's not as simple ... but you can see that in states of depression or inertia… there's a loss and a lack of vigour, a lack of Drive. You could construe this in lots of ways. One way would be that people have different constitutions in terms of instinct, but the other way of construing this, I think is more interesting and also gives us more freedom: is to say and to show that there's a part of ourselves that is really alert to the aliveness in ourselves and is actively and insidiously and subtly attacking it. So we might think we want to be more alive but actually there's a part of us that wants to be dead. And not only that, and this is where it gets even worse, is that we want to deaden other people as well so that we're on the case for aliveness. One of the ways the client develops is the idea of envy so that she and (Klein) say it's a very powerful developmental force … the brief story here is the child (this is a construction) … assumes that the mother has all the good things. the child is therefore absolutely dependent on the mother, but if the dependence becomes painful or unbearable in some way, which in some way it's always deemed to be, the child begins to feel envious and in its envious state it attacks all the good things, so the envious adult wants to spoil or mock or ruin or pollute or detract from anything of value. Wants to Create a world, in the cosmic sense, in a megalomaniac way, the envious person wants to create a world in which there is nothing to want. And if there's nothing to want then there's no risk of feeling alive. But it's a desolate vision obviously...'

'Well, what's really disappointing about these books and is really disappointing about psychoanalysis is that it doesn't give us a description of collective action because it's so privatized and it would seem to me really all life is group life and therefore all change means is group change really. I mean obviously, we live in very individualized cultures, but really we're talking about communal changes. Those would have to be the real ones, in other words creating the conditions with other people in which people can be different first of themselves and I think that the really difficult thing is to translate this into really viable political life so the project isn't self-realization, the project is how can we best look after each other, what can we do for each other. So the model is collaboration, not self-realization.'

Watch the video for more https://youtu.be/7Mo4KJfXyO4

The book: Adam Phillips, 2021. On Wanting to Change. Penguin

A review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/08/on-wanting-to-change-review-an-inspiring-vision-of-psychoanalysis

Image source: https://americanlibraryinparis.org/event/phillips23