Unforbidden Pleasures

Sep 21, 2024 1:24 PM

Author:Adam Phillips

Unforbidden Pleasures is the dazzling new book from Adam Phillips, author of Missing Out and Going Sane

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.

Adam Phillips' latest ambitious project explores the philosophical, psychological and social complexities that govern human desire and shape our reality.

Praise for Adam Phillips:

'Britain's foremost psychoanalytic writer' The New Yorker

'Phillips is one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson for our time' - John Banville

'Every mind-blowing book from Adam Phillips suspends all the certainties we are most attached to and somehow makes this feel exhilarating' - Deborah Levy

'Phillips radiates infectious charm. The brew of gaiety, compassion, exuberance and idealism is heady and disarming' - Sunday Times

'The best psychotherapist in Britain and one of our greatest contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers' New Statesman

'Brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling... [he is] the Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis' The Times

Reviews

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

The best living essayist writing in English

—— John Gray

[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

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

A fascinating look at the science of food and how our perception is shaped by all our senses, not just taste

—— Sunday Times

If simply changing the name of a dish on a menu or the color of the plate on which it is served can dramatically alter our perception of taste and food quality, then everyone in the restaurant industry needs to read this and take a deeper look at the scientific secrets Professor Spence reveals in Gastrophysics

—— Larry Olmsted, New York Times bestselling author of 'Real Food, Fake Food: What You Don’t Know About What You’re Eating & What You Can Do About It'

Wonderfully curious and thought-provoking . . . brilliant

—— Bee Wilson , Guardian

Spence cheerily whisks the reader through the senses like a magician . . . a mind-bending menu of fascinating insights

—— Nicola Davis , Observer

Revealing, very interesting and well worth understanding . . . highly enlightening

—— Rose Prince , Spectator

Spence takes a jovial pleasure in puncturing our perceptions and showing that there's a lot more going on in our mouths than what we think we're tasting . . . Spence has given us much food for thought

—— Julia Platt Leonard , Independent

A chatty whirl through the latest discoveries and their real-world applications

—— Rachel Laudan , Wall Street Journal

I wanted to reach out and thank you for your absolutely brilliant book Gastrophysics. As a thirty year restaurant veteran just venturing out on my own into the wild world of consulting, I found your research confirmed many of my long-held beliefs while adding tons of things I had never considered.

—— Sean S. Reiter, Chief Synthesist, Sean Reiter Consulting

It can't fail to entertain, inform and ultimately dazzle

—— Heston Blumenthal, chef and owner of The Fat Duck, on The Perfect Meal

This is a book to open the eyes and broaden the mind.

—— World of Cruising

As always, Solomon gets into the far corners of things, including people’s minds… He’s also very sharp on South Africa, China, Libya, Romania, and Brexit Britain, among others. He’s an expert on turmoil.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

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