Back in 2009, I did an interview with the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, author of Promises, Promises, On Kissing, Tickling, and being Bored, and most recently On Balance.
We discussed what a child psychologist wants for his own children, why he rejects modern technology like email, and why writing feels “automatic” for him.
The audio is here.
The transcript is here.
Interview transcript – Professor Adam Phillips
University of York
4th March 2009
Jennifer O’Mahony (JO) interviews Adam Phillips (AP)
JO: Can I have some basic biographical information, I found some but if you could just map out your career for me, (AP: As an adult? Not from birth? Or do you want the whole lot?) as an adult, since graduating, because I know what you did at university.
AP: I read English at university, then at that stage I got in to do a child psychotherapy training, but because I was very young they said go away and grow up, so I did a year’s research at York, and I came to York because my then girlfriend was here Hugh Haughton was one of my best friends and I was interested in doing the research.
I had no plan to do a PhD, but I wanted to use that year as pleasurably as possible so I came here. Then after a year we moved back to London and I did a three, or was it a four year, a four year child psychoanalytic training and I did that basically at the Middlesex Hospital department of Child Psychiatry where I had a training post, and I had seminars at the Hampstead Clinic and the Tavistock Clinic which meant I had a genuinely eclectic psychoanalytic training.
The training involved being in analysis four times a week for four years, then I had supervision, then I saw all those children aged nought to 16 and after that when I qualified I worked in Guy’s Hospital, in the Department of Child Psychiatry, in a school for what was then called maladjusted children called Beremond (sp?).
I worked in Camberwell Child Guidance Clinic. I worked in Charing Cross hospital Department of Child Psychiatry. I did that for 17 years, that was the health service child psychotherapy work, and then I went into private practice where I am now, and then I just saw adults. So I see adults four times a week and I write one day a week. That’s my professional life.
JO: OK, So you’ve never actually been an academic of English literature?
AP: No.
JO: Because obviously I know you’ve done things for editions of John Clare…
AP: Yes, but I’ve never actually taught literature in a university, apart from now.
JO: So would you consider doing that in the future?
AP: Not full time. I love doing this, (JO: yes)… sort of doing in briefly. I don’t want to be an academic and I didn’t want to be an academic, partly because I really love reading and I wanted it to be a private pleasure, I didn’t want to have to talk about it.
Posted in Interviews
Tagged Adam Phillips, Adam Phillips interview, Monogamy, Promises Promises, psychotherapy
I interviewed Adam Phillips, author and psychoanalyst. This is the audio file of the interview. We cover why he doesn’t use email, what a former child psychotherapist sees in his own children, and of course, his books. He tells me why Freud did “pretty well, considering” (the designer of psychoanalysis never underwent analysis himself) and why he rejects theory in favour of “more sentences, we need more sentences”.
The transcript will follow.
Listen/download here.
Jennifer O’Mahony
