Adam Phillips on 'Attention Seeking'
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Adam Phillips talks to Devorah Baum about his latest book, 'Attention Seeking', which argues, among other things, that attention seeking is the best thing we do.
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I come back to this conversation every few weeks and take away something new every time.
I think this is quite close to the Lacanian point that "all desire is a desire for love"
I too never fail to get something new from this interview when I replay it. It is comforting to know I'm not alone in this.
Adam is immensely interesting and stimulating whether you are reading or listening to him. Some of his aperçus are so disruptive you have to regress to reread or re-listen to his remark. All his presentations are attention-guzzlers with no adverse effects on the cognitive ecosystem.
I must appreciate Devorah for providing the upbeat counterpoint to the agreeably cloudy and saturnine countenance of Adam. Distraction replenishes when attentiveness depletes. Touché ! Adam.
Thanks for " aperçu", apt description of Adam's style. His prose flows so easily, a delight to read.
I love her laugh and way of talking and this is a fascinating discussion
Totally, brilliant.
very grateful to hear his insight
He says the goal of psychotherapy is to liberate ourselves from the self. In other words to forget the 'self.' That is the only true freedom in life apart from slowly acquiring new spiritual disciplines. I love reading his stuff.
"Our style is always a shameful relation to something" "Interesting is whatever gives you an appetite for the future"
I think this is quite close to the Lacanian point that "all desire is a desire for love"
This guy is a genius
I think this is quite close to the Lacanian point that "all desire is a desire for love"
What about levels of shame as a way to keep peace in societies and in relationships - I wonder where he stands on ideas of privilege and equality and how they tie in to questions about individual freedom. Is he suggesting everyone says and does whatever they want and we each just deal with the consequences? How does this pan out in a world where this happens increasingly remotely and not face to face? eg 'I want to say/do this sexist or racist thing and not feel shame about it or have to think about it please'...It's easier to continue to say and do things that damage other people and to avoid questioning that if you are in a position of privilege. And it's difficult to criticise yourself if you've lived a life of privilege because you haven't built up the strategies with which to deal with self criticism. I would be interested to see how shame can be negotiated in a way that is beneficial to both parties.
astounding
His books are great, no doubt he's an effective analyst, but books aren't psychoanalysis. Even if you find someone as good as he is, you can't afford them.
😢😢😢
I am not sure I know what you mean. Could you expand on it, please? Are you saying reading his books would be a waste of time, in some instances?
@@christopherbrookfield4785 Authors write books because they have something to say or enjoy writing. The process of psychoanalysis is so profoundly different than reading about it, that, yes, it would be a waste of time to read his books, if a cure was your aim.
I disagree. Anything that gives you insight can be helpful.
@@marionboa Absolutely not. Reading every book on bike riding without ever riding a bike is pointless. Psychoanalysis is a process, not a list of concepts.
I love this conversation. #adamistheshit
I've never heard anyone say "X is so attention-seeking." Is it a British idiom? Would it be something one hears who spends lots of time around parents and children? I wish Baum or Phillips had said that they were now going to be seeking attention by talking for about an hour, and to presume that nobody else in the room would try to seek it in that same hour. Skinner would have begun that way (and Phillips and Skinner are/were/ equally fond of generalizing and universalizing in the "we"). And neither Baum nor Phillips remarked that "attention" and "attending to" aren't hip contemporary idioms they've suddenly made interesting or attention-rewarding. William James wrote a chapter on it in his 1890 Principles of Psychology, and Alexander Bain before him, and so on. Okay, enough of my attention-seeking behavior.
Very likely to be a particularly British thing to criticise people for being 'attention-seeking' - perhaps especially children. ("Children should be seen and not heard" - Queen Victoria)
Being an ‘attention seeker’ in Britain is a well known idiom. It’s usually given to a child which is playing-up, acting-out, misbehaving etc in order to get more attention than others. It’s usually a negative term, to suggest they’re seeking attention at the expense of others.
I like him
7
Cringeworthy flirting...😖
Cringeworthy trolling.
What's the project here?
a woman admiring a man and engaging passionately with him does not equal ‘flirting’, in this case I think it is a heteronormative projection of yours.
I come back every couple of weeks to see if she's finished yet and... if anyone cares about all that stupid unsolicited bullshit
Ms. Baum is very annoying; Dr. Phillips is brilliant.
Are you being hard on her or yourself?? I found her tough to take initially partly because I found her attractive and simultaneously neurotic-but then I opened my heart to her vulnerability and got past it. She is actually doing the very thing he promotes in the book which is to not over regiment her speech. She is trying too hard. She is talking kind of like a teenager.Whatever.. LOL
sexist. totally. she is brilliant, present and surprising and she is also very feminine presenting and my guess is this is what has turned you off.
You have given yourself away by using their titles…
Devorah is fantastic
I disagree profoundly. I thought she was actually the perfect interviewer for this -- very invested in the author and the subject, and knowledgeable. I really enjoyed that she didn't try to become a strictly neutral interviewer, but allowed herself to be herself, and was open about her own interest in shame. To me that added a whole additional dimension to the conversation, which shed light on the subject being discussed.
A shame the lady keeps talking, real back ground noise and no contribution. he should just take over and talk
listen to it again
A shame the lady keeps talking, real back ground noise and no contribution. he should just take over and talk
"A shame the lady keeps talking ... he should just take over and talk" sums up the last few millenia of misogyny very succintly indeed - well done! I look forward to your future apercus, which are in no way background noise with no contribution to make. Can't wait for people like you to 'just take over and talk'! Happy days.
@@johannesdesilentio5398 To find Ms. Baum annoying is not to be a misogynist, but just realism!
It sounds like you're locked into precisely the kind of sadomasochistic contract of shaming and projection AP is trying to unwind. Consider psychoanalysis.
Attention seeking....
So you feel compelled to shame her, and part of that shaming is your feeling that she should be entirely silenced. Interesting...