To our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality – to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting – but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail.
More Adam Phillips Quotes
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The child..will try to make himself..independent of other people. .
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There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
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We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
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There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
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There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
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The child can find out what the object ..might be only by finding ..obstacles to its access
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You write to find out what you believe.
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To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
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We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults ,
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Excesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..
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To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable.
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When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe
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We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.
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It is as if to say: if these are not valued – if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing – are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.
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Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
ADAM PHILLIPS