Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd.
More Adam Phillips Quotes
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There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
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To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
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The child..will try to make himself..independent of other people. .
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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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The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
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Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.
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Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
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People change, but there really are limits.
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To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable.
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We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
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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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The child can find out what the object ..might be only by finding ..obstacles to its access
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One thing you discover in psychoanalytic treatment is the limits of what you can change about yourself or your life.
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Excesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..
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The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’
ADAM PHILLIPS






