Darwin's Worms on Life Stories and Death Stories - by Adam Phillips (Paperback)

About the Book

"Yet, as Adam Phillips argues, we are not merely trapped in a world of continuous loss. Taking as his examples Darwin's lifelong fascination in lowly earthworms, and Freud's lifelong antipathy to grubbing biographers, he unexpectedly finds much to celebrate. For both of these writers are interested, above all, in how destruction conserves life. They take their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams, and show how life is about what can be done with these humble remnants from the past. Darwin and Freud render aging, accident and death integral, not alien, to our sense of ourselves. They teach us the art of transience."--Jacket.

Book Synopsis

Adam Phillips has been called "the psychotherapist of the floating world" and "the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness." His style is epigrammatic; his intelligence, electric. His new book, Darwin's Worms, uses the biographical details of Darwin's and Freud's lives to examine endings-suffering, mortality, extinction, and death. Both Freud and Darwin were interested in how destruction conserves life. They took their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams. Each told a story that has altered our perception of our lives. For Darwin, Phillips explains, "the story to tell was how species can drift towards extinction; for Freud, the story was how the individual tended to, and tended towards his own death." In each case, it is a death story that uniquely illuminates the life story.

Review Quotes

"Adam Phillips is a clever, cultured, and eloquent man, a psychoanalyst and one-time child psychotherapist turned public guru, who obviously enjoys the process of writing and does it well... In this collection of essays and reviews he gives further proof of these talents, displaying his flirtatious intellect."

"Brilliantly lucid; reading him on top form is like having bubbles of insight exploding inside one's head."

About the Author

Adam Phillips has been called "the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness." Formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, Phillips is the author of such works as Winnicott; On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored; Monogamy; On Flirtation; Terror and Experts; Darwin's Worms; Promises, Promises; and Houdini's Box.