Terrors and experts

By Adam Phillips

Abstract

At a time when psychoanalysis and 'analysis' in general is attracting increasing attention within the association, I was intrigued and stimulated by this slim book by British child psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.

The book is about the search for expert knowledge, and the impossibility of the analyst as expert. For Phillips, a psychoanalyst is anyone who uses what were originally Freud's concepts of transference, the unconscious, and dream work, in paid conversations with people about how they want to live, and here he raises issues that are both challenging and engaging for our profession. I found his comments succinct and pertinent.