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On Giving Up Hardcover – March 26, 2024

by Adam Phillips (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 66 ratings
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One of The New York Times Critics' Picks of the Year

From acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, a meditation on what we must give up to feel more alive.

To give up or not to give up?

The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple.

Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable.

There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment―an attempt to make a different future.

In On Giving Up, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up and helps us to address the central question: What must we give up in order to feel more alive?

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  1. Print length
    160 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  4. Publication date
    March 26, 2024
  5. Dimensions
    5.65 x 0.65 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0374614148
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0374614140
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From the Publisher

Praise for On Giving Up by Adam Phillips

On Giving Up Adam Phillips

On Giving Up Adam Phillips

On Giving Up Adam Phillips

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Phillips’s] therapeutic thesis is that each of us carries a story of the life we should have lived, the life we missed out on, and, according to Phillips, the life we’ve already lived, to a degree, psychically. . . Phillips’s way to perform these sleights of compositional magic is via style . . . I’m drawn to this aphoristic disentanglement of idioms in the language as it lets loose the playfulness sentence-making allows us.”
―Thomas Larson, The Rumpus

“A wise, generous book. Phillips has a mild, expansive way of explaining the insights that psychoanalysis offers into our everyday drama, its glimpses of differently shaped problems behind the ones we thought we had.”
―Dennis Duncan, The Washington Post

“[Phillips is] like a flashlight in that his illuminating beam heightens my awareness of the dark . . . I drank [his] words like a tonic.”
―Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s Magazine
“Phillips has rendered the term ‘giving up’ spacious and flexible, having woven together psychology and literature to reveal suggestive points of contact . . . Phillips makes an ambitious case: that giving up is as important to our psychological well-being as hope and love are . . . The best form of giving up, it seems, may just be to take up a book.”
―Sarah Moorhouse, Los Angeles Review of Books

“One of the most arresting things about Adam Phillips’s work is how it resists easy summary, dissolving into a trace memory the moment you try to describe it. . . . Phillips doesn’t try to prevent us from thinking whatever it is that we want to think; what he does is repeatedly coax us to ask if that’s what we really believe, and how we can be sure.”
―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times (An Editors' Choice)

“Phillips continues to find inspiration in Freud―not only the provocative concepts, but the allowances for speculation in Freud’s language . . . The connectivity between his observations carries a certain charge, an impetus to be curious rather than strictly determined about and by our wants.”
―Ron Slate, On the Seawall

“If this collection marks the beginning of Phillips’ late style, we have a lot to look forward to.”
―Booklist

“A thought-provokingly cerebral meditation.”
―Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Adam Phillips is one of the foremost psychoanalysts practicing in the world today, and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of many books, including On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored; and On Balance. He is also coauthor, with the historian Barbara Taylor, of On Kindness.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 26, 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374614148
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374614140
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.65 x 0.65 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 66 ratings

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4.2 out of 5 stars
66 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Greywoulf
    5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps not for everyone, ~but if you're curious about psychotherapy concepts, ~yes!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I found this fascinating... A group of connected essays that are written in fairly easy to grasp language, it explains some about psychotherapy, plus has interesting anecdotes, quotes, and asides regarding Freud, Jung, and Franz Kafka. ~A fun read that informed and stimulated my mind and thinking...
    (And I think some of the reviews here are unnecessarily complicated and far more difficult to read than the book was; ~and possibly not even about the book at all? ~LOL!)
    8 people found this helpful
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  • Rictus
    3.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying
    Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2024
    I wanted to like this book, I really did. Here, I thought, is someone willing to tackle the corrosive fear of failure that undermines so much of contemporary living. But after twenty pages of vague nostrums such as "We give up, or give something up, when we believe we can no longer go on as we are. And so a giving up is always some kind of critical moment, however tempted we are to minimize it." This is a sort of consoling New-agish advice for affluent professionals that would mean nothing to someone having to relinquish their home for homelessness because they couldn't pay rent. So, I gave up reading. Perhaps it gets more profound later on so I'm giving it 3 stars.
    7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Randy W
    2.0 out of 5 stars Far too deep for me
    Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I am more than 1/2-way through the book and still do not understand the gist
    Report