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NCP is proud to announce the visit of Adam Phillips as our first Master Clinician in Residence this fall from October 23-28. He is one of the most versatile and distinguished of contemporary psychoanalytic writers, with a unique capacity to appeal to clinical specialists and an educated lay public.

He has published eighteen books and is the general editor of the Penguin edition of new translations of Freud’s works into English. He has written an intellectual biography of Winnicott, critically evaluating some of his central clinical ideas, including transitional objects and phenomena, true and false self, and Winnicott’s playful style of interacting with his patients and offering interpretations.

His biography of Freud, Becoming Freud, summarizes and evaluates the centrality of Freud’s lived experience as a parent in the project of developing his theories of psycho-sexuality, while synthesizing Freud’s magisterial writings in his early works.

In On Kindness, his cultural history of the concept of kindness, Phillips argues for a compassionate, empathic, and nonsentimental form of fellow feeling in the contemporary world as an antidote to more selfish, cynical, and power driven concepts of being. His book of aphorisms, Monogamy, provocatively contrasts monogamy and infidelity in the face of the disruptive and insatiable forms of erotic desire in the formation of the couple.

Phillips' other essay-books explore the points of convergence of psychoanalysis and literary, historical, philosophical, and clinical issues; among the most popular of these essay are Unforbidden Pleasures, On Going Sane, Promises, Promises, and On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored. His most recent book, In Writing, explores the interrelationship of psychoanalysis and literature.

In his visit to NCP from October 23-28, Mr. Phillips will be interacting with our candidates, faculty, institute members, and interested members of the Southern California therapeutic community. He will be participating in conversations with our group, engaging in a discussion on psychoanalysis and literature, teaching clinical seminars to our candidates, available for private supervision, discussing aspects of psychoanalytic education, presenting a Stoller Memorial Lecture on “Conversion Hysteria,” and headlining an all-day conference at Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica on “Winnicott and the British Independent School.”

We are hoping that Phillips' presence at NCP will create a bridge between our psychoanalytic school and the Middle School in London, stimulate substantive dialogues, and highlight the vitality of the psychoanalytic enterprise both locally and internationally.