In the new issue of AnOther Magazine, Adam Phillips talks about the life-changing influence of Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2024 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“As an adolescent, I was never interested in psychoanalysis or, indeed, knew anything about it. I was in a bookshop browsing and came across this book [Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung]. Very quickly I found it to be riveting – as an adventure and a romance. Jung was interested in what he called the depths, and I thought I was too. He gave the most extraordinary account of a life lived as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, in which amazing things could happen to people if they spoke freely to each other. For me, psychoanalysis was of a piece with literature – there was an ongoing cultural conversation about who we are, who we want to be, what we think about, what matters to us and what is the best language we have for what matters to us, if we’re not religious.
“The second psychoanalytic book I read was called Playing and Reality by Donald Winnicott and I had that adolescent experience of thinking this book was written for me, or maybe even by me. Two years ago I met an analyst who had been trained by Winnicott, who repeated two things that he had said to him – it’s not what the analyst says that matters, it’s how the analyst behaves. And if the child offers you her hand, take it. In different ways, those are two rather beautiful things.”
Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst, lecturer and author. He spent the first 17 years of his career working as a child psychotherapist for the NHS, at a time when “anybody could bring their child for psychotherapy, and it was free ... for as long as it took”. Listening to him, you can tell. He is generously clear; his intonation is reassuring and his steady pacing makes it easier to follow his profound ideas. How does he now view the adolescent picking up a copy of Jung’s autobiography by chance back then, simply because he was a “promiscuous” reader? “It was amazingly prescient, as though something in me knew much more about me than I was aware of, because the strength of the affinity was so great. I haven’t been back to the book, and I’m slightly superstitious about doing so. I want to hold on to the very pleasurable, exciting experience I had on that first reading.”
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2024 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now. Order here.