Psychoanalysis and Not Wanting to Know

This seminar will discuss Freud's paper 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Psychic Functioning' in The Penguin Freud Reader ed. Adam Phillips.

This is the second in a series of three seminars this year by Visiting Professor Adam Phillips, Writer and Psychoanalyst. 

Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst as well as one of the most influential essayists and thinkers writing today. The Irish novelist John Banville has him as 'one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time'.  Adam has been Visiting Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature since 2006.  He is the General Editor of the Penguin Freud, and author of more than 16 books of essays and studies from On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored (1993) to Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (2014).  His most recent books are Unforbidden Pleasures (Penguin, 2015), In Writing (Penguin 2017), and Attention Seeking (Penguin, 2019).

Adam Phillips Spring Term seminar text (PDF , 456kb)

Please note, places on this seminar are limited to 20, for undergraduates, postgraduates and staff of the University of York.  Please email Helen Barrett at helen.barrett@york.ac.uk. if you would like to attend.