Unforbidden Pleasures

By: Adam Phillips

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Much has been written of the forbidden pleasures. But what of the "unforbidden" pleasures?

Unforbidden Pleasures is the singular new book from Adam Phillips, the author of Missing Out, Going Sane, and On Balance. Here, with his signature insight and erudition, Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the unforbidden, from the fall of our "first parents", Adam and Eve, to the work of the great psychoanalytic thinkers.

Forbidden pleasures, he argues, are the ones we tend to think about, yet when you look into it, it is probable that we get as much pleasure, if not more, from unforbidden pleasures than from those that are taboo. And we may have underestimated just how restricted our restrictiveness, in thrall to the forbidden and its rules, may make us. An ambitious book that speaks to the precariousness of modern life, Unforbidden Pleasures explores the philosophical, psychological, and social dynamics that govern human desire and shape our everyday reality.

©2015 Adam Phillips (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A dense, challenging, provocative meditation on morality and identity." ( Kirkus)

An unceasing displeasure

The ideas are incredibly ambiguous and he talks definitively about nothing at all. Each sentence is so open ended, it is as if he himself doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.

He quotes single lines from dozens of books, seemingly to expound on their ideas or to counter them, but then does nothing with them. It makes me think he is simply giving us the highlighted bits from his favorite books.

This book is more about style than expressing any definitive thought—it is incredibly circuitous, exhausting, and annoying. It’s almost as if the writer just discovered alliteration and tried to use it as many times as possible per page.

A more important philosophical question: why would a publisher find this worthwhile to print?