The CD collection that features so prominently in his earlier interviews – from Bax to the Beatles – is now

The CD collection that features so prominently in his earlier interviews – from Bax to the Beatles – is now safely hidden from interviewers’ eyes, and he speaks of maybe having to “do a Salinger” one day. He is ambivalent about his own profile, really quite prickly about his pin-up status as the “shrinking woman’s crumpet”, and hates “celebrity questions”. Phillips has an unease about the publicity circus, an unease which has acquired an added edge through the personal significance of his latest book. And Darwin’s Worms is no Louise Hay for the literati; it elegantly raises questions about our approach to loss – through a reappraisal of Darwin’s observations on decay and evolution, Freud’s still-contentious theory of the “death instinct”, and Phillips’ linking of the two from a literary, psychoanalytic late 20th-century perspective – but seems to provide few answers.It took more than an hour of talking about loss – of ideals, of imagination, of continuity, of religion, of loved ones, of self-image, of self-determination – before Adam Phillips revealed that the book had been written in the three or four months after his father’s death.It’s hard to know how much to read into such a belated revelation. I’m interested in language that’s more productive, language that goes on to produce more language; that would be my project here.”Phillips may loosely approve of self-help but he says that if he had “designed the world” he would have us reading (literary) fiction instead, because “I think novels give you a more complex, interesting, amusing account of what a life is”.

Along with the Berlin Wall, the demise of an intellectual and moral approach to politics – as epitomised by Michael Foot and Tony Benn – is bemoaned. Phillips, while basically in favour of the burgeoning market of popular psychology and self-help books, is concerned about a consequent “devaluation of the language we use to talk about ourselves and each other” through the proliferation of “psychobabble”.”What is `self-esteem’ anyway?” he asks. “Certain words are very powerful – shy, sad, low self-esteem, depressed – and they’re very coercive, they don’t allow people to have their own thoughts. He sees the end of the 20th century as a shrinking world of the imagination. He says “there is nothing deeper than group life”, and his broadly socialist political concerns pepper his books. He is horrified by what he views as an era of “people sitting in dining rooms talking about money”, despite acknowledging that any individual’s chances of optimum mental health are influenced by location or class. She is further sustained by an enviable gift for friendship, of the feline as well as human kind, and what she describes as “the magnificent irrationality of faith”.

Her engaging memoir will delight and tantalise her many admirers.. It would be easy to sneer at Adam Phillips, author and celebrity psychoanalyst. He practises in a book-lined, cobalt-blue Notting Hill consulting room. He thinks big thoughts, writes books either on arcane subjects or on matters accessible but from a highly literary perspective Oh, and he’s rather pretty too.

But how do we end up with such a thing as a celebrity psychoanalyst? And just what is so threatening about ideals these days? If Adam Phillips has committed any crime, it is that he still cares, even if the answers to all the big questions have proved elusive or impossible – or too expensive. The price he has paid for this is a certain kind of fame.
Darwin’s Worms, Phillips’ latest book, is about loss A big concept, for this is loss in the broadest sense. In her reserve and humanity, love of poetry and enjoyment of good food and wine, James resembles her popular hero, Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. Her 14th novel, A Certain Justice, was published during the course of the memoir, and James gives a riveting account of just what is expected of a bestselling author: a gruelling programme of signing sessions, interviews, and foreign tours.