Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, plays with ideas about the lives we want.

Where do we get ideas about the kinds of lives we want? What do we fail to do about actually getting them—and why do our ideas so often fail to satisfy us in the end?

Ever curious, sympathetic, and perceptive, Adam Phillips uses both psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed with the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy rather than merely endure, tolerate, or make the best of.

The interlinked essays in The Life You Want explore the issues we have with the idea of enjoyment of life while living amid a culture that insistently promotes it and simultaneously makes it difficult for many people to achieve. With his keen eye, Phillips charts the personal and political overlap in our lives and delivers a profound analysis of our ambivalence about enjoyment and, indeed, about wanting.