English-speaking world

• Psychoanalytic ideas were dominant in several academic fields, held in esteem by intellectuals, and well known, if notorious, among the general public.
• Boiled down to its essence, psychoanalysis is an approach to understanding the mind’s dynamics and treating its ailments.
• Review: On Giving Up – Adam Phillips (Penguin) But although its influence has shrunk, reports of the death of psychoanalysis are exaggerated.
• Almost all are in humanities fields: screen and cultural studies, gender studies, criminology, linguistics and history and philosophy of science.

A celebrated literary figure

• The prolific writings of Adam Phillips epitomise this modern day humanistic expression of psychoanalytic thinking.
• Phillips, who has worked for many years in England as a psychotherapist, is also a celebrated literary figure.
• He has received high praise as “the best living essayist writing in English”, “one of the finest prose stylists in the language” and “our greatest writer in psychology”.
• The hallmark of Phillips’s work is taking an idea or phenomenon, often ordinary or obscure, and patiently investigating its hidden complexities.

On Giving Up

• On Giving Up is not, in fact, about giving up in any systematic way.
• The lead essay inspects the many forms of giving up, from renouncing a vice to abandoning all hope.
• Giving up can be a form of “enlightening disillusionment”; failure at one task but success at something else.
• There are a few false notes: is suicide really the “only paradigm” for giving up and is it true “no one writes in praise of giving up”?

Hypnotic style

• Phillips’s style throughout the book is almost effortlessly fluent and erudite.
• The theoretical dimension of his work musters a variety of literary critics and French writers, but always circles back to Freud and his commentators.
• For psychoanalytic aficionados, he is especially drawn to the British and French mystics: Wilfred Bion, Jacques Lacan and D.W. Winnicott.
• After a while, despite the simple words and the smooth sentences, the experience becomes hypnotic.

Curiosity versus knowledge

Clues to why Phillips’s work is so clever and thoughtful in the reading but also so insubstantial in what it leaves behind can be found in two ideas he presents at each end of the book. In the prologue he cites with approval the psychoanalyst Marion Milner’s distinction between narrow and wide attention and near the conclusion he develops a distinction between curiosity and knowledge.

• A related issue arises when Phillips draws a distinction between curiosity and knowledge.
• A true psychoanalyst, after all, “is someone who is, above all, curious about curiosity.” It is hard to argue against the value of curiosity, but to place it in opposition to knowledge is odd.
• Normally, we might think curiosity drives us towards knowledge and knowledge rewards and reinforces curiosity rather than dulling it.
• It is not obvious why psychoanalysis or any other approach to studying the mind could not aspire to be both a form of (widening) curiosity and a form of (narrowing) knowledge.
• But in Phillips’s work we see a highly developed psychoanalytic curiosity that abstains from making clear knowledge claims.

Psychology versus psychoanalysis

• I’m sure he would agree what he is doing is not psychology in the usual senses.
• Psychoanalysis of Phillips’s variety doesn’t aspire to be any kind of science and it sets itself up as a radically different approach to the study of mind and behaviour.
• A psychology of giving up, for example, would be less astute in unravelling the inner complexities of self-sacrifice and renunciation than Phillips’s psychoanalytic account.
• Such an approach is not inherently preferable to Phillips’s form of psychoanalysis, but it is decidedly different, and not because it is deficient in curiosity.

Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

• Roxy Valade, widely known for her inspirational TikTok presentation titled "Leaving is an Answer," which has amassed a staggering 2 million views and counting, is no stranger to captivating audiences with her transformative messages.
• In this engaging online event, Roxy will delve deeper into the themes of bravery, resilience, and transcending barriers when faced with life's trials, perfectly encapsulating the spirit of the American dream.
• Roxy's inspiring journey, encapsulated in the title "Leaving is an Answer," mirrors the essence of the American dream.
• The comparison highlights the shared journey of overcoming language barriers, cultural differences, and various challenges on the path to success.

• André Dao’s remarkable debut novel began as an investigation into his paternal grandfather’s ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government, from 1978, three years after the war ended.
• From Hanoi to Saigon, Laon to Boissy-Saint-Léger, and Melbourne to Cambridge, this richly layered novel invites the reader to join Dao in disentangling different narrative threads.

Forgetting and remembering

• It’s a homonym of “Annam” (Pacified South), a name imposed on Vietnam by the Chinese imperialists in the seventh century and perpetuated by the French colonialists.
• It refers in fact to “anamnesis”: that is, forgetting and remembering.
• He connects the reader with his story, which resonates beyond the Vietnamese diaspora to touch all diasporic peoples haunted by dispossession and unbelonging.
• Read more:
  Model minorities and murder: Tracey Lien investigates the Vietnamese Cabramatta of the 1990s

Generational journeys

• It convincingly demonstrates how, by blending facts and fiction, the narrator comes to an understanding of his grandfather’s decisions.
• Their fight and willingness to sacrifice for their cause shed light on the narrator’s enigmatic grandfather.
• Dao’s creation of a fictional Vietcong ghost in Chí Hòa Prison serves the same purpose.
• With these letters, the narrator’s daughter becomes custodian of her great-grandparents’ memories – and the full story of Anam has been told and transmitted.
• Read more:
  War's physical toll can last for generations, as it has for the children of the Vietnam War

A fine example of a global novel

• He raises moral questions of doubt, complicity and guilt, while showing compassion and generosity towards all choices.
• But Dao handles these themes in an original and convincing way, appealing emotionally and intellectually to his reader.
• In terms of thematic, linguistic, and cultural scope, Anam is a fine example of what a global novel should be like.
• And it inspires us to think of a way to create our own houses, from which to tell the stories of our past.

• The following is a list of the approved early learning and child care innovation projects across Canada.
• In partnership with 10 early learning and child care sites in Greater Vancouver, the University of British Columbia will conduct research on the effectiveness of the outdoor play intervention.
• This project aims to create a locally guided and sustainable method for enhancing outdoor play environments that will be scalable to other early learning and child care sites across Canada.
• This project will use innovative technology to engage the public and early childhood educators in licensed programs to improve early learning and child care program quality as well as to improve the well-being of early childhood educators and families across Yukon.