Darwin's Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories

Adam Phillips has been called "the psychotherapist of the floating world" and "the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness." His style is epigrammatic; his intelligence, electric. His new book, Darwin's Worms, uses the biographical details of Darwin's and Freud's lives to examine endings-suffering, mortality, extinction, and death. Both Freud and Darwin were interested in how destruction conserves life. They took their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams. Each told a story that has altered our perception of our lives. For Darwin, Phillips explains, "the story to tell was how species can drift towards extinction; for Freud, the story was how the individual tended to, and tended towards his own death." In each case, it is a death story that uniquely illuminates the life story.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 02/07/2001
ISBN: 9780465056767
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.38lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.24w x 0.41d

Review Citations: New York Times 02/18/2001 pg. 32
Entertainment Weekly 03/30/2001 pg. 63