ATTENTION SEEKING

Based on three connected talks by Britain's pre-eminent psychoanalyst on the subject of attention, this pocket-sized book is a quirky and memorable introduction to the concept of our attention - how we spend it, and what it might tell us about ourselves, from interest to obsessions, private desires to corporate commodity. Only when they become in some way disturbing do we become interested in our 'interest' - a word for phobia, obsession, perversion, addiction, ideology, hobby or discipline. What is attention and why do we seek it? How does our culture moralise attention as a force in need of control? A short, fascinating introduction to the concept of attention from Britain's leading psychoanalyst, author of Missing Out and On Kindness. Phillips is one of our brightest and most unusual thinkers, uniquely capable of bringing our deepest impulses and insights to light, and we are reassured that we are not alone in our primal anxieties. There is our official curiosity and our unofficial curiosity (and psychoanalysis is a story about the relationship between the two).' Paperback, 144 pages.