It is always said that you should reach your potential. Sounds exhausting. And it's also impossible, according to the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. However, it is worthwhile to deal with our wishes.
Mr. Phillips, you have the very comforting thought that whatever we wish for, and whatever may never be fulfilled, belongs to us as much as reality. So next to the lived life there is a second life?
Yes, we lead a kind of double life. When we grow up there is always the self we become. And a not-yet that we strive for. We are a combination of both.
I would have liked to have grown bigger or more extroverted. But I'm not. This imagined being lives in me and possibly has its own glamor?
Yes, it's glamorous because it incites and inspires. At best, it can encourage us to look for hidden qualities. Maybe you would like to have grown bigger. Well. Much more exciting is what you promised yourself from this greatness. The famous psychoanalyst Alfred Adler always asked his patients in their first conversation: "What would you do if you were cured?" And after her answer said, "Then go out there and do it!" Our dreams and desires can lure us in the right direction. They give us clues about our potential. We just have to translate it correctly. It would be a dead end if I despaired of staying small.
What is your advice to someone who keeps complaining about unfulfilled dreams?
How do you ideally raise a child? He is taught to be able to cope with inevitable disappointments in life. And to believe that something new will always grow out of disappointments. I would therefore encourage people to experiment and take risks. Each of us has very individual fears of danger. But they give us an important hint. Only when we approach the risks that we definitely don't want to take do we get closer to real life.
So if I can handle the frustration of disappointment, could it give me new ideas?
Yes, it is very difficult to come up with what you really want. It's a great art that takes time. The great drama of our capitalist system is that it constantly and instantly tells us what we supposedly want.
A new coat, a new car …
Exactly. Capitalism constantly babbles us in the conversation we should actually have: namely with other people. Because what we really want we will never discover in our head alone. No, it is our friends, our family members, the people around us who can help us find out.
In your books you write about the modern tragic hero: at the end of his struggle he always realizes that the idea of its fulfillment was wrong. His tragedy is that he thinks he knows what his satisfaction is. We are sure we have to have this car or this cell phone or we will not be happy. This corresponds to an addictive behavior. And is extremely narrow. Because actually our longings are not at all clear because we are incredibly complex beings. We are a lot more complicated than we can take. So we're trying to simplify things. When I say that I need a Porsche for my happiness, I am making it too easy for myself.
But our search for happiness is deeply human.
Feelings of happiness are always just a side effect. If you make them the main target, they disappear. So this search doesn't make sense. In addition, if you are obsessed with happiness, you can never get lost in one thing. But even a cup of tea, a fine conversation, the color of the sky can make you unspeakably happy. However, we are so indoctrinated that satisfaction resides only in exclusive, hard-to-reach things. There are an infinite number of pleasures that do not cost anything and do not have to be a weighty experience.
You once said that today we are too often held in a stranglehold by the life we missed. What do you mean by that?
No matter how fulfilled a life may be, it always contains untapped potential. It is important to have a realistic view here: you can never be everything you imagine or what you would even be able to be. Point. It becomes tragic when you are constantly in mourning because the unlived life is passing you by. For it is an absolutely inalienable fact that we will never have many of the pleasures we dream of. We have to deal with that – without becoming jealous or bitter. Envy is a highly toxic and destructive thing.
Adam Phillips is also an author. The British books, e.g. "Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life" have not yet appeared in German.
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