In a literary and groundbreaking style, Adam Phillips examines some seemingly ordinary issues that psychoanalysis has not adequately addressed: tickling, kissing, worry, boredom, danger, loneliness, tranquility, and even the act of defecating.

By illuminating these otherwise common aspects of everyday life, he argues that psychoanalysis began as a masterful improvisation within medical science, which, however, receded before the dream of science that asserts only the "examined life" is worth living.

Phillips shows how the drive for omniscience has proven ominous for both psychoanalysis and life itself, revealing that much of mental health depends on establishing a life that successfully resists examination.

As he says, psychoanalysis—as a form of discussion—is worth having only if it makes our lives more interesting or funnier or sadder or more tortured or anything we consider valuable and wish to promote; and particularly if it helps us discover new things about ourselves that we did not know we could value.