Adam Phillips joins Kate Wolf to discuss his two latest books, both published this year, On Wanting to Change and On Getting Better. The series looks at the very human impulse toward transformation, from religious and political conversion, and the conversion to family life from which one must ultimately emerge, to the aims and practices of psychoanalysis, along with more quotidian ideas of self-betterment. As always in his work, Phillips attends in these books to the aspects of ourselves that can be hardest to bear, and that can lead us to desire more rigid structures — intellectual or otherwise — or desire to be someone else, while also quietly petitioning for a more complex and thoughtful mode of change in which, as Socrates encouraged his pupils, we learn only to be ourselves. How might we get better, Phillips wonders, at talking about what it is to get better?

Also, Pankaj Mishra, author of Run and Hide, returns to recommend Josep Pla’s The Grey Notebook.

Adam Phillips's "On Wanting to Change" and "On Getting Better"

Groove as consciousness; skanking as liberation of the mind and the behind.

rave agitator for @leckenberlin
@refugeworldwide resident

bookings: wandavra [at] gmail.com

Coming up: 

17.08.2025 | Lecken @ OXI

recent past: 

27.07.2025 | Riot @ LARK
18.07.2025 | WHOLE Festival @ Ferropolis
29.06.2025 | Fusion Festival
21.06.2025 | Leck My Buttons @ OXI
31.05.2025 | Power Dance Club @ Kreuzwerk
24.05.2025 | Garage Girls @ OHM
25.04.2025 | Bird House @ Kater Blau 
18.04.2025 | Lecken @ Kreuzwerk
21.03.2025 | Palestine Fundraiser @ Crack Bellmar
08.03.2025 | IWD Lecken Showcase @ Renate
22.02.2025 | Pinky Promise @ OST
09.02.2025 | Between Us @ Möbel Olfe (b2b sweetapple)
07.02.2025 | Skankstasy Hour @ Refuge Worldwide
01.01.2025 | secret New Year's rave, Berlin  
20.12.2024 | "Office Xmass Party," Toronto
16.12.2024 | Skankstasy Hour @ Refuge Worldwide
12.12.2024 | Queer Mama Fundraiser @ LARK
06.12.2024 | Groove Service @ Privatclub
29.11.2024 | Lecken Reloaded @ Kreuzwerk

previously skanked at: RSO, ÆDEN, Renate Club, Club OST, OXI, Kreuzwerk, Mensch Meier, Fiese Remise, Refuge Worldwide, Fitzroy, LARK, Kake / Ziegrastr. 11, Radialsystem, Christa Kupfer, Untertage, Ficken3000, ELSE Club, Blue Velvet, Crack Bellmar, Trashera, Lecken, Buttons, GEGEN, Power Dance Club, Royal Highness, RIOT, Big Luv, WHOLE Festival, Fusion Festival, Volksbühne, Sophiensaele Theater, Berliner Festspiele, Hošek Contemporary, mina/Planeta Manas (Lisbon), Forum (Bielefeld), Queerpool / Südpol (Hamburg).

I love Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature, History, Politics, Nature, Music and Cinema. 

The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts.

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Adam Phillips's "On Wanting to Change" and "On Getting Better"

LA Review of Books