We would all like to think of ourselves as freedom-loving, egalitarian and democratic. Yet Freud has taught us that everything we do and say is rich in ambiguity and ambivalence. But if it is true that our inner lives are one unflagging drama of desire, dependence and greed, how can we ever presume to know what might be good for someone else?

Adam Phillips explores this question in a liberating new collection of essays. Throughout, he demonstrates how psychoanalysis can, like democracy, allow people to speak and be heard.