Finding the Words to Say it: A Review of Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature by Adam Phillips. New York:  Basic Books.  376 pp.

IN SHAKESPEARE'S Hamlet, Polonius approaches the distracted and mad Prince of Denmark and asks him what he is reading. Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words.” In these two brief lines of dialogue, Hamlet portrays Polonius as a man whose words appear empty and untrustworthy. Hamlet's contemptuous reply also distinguishes between words that are empty and those full of meaning and affect. As I eavesdrop on this dramatic conversation about authenticity in character and language, I realize that Hamlet serves as both actor and observer, both theorist and clinician, just as I do in singling out this piece of dialogue. I am engaged directly in the experience of the literature, but I am also thinking about the theoretical usefulness of these ideas to my work. In other words, I am making a substantial connection between Hamlet's contemptuous comment on Polonius' lack of authenticity and the assertions of selfstyled connoisseurs of language about literature and psychoanalysis. In the end, I am left wondering about the relative value to my psychoanalytic work of my direct experience of Shakespeare's play and of my ideas about empty and full speech that have been extracted from it.

In the preface to his collection of essays, Adam Phillips raises similar questions about how literature and psychoanalysis serve each other. He asks, what are the languages of literature and psychoanalysis good for, and what do they have to do with each other? He answers by creating a dialogue between himself as psychoanalyst-critic and the literature he reads, with the assumption that language has value in its cultural contingency and in the many texts in its words. He also assumes that the process and goals of reading and writing are the same as psychoanalysis: they are both attempts at discovery of more internal life. In his view, they both try to help patients-analysts or readers-writers discover whatever stirs their curiosity and gives them the feeling of being more alive, and part of this process