Building on his collection of psychoanalytic essays, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Phillips examines the subject of flirtation and explores the virtues of being uncommitted and the pleasures of uncertainty.

In the style of his earlier books, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored and On Flirtation, the author discusses ways in which we may be terrorized by experts, and the idea of expertise itself. He challenges the conventional idea of the self as something to be known, and sets out to show how self-knowledge is the problem rather than the solution. By examining our wish to believe things - and people (including psychoanalysts) - the book offers a revision of psychoanalysis itself. For to take psychoanalysis seriously, Phillips suggests, is to be unable to take gurus seriously.

In this collection of psychoanalytic essays on a wide range of relatively unexplored subjects, the author evolves his own distinctive version of psychoanalysis as part of a wider cultural conversation. The essays combine literary and philosophical commentary with clinical vignettes.

DW Winnicott's books, including "The Piggle", "Home Is Where We Start From" and "The Child", "Family and the Outside World" are still read, valued and argued with years after his death. This title attempts to get to grips with a writer, paediatrician and psychiatrist whose work with children and mothers continues to be relevant and fascinating.