Darwin's Worms On Life Stories And Death Stories

Adam Phillips has been called "e;the psychotherapist of the floating world"e; and "e;the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness."e; His style is epigrammatic; his intelligence, electric.

His new book, Darwin's Worms, uses the biographical details of Darwin's and Freud's lives to examine endings-suffering, mortality, extinction, and death.

Both Freud and Darwin were interested in how destruction conserves life.

They took their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams.

Each told a story that has altered our perception of our lives.

For Darwin, Phillips explains, "e;the story to tell was how species can drift towards extinction; for Freud, the story was how the individual tended to, and tended towards his own death."e; In each case, it is a death story that uniquely illuminates the life story.