"It is perhaps one of the most useful, indeed pleasurable Freudian insights that the way we defend ourselves tells us, in disguised form, what it is we desire. If clutter was the obstacle to desire, it was also an object of desire. In clutter you may not be able to find what you are looking for, but you may find something else instead, while you are looking for it. Clutter may not be about the way we hide things from ourselves but the way we make ourselves look for things. It is, as it were, self-imposed hide and seek. I may clutter up my canvas, or my studio to stop myself working - to sabotage the process - or I might do it to force myself to work in a different way. The problem with not being able to bear frustration is that you never notice the paradoxical nature of your acts: to frustrate one version of the self is always to gratify, to promote, to re-find another version."
- Adam Phillips, "Clutter: A Case History"
Promises, Promises (2001)
Promises, Promises (2001)
