Private Life

<p>The war over private life spreads inexorably. Some seek to expose invade and steal it others to protect conceal and withhold it. Either way the assumption is that privacy is a possession to be won or lost. But what if what we call private life is the one element in us that we <i>can't</i> possess? Could it be that we're so intent on taking hold of the privacy of others or keeping hold of our own only because we're powerless to do either?</p><p>In this groundbreaking book Josh Cohen uses his experience as a psychoanalyst literature professor and human being to explore the concept of 'private life' as the presence in us of someone else an uncanny stranger both unrecognisable and eerily familiar who can be neither owned nor controlled. </p><p>Drawing on a dizzying array of characters and concerns from John Milton and Henry James to Katie Price and Snoopy from philosophy and the Bible to pornography and late-night TV <i>The Private Life</i> weaves a richly personal tapestry of ideas and experience. In a culture that floods our lives with light it asks: how is it that we remain so helplessly in the dark?</p>