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Lynn Phillips

About

Lynn Phillips, author of the satirical advice manual Self-Loathing for Beginners, (SL4B.com), is a native New Yorker and Harvard/Radcliffe grad who trained as a documentary film editor under the Maysles. After working as staff writer for the cult hit, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, she wrote for a numerous publications, including The Nation, Nerve, Newsweek International, and T Magazine. Her work has appeared in several collections, including essay compilations like Crime and Criminals (Opposing Viewpoints), and satires: Paul Krassner's Pot Stories for the Soul, and Billionaires for Bush: How to rule the world for fun and profit.

Books by Lynn Phillips
Recent Posts
Before the Devil Knows You're Hooked
Champions of "personal responsibility" believe that moral censure can prevent addiction and spur addicts’ recovery by removing “incentives” to use drugs. The recovery community diagnoses addiction as a medical condition that blame can’t help. In the end, Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t saved by either camp.
gore vidal with white cat
Taking to Drink
When the late Gore Vidal compared his fondness for the lecture circuit to “taking to drink,” was he suggesting that having an audience was potentially addictive—or something more personal and interesting?
origin if valentines day
A Valentine's Day Proposition
Prepare to cut up a few scientific journals into valentines. Last time out we marveled at how often the phrase “casual sex” twists therapists' minds into strange positions.This week we take a poke at some dubious research on women’s desire for “casual sex,” addressing Freud’s famous Valentine’s Day question, “What do women want, and is it me?”
"Casual Sex" You Say?
The phrase “casual sex” turns out to be a most treacherously roomy category. It can include good sex, bad sex, safe sex, risky sex, sex alone or with others, sex with friends or strangers, sex with partners older or younger. But few who use the term seem to notice.
Members of the Conn State House in session
Playing With One's Self

Computer solitaire, originally packaged with Windows to make computers and mouse technique easier for new users to grasp, can become a huge time sink, even for people like me who flatter themselves that they're too smart and engaged with life to get hooked on it.

Computer solitaire, originally packaged with Windows to make computers and mouse technique easier for new users to grasp, can become a huge time sink, even for people like me who flatter themselves that they're too smart and engaged with life to get hooked on it.

Humans vs. Humanity

If the bulk of our psychological experiments in the U.S. apply only to the globe’s 5%, a great many experimental findings are due for a do-over.

If the bulk of our psychological experiments in the U.S. apply only to the globe’s 5%, a great many experimental findings are due for a do-over.

The Boss of Me

There's not much room for debate about addiction's ability to impair in some brains whatever passes for individual autonomy. Emphasis here on the word "some."

There's not much room for debate about addiction's ability to impair in some brains whatever passes for individual autonomy. Emphasis here on the word "some."

Are You Not Who You Think?

American individualism imagines a sovereign self--- free of adulterations like addiction and social control; but neuroscience questions whether this is possible.

American individualism imagines a sovereign self--- free of adulterations like addiction and social control; but neuroscience questions whether this is possible.

Amy Winehouse---What We Need to Know Know Know

Because addictions are dangerous and dehumanizing, our unexamined assumptions about them can make them more so.

Because addictions are dangerous and dehumanizing, our unexamined assumptions about them can make them more so.

Devil's Food

So tempting is it to blame biblical literalism for the Bible Belt's defects, that I have found a way to do it. But the truly satanic force behind physical decay and moral perversion in the Bible-thumping states may be less grandiose: fish fingers, say, or chicken nuggets.

So tempting is it to blame biblical literalism for the Bible Belt's defects, that I have found a way to do it. But the truly satanic force behind physical decay and moral perversion in the Bible-thumping states may be less grandiose: fish fingers, say, or chicken nuggets.