ISBN 9781913260149 (paperback), 162 pages

What is success, and is it worth the sacrifice? A psychiatrist and philosopher searches for a better, freer way of living.

We spend our lives striving: for achievement, status, wealth, recognition, security. We devote our best years to getting ahead, often without asking what ‘getting ahead’ is for.

In the pursuit of success, we neglect friendship, love, contemplation, wonder, and freedom. We become accomplished, yet somehow diminished. We succeed in the eyes of the world, but fail in ways that are harder to name.

In The Art of Failure, psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton explores this tension at the heart of modern life. Drawing on psychology, philosophy, literature, and lived experience, he turns to questions we usually avoid rather than answer: fear and courage, madness and sanity, death and meaning, happiness and love.

What emerges is not a system or doctrine, but a slow unsettling of assumptions. The idea that success is always good begins to look less certain. The idea that failure is always bad begins to look less simple.

Wide-ranging, provocative, and quietly unsettling, The Art of Failure is not a guide to doing better. It is an invitation to wonder whether ‘better’ has been correctly defined.

For anyone who has ever suspected that achievement alone is not enough, this book offers a way of thinking that does not rush to consolation.

About the author

Dr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist and philosopher. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the recipient of several book prizes. His work features regularly in the likes of Aeon and Psychology Today, and has been translated into several languages.

Editorial reviews

Brilliant. Neel Burton has already won several prizes … and this volume deserves another. —The British Medical Association Book Awards

A unique perspective…. Neel Burton delivers on the provocative and intriguing promise inherent in this work’s title… —The BookLife Prize (Quarter-finalist)

In this eye-opening read, psychiatrist Neel Burton explains… that by redefining what it means to achieve, we can avoid failure and gain control over our lives. —BookBub (Featured New Release)

If you want to re-examine your life and goals and perhaps find deep happiness, this book can help you get there. —Tammy Ruggles for Readers’ Favorite

A demanding, provocative and ultimately transformative read. Give it a try and see how you get on. —The International Review of Books

Contents

1. Mania
2. Freedom
3. Fear
4. Courage
5. Death
6. Values
7. Kings
8. Ghosts
9. Madness
10. Meaning
11. Happiness
12. Ataraxia
13. Friendship
14. Love

A book for anyone willing to reconsider what success has been asking of them.

The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide

Most people are like pre-programmed robots, and unable to go off script for fear of bugging the programme and failing the programmers. All intelligence is art-making, that is, artificial. —Neel Burton

Since the end of the Second World War, real term incomes in countries such as the US and UK have increased dramatically, but happiness has not kept apace. In fact, people today are considerably less happy than back then: we have less time, we are more alone, and so many of us are on antidepressants that trace quantities of fluoxetine have been detected in the water supply. 

Although economists focus on the absolute size of salaries, several sociological studies have found that the effect of money on happiness results less from the things that money can buy (absolute income effect) than from comparing one’s income to that of others, and in particular to that of one’s peers (relative income effect). 

This is a large part of the explanation as to why people today are no happier than were their grandparents: despite being considerably richer and healthier, they have only just managed to ‘keep up with the Joneses’—who now, along with the rich and famous, constantly flaunt their lifestyles on Instagram. 

But there is more. If I am to believe what I see in the media, happiness is to be six foot tall or more and to have bleached teeth and a firm abdomen, all the latest clothes, accessories, and electronics, a picture-perfect partner who is both a great lover and a terrific friend, an assortment of healthy and happy children, a large house in a good neighbourhood, a second property in an idyllic holiday location, a top-of-the-range car to shuttle back and forth from the one to the other, a clique of ‘friends’ with whom to have fabulous dinner parties, three or four foreign holidays a year, and, of course, a prestigious job that does not detract from any of the above. 

There are at least three major problems that I can see with this idea of happiness. First, it represents a state of affairs that is almost impossible to attain to and that is, therefore, in itself an important source of unhappiness. Second, it is situated in an idealized and hypothetical future rather than an imperfect but actual present in which true happiness is much more likely to be found, albeit with an altered frame of mind. And third, it has largely been defined by economic and even social and political interests that have little to do with true happiness, which has far more to do with the practice of reason and the peace of mind that this eventually brings. 

In short, it is not only that the bar for happiness is set too high, but also that it is set in the wrong place, and that it is, in fact, the wrong bar. 

Jump and you’ll only break your back. 

The Art of Failure struck a chord with me because artists, through their art, explore the same fears and problems that Burton does… But anyone from any background would learn a lot from this book. —Rod Judkins, artist, lecturer, and author of The Art of Creative Thinking