We'd all like to escape from something - or say we would. So what's stopping us?

Houdini's Box explores the lives of four different escape artists. There is the little girl who is committed to playing her own wayward version of hide and seek. There is Harry Houdini, the 'greatest Magician the World has ever Seen', who electrifies the world through a series of death-defying escapes. There is a man who, Jonah-like, is always in flight, whether from women or from his analyst. And finally, there is the poet Emily Dickinson, who spends the last decades of her life in self-imposed solitary confinement.

In this, his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips helps us understand why we all feel most alive in the very moment of escape.