British psychoanalyst Josh Cohen's book explores our relationship with work, or more precisely, the ingrained desire within each of us not to work. This desire, far from seamlessly coexists with the desire to work—and to achieve success, prestige, and well-being—and, as the author suggests, is no less, if not more, important, even defining. This desire is familiar to us from childhood, when it is easily satisfied, but we learn to suppress it and become accustomed to devoting all our energy to work, sometimes forgetting that life is not limited to it. Sometimes the result is great achievement in our chosen profession, sometimes depression, sometimes both. How do we deal with the need for 'non-work,' which is impossible to fully realize, but also extremely dangerous to deny and suppress? The author seeks answers to this seemingly insoluble question through his own life experience, the stories of his patients, and the lives of several prominent individuals who faced the conflict between work and non-work head-on—Emily Dickinson, Orson Welles, Andy Warhol, and David Foster Wallace. This text, inspired by Josh Cohen's desire to understand himself and able to help us do the same, is composed of autobiographical essays, psychoanalytic notes, and insightful observations on the nature of creativity.