Phillips loves questions and quibbles, and he defends the analyst's maddening habit of not answering questions by suggesting that this could encourage the patient in a game of asking without expecting an answer - or without expecting 'that there will be answers at all'. This hopeful uncertainty is also applied to 'the culture of complaint', in which we are 'forever aggrieved about being misunderstood'. Thus we could be 'endlessly fascinated by what people make of us'. Phillips does go on to say that the history of oppression has been a history of people 'having translations imposed upon them by a dominant class or group'. Even so, there seems something theoretical and unreal in suggesting that, say, a black boy set upon by white hoodlums might pause to consider, with endless fascination, how he is being mistranslated.
Paradox can be an irritant.
But then, Phillips is irritated himself by the analyst as 'the knowing knower', always with his mind made up.