Adam Phillips is one of Britain’s leading psychoanalysts and literary critics. He has written more than 20 books about psychoanalysis, literature and culture on subjects ranging from Freud and DW Winnicott to Proust and Houdini. He is the general editor of the Penguin Modern Classic Freud series and a visiting professor at the University of York. His new book, Attention Seeking, is about how and why we need attention and the ways in which we seek to attain it.

There are many competing demands on our attention these days. What determines what attracts our attention?
I think it’s a combination of the culture and society we happen to be born into, which provides the material. Our parents are obviously implicitly and explicitly telling us where we should look, what we should listen to, how we should behave. And our education is about this, too: it’s about organising our attention. And then there’s an unknown factor you could call genetics or inherited characteristics.

You suggest that attention might be a form of madness or addiction. Why?
There’s a part of us that wants to attack our own development and the way we do this is by actively narrowing our mind. And that is what a phobia or an addiction is: it’s the overorganising of attention, because it solves a lot of problems in a certain sense.

So the reason we might want to narrow our attention is for fear of the unknown consequences of its promiscuity: we really don’t know where it will take us. And that’s exciting and exhilarating, but it’s also troubling.

Attention-seekers generally have a bad reputation, but you say that “attention-seeking is one of the best things we can do”. Why?
Because we need attention and we don’t usually know what it is in ourselves that we want attending to, but we know we want something from other people. And this is why celebrity culture is interesting. Because it appears that there’s a whole swath of people who know what they want: it could be called fame, it could be called wealth. But I think it’s much more enigmatic than it looks. Because the risk is you get a huge amount of attention and no engagement.

That sounds like a description of social media. Do you agree with the cultural anxiety that it is eroding our attention span?
I prefer a world in which one of the things people might enjoy doing is listening, reading and looking carefully and slowly and patiently. But I also know that to a lot of people – and to a lot of younger people – this is the daftest and most boring thing anybody could say.

You write about how children should be allowed to experiment with their interests. What if parents direct children’s interests too much?
The risk is that the child has to develop a compliant self to manage the parent. As children, we pick up what our parents want us to be. So then we’ve got a task, which is how to negotiate being what they want us to be and what we think we might want to be. And these things are not always compatible, so there’s going to be conflict. The risk always is that the child becomes simply a narcissistic object for the parent.

Can you give a child too much attention, and what’s the danger in that?
You can. If, for example, I am overprotective of my child, I am communicating to them that there must be something terrible out there that they need so much protection from. The other version is to be too directive and demanding in terms of what the parent wants the child to be. As a parent, you have to let your child teach you what kind of a parent they need you to be.

Culturally there’s a tendency to equate loss of attention with loss of morality: do you think that’s true?
Yes. I think in order to be in the best sense moral – in order to be kind to people – we have to be able to think about them, we have to be able to engage with them, and we have to be able to imagine them. And you can’t do that quickly.

You point out that “big ideas” inevitably restrict our attention. Is that why the Brexit debate has become so polarised and reductive?
Yes. I think what’s satisfied lots of people is how boring it is. It’s boring and lots of people don’t know how to think about it. And it’s a huge relief that it’s expressed as a grievance. But there’s something very distressing about people who claim to know what they’re doing having no idea what they’re doing. The best thing that could come out of Brexit would be people beginning to wonder about the kind of political conversations they want. What are the political conversations that feel valuable, given we’ve had a thousand that aren’t?

When did you first become interested in psychoanalytic theory?
When I was about 16, I read Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I’d never heard of psychoanalysis and it seemed to me to be an amazingly interesting life. And then I read Winnicott’s Playing and Reality when it came out and I knew exactly what I wanted to be then, which was a child analyst.

What were your favourite books as a child?
I didn’t have favourite books. I wasn’t a big reader as a child. I was interested in nature so I read books about that.

When you did start reading avidly in your teens, who were your favourite writers?
DH Lawrence, TS Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Wordsworth, Blake and Keats.

Which writers have most influenced your own writing?
I imagine I’ve been influenced by everything I’ve read, in a way. All literature is wisdom: it’s teaching you who to be and how to live.

Is there a book you think is overrated?
No, I like the idea that when people really love books they overrate them. I think it’s a great thing to do.

What about a book that people might be surprised to find on your shelves?
It’s hard to answer because I don’t know what people are expecting me to be like. Another version of the question is: are there any books here that I’d rather people didn’t see, and I don’t think there are.

Are there any genres you avoid?
I don’t read detective fiction; I’m not interested in what happens next and I’m not very interested in finding out who did it. I don’t read science fiction and I don’t love things that are too heavily allegorical.

What was the last great book you read?
The Great Gatsby. I reread it two weeks ago. Sometimes, I just know I want to reread a book and I don’t know why, and I often don’t know why after I’ve read it. But it really worked – I thought it was fabulous.

What books do you have on your bedside table to read next?
I’m going to reread William James’s Pragmatism. And there’s an American poet called Rae Armantrout: I just read her poems and they’re really good, so now I’m going to read her prose.

• Attention Seeking by Adam Phillips is published by Penguin (£6.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99