Psychotherapist and writer Philippa Perry attempts to unpick the tangled idea of desire.

We live in a world where we get what we want. Strawberries in January, the instant Uber, new clothes, all the music we could ever want, news in our pocket and constant connection via the digital world. And all to be easy and instant. However, we're also struggling to understand the world in which we live. It's not something we seem to enjoy. Sometimes we say it's 'inhuman'.

It may be that we could benefit from a clearer understanding of desire -- and our desires.

We live in an age of desire, but also an age of discontent. The gap between the urge and its fulfilment is now shorter than ever. But rather than making us more content, this short-circuit seems often to frustrate our capacity to understand and therefore control our desires.

A desire satisfied is often merely a desire reinforced or reinvented: in Freud's phrase, desire is always in excess of any item's ability to satisfy it. In times – technological, political, personal – when we are promised satisfaction, how does the inevitable falling short affect us, and what new and strange desires does it spawn?

Featuring Katherine Angel, Adam Phillips, John Yorke and Emmett.

Readings by Catherine Dyson

Producer: Martin Williams Show less