The Examined Life How We Lose and Find Ourselves Synopsis
Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2013.
We are all storytellers - we make stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient. These are stories about our everyday lives: they are about the people we love and the lies that we tell; the changes we bear, and the grief. Ultimately, they show us not only how we lose ourselves but how we might find ourselves too.
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Stephen Grosz Press Reviews
Praise for The Examined Life:
'...it will leave you wiser about humanity than you were when you picked it up.' - Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree. 'A fascinating collection of quiet stories about very real human predicaments: the listening cure at its best.' - Patrick McGrath, author of Asylum
'I couldn't put this down - I read about other people, but learned about myself...No preaching, no cliches--just wisdom.' - Victoria Hislop, author of The Thread
'There is a rare integrity in the writing: no showing off, just honest attention to each trusted relationship.' - Ruth Padel, author of 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem
'This gripping book offers psychological solutions to some extremely complex human puzzles and is full of wisdom and insight.'- Sophie Hannah, author of Little Face
'The Examined Life . shares the best literary qualities of Freud's most persuasive work. It is . an insightful and beautifully written book . a series of slim, piercing chapters that read like a combination of Chekhov and Oliver Sacks. [A] deeply affecting book' -- Michiko Kakutani New York Times
About Stephen Grosz
Stephen Grosz was born in Indiana and educated at Berkeley and Oxford. For the past twenty-five years he has worked as a psychoanalyst, teaching clinical technique at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory at University College London. His stories have appeared in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine. This is his first book.
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