The Examined Life
Stephen Grosz
**SUNDAY TIMES BESTELLER**
This book is about learning to live.
Echoing Socrates' statement that the unexamined life not worth living, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws on his twenty-five years of work and more than 50,000 hours of conversations to form a collection of beautifully rendered tales that illuminate the human experience.
These are stories about everyday lives: from a woman who finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip to a young man loses his wallet, to the more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer and the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.
'A captivating journey... These are universal themes, insights into an emotional world we inhabit, often with equal difficulty. A wonderful book' Sunday Times
Product Details
About Stephen Grosz
Reviews for The Examined Life
Lucy Lethbridge
Observer Books of the Year
With deceptive simplicity and gentle wisdom, Grosz teases out a lesson or chases down a fugitive insight. I have distrusted psychoanalysis for years, but I would leap onto Grosz’s couch
James McConnachie
The Sunday Times Books of the Year
This moving book of patient portraits by the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz will make the reader think of Freud’s keenly observed and literary-minded case studies. Writing with sympathy and insight, Mr Grosz distils 25 years of work into a series of slim, piercing chapters that read like a combination of Chekhov and Oliver Sacks
Michiko Kakutani
New York Times
The success of The Examined Life by the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz has, I think, relatively little to do with his clinical know-how; it rests, as Freud's did, on his story-telling abilities
Rachel Cooke
Observer
Grosz is a superb storyteller and tells lots of his patients' stories with sensitivity, but also with great acuity. You might keep thinking you recognise things about people you know
William Leith
Evening Standard
A wonderful example of a book that provides a safe space that can be used as a base to explore the less safe
Alex Clark
Guardian
Riveting... Grosz is adept at uncovering the little lies we tell ourselves and he's very perceptive about the potentially positive effects of bad experiences
Daily Telegraph
Because of [Grosz's] skill at getting to the heart of the matter, we forget the distance separating us and become quickly involved in the lives of those he discusses
Mail on Sunday
Absolutely fascinating. You’ll be amateur psychoanalysing yourself and everyone you know
Independent on Sunday
It made me stop and think, and it has stayed with me. Grosz is a superb storyteller and tells lots of his patients' stories with sensitivity, but also with great acuity. You might keep thinking you recognise things about people you know
William Leith
Scotsman