The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves [NOOK Book]

Overview

An extraordinary book for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives.

We are all storytellers—we create 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 practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most ...

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The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

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This item will be available on May 28, 2013.
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Overview

An extraordinary book for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives.

We are all storytellers—we create 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 practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behavior. The Examined Life distils more than 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 the analyst as to the patient.

These are stories about our everyday lives: they are about the people we love and the lies we tell, the changes we bear and the grief. Ultimately, they show us not only how we lose ourselves but also how we might find ourselves.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Grosz could get technical if he wanted to—he teaches clinical technique and psychoanalytic theory at London’s Institute of Psychoanalysis and University College London, respectively—but he believes the best way to prove the power of storytelling is to practice what he preaches. Drawing from two decades of experience as a working psychoanalyst, Grosz bases the bulk of his claims on the tales of his patients, which range from traumatic boarding school experiences to failed romances and terminal illness. They are compassionately told and eminently readable, but skeptical readers will likely lament the lack of scientific analysis. But then again, that’s Grosz’s whole point—science needn’t be at the forefront if cathartic personal narrative is the focus. The crucial role of storytelling in forming one’s sense of self and of the world seems to be a given among psychoanalysts and writers, but Grosz goes further to demonstrate the ways in which stories, when unspoken, manifest themselves as symptoms of psychological distress. Quick leaps from focused accounts to grand conclusions sometimes disrupt the rhetorical arc of the book, though this in itself might be in keeping with the overall idea that narratives are messy, unpredictable, and somehow, in spite of all of these things, inherently useful—if not always in the words, then in the silences between them. Agent: David Miller, Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd. (May)
Michael Holroyd - The Spectator
“Engaging, frank, and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories. . . . A stimulating book.”
Melissa Katsoulis - The Times
“Brilliant. . . . After reading [Grosz’s] absorbing accounts of his patients’ journeys you might feel that The Examined Life ought to be given out free at birth.”
Trisha Andres - Financial Times
“By turns edifying and moving. . . . Grosz offers astute insights into the perplexities of everyday life.”
Robert Collins - Sunday Times
“Grosz’s vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces of bare, illuminating fiction. . . . It is this combination of tenacious detective work, remarkable compassion and sheer, unending curiosity for the oddities of the human heart that makes these stories utterly captivating.”
Andrew Solomon
“This book conveys the nuanced complexities of psychoanalysis in deceptively simple human stories. It is written with generosity toward both its subjects and its readers; with authentic wit; and with flashes of profound insight. The novelistic charm of its case histories makes it impossible to put down, but while you may read it for entertainment, it will leave you wiser about humanity than you were when you picked it up.”
The Spectator - Michael Holroyd
“Engaging, frank, and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories. . . . A stimulating book.”
The Times - Melissa Katsoulis
“Brilliant. . . . After reading [Grosz’s] absorbing accounts of his patients’ journeys you might feel that The Examined Life ought to be given out free at birth.”
Financial Times - Trisha Andres
“By turns edifying and moving. . . . Grosz offers astute insights into the perplexities of everyday life.”
Sunday Times - Robert Collins
“Grosz’s vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces of bare, illuminating fiction. . . . It is this combination of tenacious detective work, remarkable compassion and sheer, unending curiosity for the oddities of the human heart that makes these stories utterly captivating.”
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780393240412
  • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
  • Publication date: 5/28/2013
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 240
  • Sales rank: 356,495
  • File size: 419 KB

Meet the Author

Stephen Grosz is a practicing psychoanalyst—he has worked with patients for more than twenty-five years. Born in America, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, he lives in London. A Sunday Times bestseller, The Examined Life is his first book.
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