The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

Summary

An extraordinarybook for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives

We are all storytellers—we create stories to make sense ofour lives. But it is not enough to tell tales; there must be someone to listen.

In his work as a practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz hasspent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our mostbaffling behavior. The Examined Life distills more than fifty thousandhours 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 teachus a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait ofthe analyst at work and show how lessons learned in the consulting room canreveal as much to the analyst as to the patient.

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