The Examined Life: How We Lose And Find Ourselves - Softcover

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.

''Grosz's vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces of bare, illuminating fiction... utterly captivating.'' --Sunday Times

''Marvellous. 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.'' --The Times

''Crystal-clear and completely magical. The Examined Life is a book full of troubles, but also of wonders.'' --Mail on Sunday

''Engaging, frank, and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories.'' --The Spectator

''By turns edifying and moving. Grosz offers astute insights into the perplexities of everyday life.'' --Financial Times

''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.'' --Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree

''Drawing from two decades of experience as a working psychoanalyst, Grosz bases the bulk of his claims on the tales of his patients . . . They are compassionately told and eminently readable . . . 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.'' --Publishers Weekly