Name: The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
ISBN: 9780393349320

Stephen Grosz

The author describes his work as a psychoanalyst over a twenty-five year period, describing his efforts to guide his patients to personal insights into their behaviors and resolutions which can change their lives for the better.

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

This book has disturbed me deeply: through many small anonymized stories of psychoanalysis sessions often spanning years, the book is a mirror to look into ourselves. I cried more than once, not for the characters but for myself and for the people I love.

Aske Dørge

Gavin

Neat, sad, surprising, overcoming my strong prior against psychoanalysis. A series of polished case studies illustrating the wide variety of ways we can be broken-down and knotted-up. 

Settles into a pattern: 'difficult patient’s puzzling actions are to be explained by a timeless subversion - thus, praise can be destructive, pain is vitally informative, spitting in people’s faces can be a defence mechanism', etc. 

He’s honest about the questionable utility of his field – he doesn’t seem to help many of these people, let alone cure them – and this makes the book ok.