The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz

We often spend our days running unthinkingly from one activity to the next, worrying about what others think, frantically trying to make ends meet, or obsessing over the past. In The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves, renowned psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz shows us that our lives can offer greater fulfilment if we make time to deliberately reflect on our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

In this book, Grosz draws on over 25 years of listening to patients in his psychoanalytic practice to illustrate how we can recognise and contain the dark and conflicting aspects of our lives — our losses, failures, and pain — and find a way to a more vibrant, calm existence. Groszillustrates these ideas through the lives of six patients, using their stories to show how we can transform our lives through the process of examining them.

The first of his patients is Charlotte who, as a child, rarely expressed her emotions and lived in fear of revealing too much about herself. Grosz shows how Charlotte, by learning to understand the source of her fear, can open up to emotional expression, leading her to recover her sense of who she truly is and connect with her feelings of loss.

Carrie is next. Carrie, a successful artist and academic, has buried herself in intellectual pursuits. Grosz shows how she can recognise her need to remember her past and her sadness, and allow herself to reconnect with her emotional core. Through this, Carrie can restore herself and regain her passion for life.

Grosz also introduces us to Bill, a businessman who’s stuck in a rut, and Juanita, a patient struggling with feelings of worthlessness and inferiority. Through an exploration of their stories, and his own clinical reflections, Grosz guides the reader to a better understanding of the causes of their struggles, and the means by which they can build the self-assurance and confidence necessary to live their true lives.

Grosz’s reminder to us all is that each of us has our own story, our own sources of difficulty, our own way of understanding and managing our inner lives. He cautions us that our search for growth will fail unless we face our lives with honesty and courage, and open ourselves to a fuller understanding.

Grosz also considers how a person can find, or regain, their sense of self through the creative act of writing. He brings in literature and philosophy to further illustrate his points, making The Examined Life a useful reference for those seeking to think more deeply about their own lives.

For those of us who have grown weary of our own repeating patterns of behaviour and mistakes, The Examined Life offers a refreshingly hopeful outlook. Grosz reminds us that healing, growth and self-discovery are possible when we thoughtfully examine our lives and learn to be mindful of our reactions to them. Through this book, Grosz offers readers the tools to discover a path to a truer, fuller form of living.