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The Examined Life

How We Lose and Find Ourselves

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The Examined Life

By: Stephen Grosz
Narrated by: Peter Marinker
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

SUNDAY TIMES BESTELLER

This book is about learning to live.

Echoing Socrates' statement that the unexamined life not worth living, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws on his twenty-five years of work and more than 50,000 hours of conversations to form a collection of beautifully rendered tales that illuminate the human experience.

These are stories about everyday lives: from a woman who finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip to a young man loses his wallet, to the more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer and the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.

©2013 Stephen Grosz (P)2023 Penguin Audio Essays Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Nonfiction Mental Health

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Critic reviews

'A captivating journey... These are universal themes, insights into an emotional world we inhabit, often with equal difficulty. A wonderful book.' (Sunday Times)

'With deceptive simplicity and gentle wisdom, Grosz teases out a lesson or chases down a fugitive insight. I have distrusted psychoanalysis for years, but I would leap onto Grosz’s couch.' (James McConnachie)

'The success of The Examined Life by the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz has, I think, relatively little to do with his clinical know-how; it rests, as Freud's did, on his story-telling abilities.' (Rachel Cooke)
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Most relevant  
The author spoke about many patients that I felt I could relate to, there are a lot of assumptions made but regardless of if they are true or not, they are useful to reflect on. Its soothing the read that time changes perspective and I felt like a message from the author was that we are all doing our best with what we have now. Really enjoyed this book

Helped me learn some things about myself

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This is not a self-help book and that’s a great thing. You won’t find shortcuts or advice so that you don’t have to deal with going to therapy yourself. It’s an interesting bunch of short stories of cases that are both entertaining and fascinating.

Fascinating for anyone who’s interested in psychoanalysis

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Loved it. Could start it all over again. Really insightful stories / cases about the human condition.

Excellent. Loved it.

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This book offers a great insight into psychodynamic theory in practice and I highly recommend it to fellow students of counselling and psychotherapy. The bureaux cases studies make this a really accessible book and easy to fit into your reading/study schedule. It’s also really relatable and I gained insights into myself along the way.

Bitesize case studies for students of counselling

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There’s a lot to learn and reflect with this book. And with every listen, it helps me reflect and introspectively examine my mind and life. Great book, and very pleasant to listen to as well.

Something to learn or relate on every read

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