The Examined Life

What the book bears witness to

Stephen Grosz is an American-born psychoanalyst who has practised in London for more than twenty-five years, a career his publisher describes as more than fifty thousand hours of conversation with patients. The Examined Life, published in 2013, gathers short accounts of some of those encounters, with names and identifying details changed. Most chapters are only a few pages long. Each tells of one patient, one pattern and one moment in which something was understood.

The book bears witness to the inner lives of ordinary people in distress: people who cannot stop lying, cannot let go of a loss, cannot accept good news about themselves or cannot face their own death. Grosz writes about them with warmth and restraint. He rarely offers a theory. He describes what happened in the room.

What it shows

It shows that people often act against their own interests for reasons they cannot see. One chapter concerns a man who lied compulsively, about trivial things as well as important ones; others concern patients who kept missing sessions, or who sabotaged the very successes they had worked for. In case after case, Grosz finds that the self-defeating behaviour protects the person from a pain they cannot yet face, and that it begins to loosen only when that pain can be named.

It shows that the stories people tell about their lives can trap them. A person who cannot put what happened to them into words tends to act it out instead, repeating it in relationships and choices. Part of the work of analysis, as Grosz describes it, is helping someone find those words, so that the old story no longer runs them.

It shows the value of listening. Much of what Grosz does, as he describes it, is to pay close attention, to notice what is not said, and to resist the urge to reassure or advise. Change, when it comes, comes from the patient’s own recognition.

It also shows small truths about everyday life. One widely discussed chapter argues that indiscriminate praise of children can be harmful, because it teaches them to perform for approval rather than to engage with what they are doing, and suggests attending to what a child actually did instead. Another reflects on how people resist change because it involves loss, even when the change is for the better. Another describes how envy and admiration differ.

The questions it leaves

The book leaves the question of how much of ourselves we can know. Grosz’s patients are intelligent people who cannot see what drives them until someone else, patiently, helps them see it. The implication is that self-knowledge is not a matter of introspection alone. It often requires another person.

It leaves the question of what psychoanalysis can claim. Grosz writes as a practitioner, not a researcher, and the book does not argue for psychoanalysis against other therapies. Psychoanalysis has long been debated within psychology, and its evidence base is different from that of more structured treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy. The book’s value lies less in proving a method than in showing, case by case, what close attention to a person can reveal.

And it leaves the question of the examined life itself. The title echoes Socrates, who said at his trial, as Plato reports it, that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. Grosz’s stories suggest what examination costs and gives: it is painful, slow and incomplete, and it allows people to live their own lives rather than their old stories.

What it changes in how you see others

The book changes how one sees behaviour that seems irrational. A colleague who sabotages their own success, a friend who keeps choosing the wrong partner, a customer who behaves inexplicably, may be protecting themselves from something. Asking what it might be is more useful than judging.

It changes how one listens. Grosz’s patience, his willingness to sit with silence and let the other person reach their own understanding, is a skill that applies far beyond therapy. The site’s idea page We Know More Than We Can Tell touches on how much of what we know about ourselves and others is not put into words.

And it changes how one sees praise and feedback. His chapter on praising children applies to managers too: attention to what someone actually did is worth more than general approval.