Freud’s famous case studies, like Dora, the Wolf Man, Little Hans and the Rat Man, are psychoanalytic readings, suspenseful detective stories and elliptical narratives that have all the drama and contradictions of modernist fiction. Not only is Freud a powerful writer, but his methodology and insights also have a lot in common with literary criticism and novelistic architecture. His patient portraits showcase his skills both as a critic, intent on deconstructing his subjects’ lives, and as a masterly storyteller, adept at using unreliable narrators to explore the mysteries of love and sex and death. It’s no coincidence that he liked to write about characters from Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen and Sophocles (yes, Oedipus), or that he paid so much attention to the language and imagery employed by his patients. “The Examined Life,” by the psychoanalyst — who teaches at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and in the Psychoanalytic Unit at University College London — shares the best literary qualities of Freud’s most persuasive work. The book’s unfortunate title and chapter headings (“On not being in a couple,” “Why parents envy their children,” “How lovesickness keeps us from love”) give the false impression that this is some sort of cheesy self-help book. It is, rather, an insightful and beautifully written book about the process of psychoanalysis, and the ways people’s efforts to connect the past, present and future reflect their capacity to change.

The book distills the author’s 25 years of work as a psychoanalyst and more than 50,000 hours of conversation into a series of slim, piercing chapters that read like a combination of Chekhov and. They invite us to identify with Mr. Spears For Sale there. Macbook A1181 Audio Driver For Windows 7 here. Grosz’s patients and their losses and regrets, even as we are made to marvel at the complexities and convolutions of the human mind. Advertisement To protect his patients’ confidentiality, Mr.

Grosz says he has “changed names and altered all identifying particulars.” Some have predicaments that will sound immediately familiar to many of us: a woman reluctant to give up hope that her commitment-phobic boyfriend will marry her; a man, uncomfortable with intimacy and emotional dependence, finds that he is genuinely happier on his own (he asks Mr. Grosz if he can see him occasionally, when he needs to, but not on a regular basis); a girl whose skill in living up to her parents’ expectations of good behavior and academic achievement “did not prevent the development of her substantial intellectual abilities” but slowed her emotional development. Other case studies have a more surreal, fablelike quality. There’s a man who obsessively fantasizes about an imaginary house he owns in France, sketching floor plans in his head, visualizing different colors of paint in one room, a larger doorway in another. Bc Drivers License Learners Restrictions After Hysterectomy. And there’s a man who seems willfully intent on boring everyone around him, including dates, colleagues — and yes, Mr. Grosz; apparently, it’s an aggressive way of “controlling, and excluding, others,” and his avoidance of dealing with his feelings reminds Mr.