Stephen Grosz is a psychoanalyst in Hampstead who, 12 years ago, published a book of vignettes drawn from his private practice, The Examined Life. To his astonishment it became a bestseller. As founder of just-launched therapy platform Welldoing, I was delighted to get an interview with him, in his consulting room back in 2013. It is still one of the most-watched videos on our YouTube channel. (You can watch our latest interview at the bottom of the article)
Now, here is Grosz’s follow-up, Love’s Labour. If the first book is about how we deal with change and loss in our lives (and how therapy can work to help us cope), then this 176-page book is about how love is lived, by the analyst and his patients. He introduces us to a range of people, from an Eritrean immigrant who trains as a therapist but has repeated problems with committing to relationships, to a young woman who simply cannot mail her wedding invitations. Each story delicately unfolds, in the way weeks of therapy sessions might, until we see the problem, alongside the client.
Even when the stories involve less likeable people or practices, Grosz is hugely empathetic. He tells a personal story of making friends with two American couples at a conference for psychoanalysts. They enjoy meals together over several years of these meet-ups, and then one husband discovers his wife is sleeping with the other wife’s husband. In the terrible fall-out from this news, the two women express different opinions of the aim of psychoanalysis. Cora, the one having the affair, regrets the harm she is doing, but is prepared to take the consequences to live a life that she believes is best for her. Susan takes a more conventional psychoanalytic line, to accept yourself and not be swept away by impulsive acts. Grosz finds himself in the middle, and swings through the various one-line explanations from Sigmund Freud and Donald Winnicott, to Jacques Lacan and Janet Malcolm. While it is still a dramatic story of how love can upturn people’s lives, it moves the reader to consider more than these individuals, but ponder ourselves what we believe “talking about things” could achieve.
Grosz has been seeing clients for more than 40 years and he has seen a great deal of change in how people connect with each other. He is concerned that too many of us hide from the truth, writing, “To be human is to be uncertain, conflicted, divided and yet, we grow up in a world that tells us we should feel whole, certain of our sexual desires. Brought up on the callow, familiar storylines of popular culture, encouraged to see love through the starry-eyed cliches of social media and celebrity news — we’re diverted from asking ourselves the awkward questions: what is my desire? Why is my sexual self as it is?”
This is not a book with a pithy motto or a 7-point plan to pin on your fridge. It’s thoughtful, gently questioning and acute in its observations. While you might not want to lie on his couch, I think many people would enjoy this trip through Stephen Grosz’s brain.
