Review of Stephen Grosz "The Examined Life"

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
by

Stephen Grosz

Tim's review

May 22, 2019 

"[O]ur job is to try...to find a useful question" Stephen Grosz (page 128)

An amazing set of 31 real-life stories about counseling and helping patients make therapeutic progress.

Four main themes jumped out at me from the book. This "review" is basically in note-taking/outline form:

(1) Grosz's Working Hypothesis: Therapy is about helping the client to "tell their Story"

"What if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him? When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us -- we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand" (page 10)

(2) Grosz's Goal: Use the dreams/symptoms/behavior to find the story and help the client find words (and courage and insight) to tell that story

(a) Questions: What does the dream mean? "What possible psychological purpose could this behavior serve?" (page 41) What response (from others) are the symptoms supposed to provoke? (A 10-year-old's bedwetting is one example: pages 136-141)

(b) "Our job is to try...to find a useful question" (page 128)

(c) "Does that dream remind you of anything?" (page 12)

(d) Interpreting the dream: what subconscious conflict might the dream represent? Examples: pages 93, 99, 193-195, 199, 201-202, 213,214

(e) Children often use play (or art) to "free-associate":
"The idea is that a child's play...can help a child to express the emotions they might not be able to put into words" (page 160).

(2) Grosz's Goals at a First Meeting ("initial consultation")

(a) How does the counselor, Grosz, feel going into a First Meeting? A "mixture of anticipation, curiosity and vague unease" (page 74)

(b) What are the counselor's goals of the First Meeting?
Grosz hopes that he learns "the patient's [basic] life story [and] the history of his problem" (page 49); he also feels that it's "most important" that "the patient should leave our first meeting feeling heard" (page 49)

(c) Why do clients seek therapy in the first place?
*"I'm not living my life as fully as possible, but I'm not sure what I'd like to be" (page 96)
** Behavior finally causes a painful loss: Philip, a pathological liar, enters treatment when his 7-year-old daughter catches him in a lie and looks upon him with disgust (page 40)
*** Because we "felt trapped by things we find ourselves thinking or doing, caught by our own impulses or foolish choices; ensnared in some unhappiness or fear; imprisoned by our own history (pages xi-xiii)

(3) What does it mean to change--and why is change difficult for people?
"I want to change, but not if it means changing" ... "there cannot be change without loss" (page xii)

(a) Ways to change (page 114):
* "Fixing" oneself
** Repairing relationships (either with people around us or people from our pasts)

(b) Change is also difficult because people around us might not want us to change
* The client's problems allow the client's family to focus on her problems--and ignore their own problems (page 140)

(4) Miscellaneous Themes

(a) Silence comes in several types and serves various functions (pages 200-205)

(b) Boredom can be a very useful therapeutic signal (page 147)

(c) Impasses/Deadlocks have a purpose in therapy (page 164)

(d) Some people are unaware of their own emotions (pages 25, 89)