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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: The Examined Life

Book of the Week: The Examined Life: Episode 5

The Examined Life

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Examined Life, Episode 5

Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz examines his own night-time anxieties.

Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz examines his own night-time anxieties. Concluded by Peter Marinker. From January 2013.

The world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns. 

Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.

In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.

This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.

Episode 5 of 5:
Analysts don't always have all the answers, sometimes they have questions and sometimes they have dreams. Stephen Grosz examines his own night time anxieties. 



Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jane Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.

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By Stephen Grosz. Stories from the analyst's consulting room

By Stephen Grosz. From over 50,000 hours of conversation the author distils a series of true stories about the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour

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