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emmadiamond's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
katemck1's review against another edition
I enjoyed this since it helped me understand how we make our stories to make sense of the world. Very uplifting through each story having a conclusion that pulls the tale to its end. Satisfying. I shall reread. Lots of wise words.
junw_ng's review against another edition
5.0
It was a joy to read and affected me in ways I did not know it would. It gave me a greater understanding that the way people act or do not act and speak or do not speak is sometimes not as you may have perceived and brings me back to sonder. I believe that this word embodies this book. It is the feeling of viewing other people and acknowledging that they have their own unique stories.
The book was very intriguing as a touched upon the mind and how much or how little we may know about our own thoughts and feelings and what they represent.
I would highly recommend for any who are even slightly interested. It is made up of various stories about his many patients during the authors psychoanalysis sessions, which made it easy to read and digest.
I read this as a digital copy and would consider purchasing a physical version to read again at a later stage.
The book was very intriguing as a touched upon the mind and how much or how little we may know about our own thoughts and feelings and what they represent.
I would highly recommend for any who are even slightly interested. It is made up of various stories about his many patients during the authors psychoanalysis sessions, which made it easy to read and digest.
I read this as a digital copy and would consider purchasing a physical version to read again at a later stage.
dandelion451's review against another edition
4.0
A captivating and engrossing read, only 4 stars because it was a little too brief in parts; it left me wanting more!
charlotteple's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed this, the cases were interesting and engaging despite being condensed.
coronaurora's review against another edition
4.0
This turned out to be exactly the kind of snapshot I was looking for, wondering one day at the role and casual day in the life of a psychoanalyst. Employed as a medic in a largely state-sponsored healthcare behemoth which does not really offer its patients this portal of therapy and being severely disillusioned by the bio-pharmaceutic model where most patient referrals go and sink, I wanted to see up close this particular domain of psychotherapy: a domain that seemed more interested in explaining, storytelling and unspooling the past as a way to guide one's future(by future, I mean the Long Term and not the Short Term bandaging that is routinely dished out by the brutally prescriptive & action-oriented CBT!). And Grosz, with his lucid, pithy patient summaries neatly cased within chapters titled with the Big Themes of Life, proved to be a balm to my restless self.
As a distillate of his lifelong work, this elegant compendium had an endearing certainty that never veered into bull-headed arrogance or breast-beating advertisement of his often-disparaged, mostly-ignored specialty. I was deeply immersed in what seemed as perfectly viable explanations of the behaviours and projections his patients had adopted to their own bewilderment and distress. In his recounting, his humility as a practitioner was evident in how much value he placed in the patient's explanations for their behaviours. In successful cases, he seemed to be offering them competing explanations and the eventual explanation for behaviour/projection seemed to emanate from a negotiation.
I also loved how the case studies were bundled into themes, as the most common narratives of psychological discontent the author (or any practitioner for that matter!) comes across relate to being left alone, being ignored or radical changes in life's circumstances or life's choices. Together, they formed a veritable snapshot of the detritus accumulated by our species' faculties of being social, self-aware and civilised.
His discipline's focus on the slightly or majorly mal-adjusted homo sapien (I am describing all of us here!) and coaxing out a narrative (a basic sense-making trait we are all gifted with) seemed pretty credible and updated my constricted view of the therapy's value. After my fevered enthusiasm during A-levels with Freud's and Jung's theories, my interest, like most of late last century's, was overtaken (rather trammelled) by behaviourist and biopsychiatric models which overwhelmed the curriculums of the formal institutions I became a product of. This magnified focus of the Individual and his/her own life circle's dramas and slights, fired by primal fears and compensations for these fears, that I had always thought to have an integral role, to see its value here was a nice homecoming.
I have come away enriched at seeing the quality and type of dialogue contemporary psychoanalytical psychotherapy sort would typically have, and will certainly be seeking help for either myself or my future patients as the push-and-pull of life and relationships swings me or them a little-bit off center. I just hope to have someone as humble, empathic and patient as Mr Grosz (or his projection in this book of his!) to interact with.
As a distillate of his lifelong work, this elegant compendium had an endearing certainty that never veered into bull-headed arrogance or breast-beating advertisement of his often-disparaged, mostly-ignored specialty. I was deeply immersed in what seemed as perfectly viable explanations of the behaviours and projections his patients had adopted to their own bewilderment and distress. In his recounting, his humility as a practitioner was evident in how much value he placed in the patient's explanations for their behaviours. In successful cases, he seemed to be offering them competing explanations and the eventual explanation for behaviour/projection seemed to emanate from a negotiation.
I also loved how the case studies were bundled into themes, as the most common narratives of psychological discontent the author (or any practitioner for that matter!) comes across relate to being left alone, being ignored or radical changes in life's circumstances or life's choices. Together, they formed a veritable snapshot of the detritus accumulated by our species' faculties of being social, self-aware and civilised.
His discipline's focus on the slightly or majorly mal-adjusted homo sapien (I am describing all of us here!) and coaxing out a narrative (a basic sense-making trait we are all gifted with) seemed pretty credible and updated my constricted view of the therapy's value. After my fevered enthusiasm during A-levels with Freud's and Jung's theories, my interest, like most of late last century's, was overtaken (rather trammelled) by behaviourist and biopsychiatric models which overwhelmed the curriculums of the formal institutions I became a product of. This magnified focus of the Individual and his/her own life circle's dramas and slights, fired by primal fears and compensations for these fears, that I had always thought to have an integral role, to see its value here was a nice homecoming.
I have come away enriched at seeing the quality and type of dialogue contemporary psychoanalytical psychotherapy sort would typically have, and will certainly be seeking help for either myself or my future patients as the push-and-pull of life and relationships swings me or them a little-bit off center. I just hope to have someone as humble, empathic and patient as Mr Grosz (or his projection in this book of his!) to interact with.
mellys_reads's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0