A maths lecturer, convinced his wife is cheating, will not check the CCTV footage that might confirm his fears but instead keeps a\u00a0private tally of the number of pubic hairs she sheds in her underwear. One\u00a0hair is \u201cOK, acceptable\u201d, more is evidence that she has been \u201chaving it\u00a0off\u201d, he says, unaware that he uses these delusions of her infidelity to protect himself from the dangers of intimacy. A high-flying Fulbright scholar becomes a sex worker to avenge the father she hates. An ex-nun\u00a0discovers that her decades of\u00a0religious seclusion were driven by\u00a0an unconscious fear of pregnancy. A troubled young woman, seeking redress for her psychological losses, steals large sums of money that she will never spend.<\/p>\n
In Love\u2019s Labour, the London-based, American-born psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz offers an antidote to the pat, sanitised love stories we absorb through romcoms, reality TV shows and other popular culture. Often, he writes, \u201ceasy stories obscure the hard ones\u201d, and the hard ones are most true. \u201cI like older guys\u201d, the kleptomaniac tells him, an explanation that conceals: \u201cI want a\u00a0man to be the mother I never had.\u201d In\u00a0Grosz\u2019s telling,\u00a0psychoanalysis resembles a\u00a0painstaking, collaborative act of\u00a0excavation, removing layers of\u00a0self-deception and motivated reasoning to discover the conflicting fears and desires that lie\u00a0beneath.<\/p>\n
Love\u2019s Labour is Grosz\u2019s second book and like his bestselling 2013 debut, The Examined Life, it is a series of case studies that read like Grimms\u2019 fairytales: dark and allegorical. His patients\u2019 identifying details have been\u00a0removed, but one imagines the\u00a0pube-counting professor and others will recognise themselves. That\u00a0these strange life stories are true(ish), makes them all the more powerful and compelling. The title refers to Grosz\u2019s belief that the work\u00a0of\u00a0love is to learn to see oneself\u00a0and others clearly \u2013 which is also the work\u00a0of psychoanalysis and, arguably, of life.<\/p>\n
The book is as much about the mysteries of analysis as it about the mysteries of our hearts and sexual desires. In one chapter, Grosz recounts\u00a0a fierce argument between two psychoanalysts after one, Susan, discovers that the other, Cora, has been having an affair with her husband. Susan says that Cora has never learned what psychoanalysis should be about: having empathy, behaving morally, accepting reality. But Cora believes the goal is learning to act according to one\u2019s true desires and accept the consequences. Both outcomes, Grosz concludes, can be desirable consequences of analysis, but neither should be the aim of the therapist. To have aims for a patient is\u00a0to infringe on their autonomy. He\u00a0aims\u00a0for nothing more than for his\u00a0patients to better understand themselves.<\/p>\n
As one might expect, therapeutic breakthroughs often happen after Grosz and the patient analyse a dream, and his patients frequently trace the origins of their issues with intimacy to early childhood, to a dead or emotionally absent parent. Each case study can feel like a detective story: a tiny, inconsequential detail may, sometimes years later, unlock a new understanding. And what a long time this process can take! Grosz has been working with patients for 40 years, and sometimes a\u00a0phone call or chance encounter decades after the initial consultation completely changes his understanding of a person\u2019s predicament. In the penultimate chapter \u2013 a pure horror story: chilling, moving, unforgettable \u2013 he describes a\u00a0sculptor who has found himself emotionally and physically stuck since his girlfriend\u2019s suicide. After they have been speaking for 10 years, Tobias recounts a dream that finally enables him to reveal horrifying details about the aftermath of her death, details that\u00a0help them both understand his emptiness, and that will haunt readers long after they have set this book\u00a0aside.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see the light, you have to go down into the dark,\u201d Grosz writes. His\u00a0patients often learn that pain or darkness cannot be avoided: to love fully one must accept the reality of loss, to live fully one must accept the reality of death. What a privilege it must be to accompany another person so closely as they try to figure out the challenge of living \u2013 of change and love, and accepting love and change. And what a privilege it is for the reader to catch a glimpse of this process.<\/p>\n