A series of vivid case studies portrays people whose bizarre actions mask deeper conflicts and defenses against intimacy. A lecturer tallies pubic hairs to avoid confronting fears of infidelity and intimacy. A Fulbright scholar turns to sex work driven by hatred of her father. An ex-nun recognises decades of seclusion as an unconscious fear of pregnancy. A kleptomaniac seeks older men to recreate a missing maternal relationship. Psychoanalysis is presented as a painstaking, collaborative excavation that strips away motivated reasoning and self-deception to reveal conflicting fears and desires. The work of love is to learn to see oneself and others clearly.
A maths lecturer, convinced his wife is cheating, will not check the CCTV footage that might confirm his fears but instead keeps a private tally of the number of pubic hairs she sheds in her underwear. One hair is OK, acceptable, more is evidence that she has been having it off, he says, unaware that he uses these delusions of her infidelity to protect himself from the dangers of intimacy.
In Love's 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, easy stories obscure the hard ones, and the hard ones are most true. I like older guys, the kleptomaniac tells him, an explanation that conceals: I want a man to be the mother I never had.
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