Love’s Labour is a collection of psychoanalysis case studies, is long awaited follow-up of American-born, London-based, Stephen Grosz’s bestselling debut of 2013, The Examined Life,  a series of slender psychoanalytic case histories, which opened the world of the consulting room with vividness. 

In Love’s Labour, Grosz, gives us insight into the twists and turns of the patient’s inner lives. The woman who is horrified to find her husband having an affair eventually turns out to have a secret gladness: It’s a get-out-of-jail free card she can now legitimately divorce. After deeper exploration, these patients turn out to be Russian dolls, with layers of self to examine. “Penetrating the familiar hard work”, Grosz writes. 

Sophie is about to get married to a man she loves- but can’t bear to send out her weeding invitations. Abigail, an academic, funds her life through sex-work, feeling that by doing so she is curing herself of her neglectful father, Grosz observes she is avenging herself on him.

Ravi, a maths lecturer, is tormented by his wife Sonal’s supposed infidelity, but won’t look at the CCTV- even though that might reveal her to be innocent. When 19-years later Grosz is contacted by Sonal. She is dying of cancer and Ravi is cruelly neglecting her. Grosz feels that he missed a vital clue all those years ago, concerning Ravi’s ingratitude and envy.

Love’s Labour underlines the unique oddity of the psychoanalytic couch, where people are free to reveal their truest and strangest selves.

“Finding our way back to a place where we can see ourselves requires courage” Grosz writes.  According to Grosz, all human beings have a degree of hatred and envy, the trick is to know these difficult emotions and avoid self-deception. If they remain unknown, though they retain the power to pull the strings, directing behaviour unseen and ultimately threatening the possibility of successful intimacy- aka love.

Love’s Labour by Stephen Grosz, Chatto & Windus, £18.99, 208 pages.