FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (22) - STEPHEN GROSZ (2025) 'LOVE'S LABOUR'

 Around forty years ago, I had my quiet conversion experience and accepted what I understood to be the essence of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. My training as a historian left me in little doubt that there was much in the biblical account that was not what we call literal truth - but it seemed to me that the sayings of this historical Jesus had a power and insight that made me want to follow his path for a more fruitful way of understanding myself and the art of living well with others. I found this truth encapsulated in the biblical text: 1 John 4:16 - "God is Love."

Stephen Grosz, psychoanalyst

Stephen Grosz' book, 'Love's Labour', makes no leap to connect love with God but it is about the nature of love - and there are insights that can deepen our understanding. Grosz is a psychoanalyst who has worked with patients for more than forty years. Protecting their confidentiality, Grosz presents the details of some of his most revealing cases that amply bear witness to a quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke that prefaces the book itself: "For one person to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

Grosz began his own psychoanalysis - the necessary precursor to becoming a psychoanalyst - aged 31; his listing of the things he didn't understand about himself at that time tell a powerful story of what he

came to learn from his clients, including those that appear in the pages of this book. He had yet to learn that:

• each of us is responsible for our own happiness
• we need to treat ourselves with care and consideration
• we need to experience pain in a loving relationship to understand what we desire
• we deceive ourselves about love - the who, what and why - but we have the power to undo that self-deception 
• this is love's labour: the odyssey in which we learn to see ourselves clearly and likewise our loved ones - to know fully ourselves and those we love. 

Stephen Grosz's latest book (2025)

 Grosz presents some conclusions in his Prologue:

• There is a distinction between submission and surrender. Surrendering is letting go, experiencing a release - this happens when two people surrender to each other.
• Psychoanalysis is a particular form of not knowing. The client and the psychoanalyst are two people not knowing together - the process is to think together, talking and listening, finding meaning together. 
• Unavoidable loss is at the heart of love - we let go of the past in order to seize the present.
• Our experience of loss shapes who we are - our life story is one of loss: we lose the womb when we are born; we lose mother's protection when we go to school, make friends, and play with others - ultimately we lose everything we have loved when we die.
• The work we have to do is to reach each other. 

In his first case study: 'Marry Me', Grosz gives his account of a client, Sarah, who came into analysis with him in 1989. Her presenting problem was whether to marry Nick or not. She was an only child and very close to her parents. Grosz teases out a possible meaning in a dream: her fear of embarking on a marriage was related to her anxiety of losing that closeness to parents. In the end she does marry Nick. Twenty-six years later in 2015, Sarah reappears in his consulting room. This time the issue is whether she should divorce Nick who has had an affair. Grosz's recounting of the analysis that follows is gripping - Sarah reveals that her parents had lost a child in pregnancy a year before her own birth and then became fearful of losing Sarah and as a consequence too clinging. In the end, she does decide to work with Nick to revitalize their marriage - her breakthrough comes with the realization that whilst her parents thought that mourning meant coping, she came to understand that mourning means accepting reality. 

Not all the cases work out so well. Two academic doctors are married, Ravi and Sonal. Ravi becomes delusional and convinced his wife is having an affair. Ravi had felt the pain of abandonment as a child when his parents had divorced - now he is unknowingly protecting himself against the anxiety of abandonment by avoiding an intimate trusting relationship with Sonal. He cannot talk to her about his fears. However, there is reconciliation after a time in analysis - Ravi and Sonal begin to do small things together and the marriage is saved. However, nineteen years later Sonal rang Dr Grosz to explain that cancer now meant she had only months left to live and she wanted Ravel to return to analysis - he was unable to cope with her and her condition. Ravel declined. Unconsciously, he was, Grosz suggests, resenting Sonal's poise and grace in her terminal illness. He refused to do love's labour. 

Sometimes when the case seems so difficult to unravel, Grosz turns to his supervisor for guidance, in this case Dr Glasser. Kate had been in a sexual relationship with her uncle and had served time for theft, now as Grosz's client she was seeking to break the boundaries of the session and control him. Glasser tells Grosz that he is thinking too much about what he has said to Kate, instead he needs to hear what she is hearing. Glasser suggests that Kate is trying to make him feel a failure so he can have a taste of what she feels about herself and her life. Kate didn't return to the clinic for more sessions with Grosz - but three years later he met Kate on an underground station and she quietly explained that she was back at the clinic. Dr Glasser had explained that Dr Grosz had left the clinic; now she was in analysis with Glosser. Grosz realized that he had been looking to Dr Glasser as a child seeking approval from his father. The art of psychoanalysis is a constant conversation with all parties.

Three cases to give you a taste of the insights offered in the book. There are more to discover. One case study offers a thought-provoking analysis of gift-giving - what really is going on for the giver - and the recipient. Another case raises issues of responsibility - two analysts are in secure marriages and the four of them are in a friendship into which Grosz, ten years their junior, is welcomed. He admires all four of them. Then, out-of-the-blue, one of the analysts embarks on an affair with the other husband. Should they, as analysts, have known better?

Anna Freud (1895-1982)

One tale in the book had a particular resonance for me because it takes place in Southwold in Suffolk where we used to live. In 1976, Stephen Grosz was president-elect of the Oxford University Psychoanalytic Society when he and the other nine members climbed into a minibus to make the journey to Southwold to meet Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund. Anna was the most famous living psychoanalyst. The seminar with Anna left Grosz unsatisfied; something was not quite right. Freud seemed distant. The day had been arranged by Dr Marie Battle Singer, a black American analyst of distinction. At the lunch afterwards, it was Singer who provided the inspiration for Grosz - she insisted the party of undergraduates dance and turned to Grosz and said: 'They tried to psychoanalyse the dance out of me - but they couldn't take that away from me. Don't let them do that to you.' Grosz realized that Freud looked to him and the others from Oxford as instruments to get psychoanalysis on the curriculum at the university. Singer, however, had showed him a way of being. 

Marie Battle Singer (1910-1985)

The book ends with the story of the analysis of Tobias, a sculptor who had fallen in love with Misaki from Japan. She commits suicide. This searing account serves to emphasize that the underworld is a necessary part of every analysis. To see the light you have to go down into the dark. 

Reading this book will take you deeper into the complexities of love and potentially increase your understanding. In the Epilogue, Grosz offers a beautiful definition of happiness: 'the sweetness of desiring what you have'. 'Love's Labour' is warmly recommended.