How to Be Real - by Stephen Frosh (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Profound, challenging and restorative - How to Be Real offers a path to a more radical future of the self, from one of the leading psychotherapeutic thinker of our times.

How to be Real tackles one of the most urgent questions: how can we thrive in a world that is so troubling and confusing? We are constantly being told that we must be 'authentic' and 'real' whilst our sense of reality is being undermined, fragmenting our experiences and dividing people from each other. In the face of such dilemmas Frosh argues that gaining a sense of reality requires us to face the complexity of modern life. We must learn to think more clearly and bravely about it, and to allow ourselves to develop a depth of feeling that may often be uncomfortable or even distressing to live with.

By working alongside thinkers such as Freud, Winnicott and Klein, Frosh argues that we must look to what connects us and appreciate how authenticity depends on the quality of relationships we form with each other. Consequently, 'how to be real' has political as well as psychological and ethical implications. It is out of such disruptive complexity that human depth and relational integrity arise. Frosh pursues this through an exploration of childhood and the development of the self, of why and how we put up defences against reality, and of what hate means. The book describes how we might turn the ghosts that trouble us into ancestors that enrich our lives. It asks us to be brave enough to seek solidarity with others and, finally, to find the humanity in death.

About the Author

Stephen Frosh is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. He is one of the founders of Psychosocial Studies in the UK, bringing together sociological and psychological (especially psychoanalytic) perspectives. He has published over 20 books as well as over 150 academic articles. He is co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies (2024) and the Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Jewish Studies (2025).