How to Be Real - by Stephen Frosh (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From a leading psychoanalytic thinker, a profound, challenging and restorative book charting a path to a radical future for the self

In How to Be Real, leading psychosocial thinker Stephen Frosh tackles one of our most urgent questions: how can we thrive in a world so troubling and confusing? Despite constant exhortations to be 'authentic' and 'real', our sense of reality is undermined by the complexity of the modern world. Getting in touch with reality means facing up squarely to this complexity.

Drawing on thinkers such as Freud, Winnicott and Klein, Frosh argues that we must look to what connects us. Authenticity depends on the quality of our human relationships. Consequently, the question of 'how to be real' has political as well as psychological and ethical implications. What seems merely disruptive can be the wellspring from which human depth and relational integrity arise.

By exploring childhood and the development of the self, the whys and wherefores behind our defences against reality, and the meaning of hate, Frosh shows how we can turn the ghosts that trouble us into ancestors that enrich our lives. We must be brave enough to seek solidarity with others and, finally, to find the humanity in death. How to Be Real is a bold and necessary guide to finding your radical self in difficult times.

Review Quotes

"With far-reaching expertise and crystal clarity, Stephen Frosh tackles what we all want to grasp, "how to be real", knowing that the messiness of life means we can never be fully sure of our own sense of authenticity. In these pages, Frosh addresses the necessary illusions that daily sustain us as we try to confront, or more often work to camouflage, our inevitably dependent, insecure and vulnerable lives. A crucial text for all of us."
--Lynne Segal, author of Lean on Me: A Radical Politics of Care

"Frosh brings sagacity, verve and deep ethical understanding to his survival guide. Rarely have the social, political and psychoanalytical been bound together in one book with such lucidity - all in the service of confronting our current ills."
--Lisa Appignanesi, author of MAD, BAD AND SAD: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND THE MIND DOCTORS

"We only become real for ourselves by first acknowledging the reality of others - who may have different ideas of what's real. It's just one lesson from this indispensable survival guide to a reality many of us, in a world grown too frightening and uncertain, are seeking to escape. Yet the wisdom and timeliness of this remarkable book is that it shows what being real can also mean: not only reckoning with life's harshest truths, but possessing life's deepest pleasures and possibilities as well."
--Devorah Baum, author of On Marriage

"Stephen Frosh is an excellent and humane guide to the meanings of selfhood in challenging times. His book leads us through a maze of debates, thought experiments, and arguments. It'll be of immediate interest to anyone grappling with the implications of the AI revolution for psychological therapies. A timely, readable, and fascinating introduction."
--Daniel Pick, author of Brainwashed

"Frosh wants us to show up fully to our overwhelmed, over-mediated, and politically fractured twenty-first-century reality. How to Be Real is a lament and a lifeline. In a world where the self is constantly under assault--by narcissistic leaders, simulacra of social media, and the soft lies we tell ourselves--Frosh turns to psychoanalysis, that surreal and unruly science born a century ago, for a path back towards reality. This is not a self-help book, not exactly. It's something more ethically demanding: a call to live with discomfort, vulnerability, and truth.'"
--Jamieson Webster, author of On Breathing

"In an age of platitudinous pop wisdom and facile quick fixes, Stephen Frosh offers us something more difficult and infinitely richer: a penetrating anatomy of the complex weave of psychic, social and political forces that help and hinder our sense of the world's and our own reality."
--Josh Cohen, author of All The Rage

"Addresses some key questions, from birth until death, of our present age. Can we live full lives at a time when we are overwhelmed by unreal influences? How do we grieve, listen to the ghosts of the past, engage with strangers, recognize inauthenticity? Stephen Frosh has a profound understanding of these questions based on years of experience as a sociopsychologist."
--Bryan Cheyette, author of The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction

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 twenty 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).