How to be Real: A Survival Guide in Challenging Times - Stephen Frosh

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.

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: September 2025

Format: Hardback

Pages: 256

Dimensions: 14.63 x 2.03 x 21.72 cm