Symptoms are disguised communications, not random malfunctions

Grosz repeatedly shows that behaviors patients experience as inexplicable — sudden panic, compulsive lying, self-sabotage right before success — are rarely arbitrary. They function as a kind of coded message about a conflict the person cannot yet consciously articulate or tolerate feeling directly.

In one recurring pattern he describes, patients who lie compulsively are often not seeking to deceive for gain but are managing an unbearable feeling of being exposed or inadequate, with the lie serving as a shield against a deeper shame they haven't found words for. The symptom, in other words, is doing psychological work, even though it looks purely destructive from the outside.

Grosz's therapeutic method treats the symptom as a starting clue rather than the target to eliminate directly — understanding what the behavior is protecting the person from is what eventually loosens its grip, more than confronting the behavior itself.

Takeaway: before trying to stop a self-destructive pattern, ask what feeling it might be protecting you from facing.