Darian Leader on Psychosis

Lambeth and Southwark Mind's 2016 annual lecture. Darian Leader, a leading thinker and psychoanalyst, talks about the importance of thinking about psychosis and our responses to it. We can see the psychotic individual as attempting forms of self-cure, and the role of the analyst maybe to act as "secretary", to help this process. This modest role is in fact crucial in holding the patient together. This is one of many ideas formulated in this wide ranging lecture.

Books by Darian Leader:

• Hands: What We Do with Them - and Why

• On the Marketing of Depression

• What is Madness?

• The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression

• Why do women write more letters than they post?

• Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection

• Strictly Bipolar

• Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide

Hands: What We Do with Them - and Why by Darian Leader

Buy Hands: What We Do with Them - and Why here. - Free delivery worldwide

Why do zombies walk with their arms outstretched? How can newborn babies grip an adult finger tightly enough to dangle unsupported from it? And why is everyone constantly texting, tapping and scrolling?

For anyone curious about how human beings work, the answers are hidden in plain sight: in our hands. From early tools to machinery -- from fists to knives to guns -- from papyrus to QWERTY to a swipeable screen -- the history of civilization is a history of what humans do with their hands. We have always kept our hands occupied, and if mankind's story is marked out by profound changes in how we use our hands, it is also marked by underlying patterns that never change. And as much as the things we do with our hands reflect our psychological state, they can also change that state profoundly...

Drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, modern technology and clinical research, Darian Leader presents a unique and fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands - and why.

Also by Darian Leader:

• On the Marketing of Depression

• What is Madness?

• The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression

• Why do women write more letters than they post?

• Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection

• Strictly Bipolar

• Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide

Darian Leader on the Marketing of Depression

The New Black is Darian Leader's compassionate and illuminating exploration of melancholy

Buy The New Black here. - Free delivery worldwide

What happens when we lose someone we love? A death, a separation or the break-up of a relationship are some of the hardest times we have to live through. We may fall into a nightmare of depression, lose the will to live and see no hope for the future. What matters at this crucial point is whether or not we are able to mourn.

In this important and groundbreaking book, acclaimed psychoanalyst and writer Darian Leader urges us to look beyond the catch-all concept of depression to explore the deeper, unconscious ways in which we respond to the experience of loss. In so doing, we can loosen the grip it may have upon our lives.

The psychoanalyst Darian Leader has established himself as an elegant and erudite voice of Lacanian theory in academic yet popular books commenting on love, the sexes, the history of psychoanalysis, the mind and the body.

Buy The New Black here. - Free delivery worldwide

His most recent books include: What is Madness?; The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression; Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?; Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops us from Seeing; Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection (with David Corfield); Strictly Bipolar; and Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide (with Judy Groves)

What is Madness? by Darian Leader

Buy What is Madness? here. - Free delivery worldwide

What is Madness? is Darian Leader's probing study of madness, sanity, and everything in between

What separates the sane from the mad? How hard or easy is it to tell them apart? And what if the difference is really between being mad and going mad?

In this landmark work Darian Leader undermines common conceptions of madness. Through case studies like the apparently 'normal' Harold Shipman, he shows that madness rarely conforms to standard models. What is Madness? explores the idea of quiet madness - that at times many of us live interior lives that are far from sane but allow us to function normally and unthreateningly - he argues that we must seek a new way to assess, treat and deal with those suffering mental health problems.

What is Madness? is Darian Leader's radically insightful and masterfully convincing exploration of a painful, complex but endlessly fascinating area of humanity.

See also

Darian Leader on the Marketing of Depression

His most recent books include: What is Madness?; The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression; Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?; Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops us from Seeing; Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection (with David Corfield); Strictly Bipolar; and Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide (with Judy Groves)

Strictly Bipolar by Darian Leader

Buy Strictly Bipolar here. - Free delivery worldwide

Strictly Bipolar is Darian Leader's treatise on the psychological disorder of our times.

If the post-war period was called the 'Age of Anxiety' and the 1980s and '90s the 'Antidepressant Era', we now live in Bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike, with child prescriptions this decade increasing by 400% and overall diagnoses by 4000%.

What could explain this explosion of bipolarity? Is it a legitimate diagnosis or the result of Big Pharma marketing? Exploring these questions, Darian Leader challenges the rise of 'bipolar' as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and argues that we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression.

What, he asks, do these experiences have to do with love, guilt and rage? Why the spending sprees and the intense feeling of connection with the world? Why the confidence, the self-esteem and the sense of a bright future that can so swiftly turn into despair and dejection?

Only by looking at these questions in a new way will we be able to understand and help the person caught between feelings that can be so terrifying and so exhilarating, so life-affirming yet also so lethal.

Strictly Bipolar is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary views of the self, bipolarity and a deeper understanding of manic-depression.

Buy Strictly Bipolar here. - Free delivery worldwide

See also

What is Madness? by Darian Leader

Why do women write more letters than they post? by Darian Leader

Buy Why do women write more letters than they post? here.

Why do men tend to keep love letters in files along with their other correspondence, whereas women keep them with their clothes? And if a letter is written but not posted, at whom is it really directed? As psychoanalyst Darian Leader shows, such questions go to the heart of sexual desire, which is never addressed to our flesh and blood companion, but always to something beyond him or her. In an engaging, at times startling, enquiry into the fundamental loneliness of each sex, Leader asks why relationships frequently run aground on the trivial question, 'What are you thinking?' If a man chooses as his partner a woman unlike his mother, why does he try to make her behave towards him exactly as his mother did, when he was a boy? And why might a woman decide not to spend the night with a man, after one glimpse of his apartment?

Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection

Buy Why Do People Get Ill? here.

Have you ever wondered why we get ill?

Can our thoughts and feelings worsen or even cause conditions like heart disease, cancer or asthma?

And what – if anything – can we do about it?

Why Do People Get Ill? explores the relationship between what’s going on in our heads and what happens in our bodies, combining the latest research with neglected findings from medical history. With remarkable case studies and startling new insights into why we fall ill, this intriguing book should be read by anyone who cares about their own health and that of other people.

The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression by Darian Leader

Buy The New Black here. - Free delivery worldwide

The New Black is Darian Leader's compassionate and illuminating exploration of melancholy

What happens when we lose someone we love? A death, a separation or the break-up of a relationship are some of the hardest times we have to live through. We may fall into a nightmare of depression, lose the will to live and see no hope for the future. What matters at this crucial point is whether or not we are able to mourn.

In this important and groundbreaking book, acclaimed psychoanalyst and writer Darian Leader urges us to look beyond the catch-all concept of depression to explore the deeper, unconscious ways in which we respond to the experience of loss. In so doing, we can loosen the grip it may have upon our lives.

Also by Darian Leader:

• On the Marketing of Depression

• What is Madness?

• Why do women write more letters than they post?

• Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection

• Strictly Bipolar

• Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide

Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide

Buy Introducing Lacan here. - Free delivery worldwide

Jacques Lacan is now regarded as a major psychoanalytical theorist alongside Freud and Jung, although recognition has been delayed by fierce arguments over his ideas. Written by a leading Lacanian analyst, "Introducing Lacan" guides the reader through his innovations, including his work on paranoia, his addition of structural linguistics to Freudianism and his ideas on the infant 'mirror phase'. It also traces Lacan's influence in postmodern critical thinking on art, literature, philosophy and feminism. This is the ideal introduction for anyone intrigued by Lacan's ideas but discouraged by the complexity of his writings.

~ Lacan For Beginners
~ Free Ebook - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis 

.. with great equanimity, lacan recovers from an assault by a disgruntled student

See also: 

Introducing Slavoj Zizek: A Graphic Guide 

Introducing Freud: A Graphic Guide To The Father Of Psychoanalysis