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.

Why Do People Get Ill: Exploring The Mind Body Connection

Corfield, David

Leader, Darian

Self-Help

Penguin Uk

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. 'His orthodox, psychoanalytical approach, produces an unpredictable, occasionally brilliant book. The New Black is a mixture of Freudian text, clinical assessments and Leader's own brand of gentle wisdom' Herald 'Compelling and important . . . an engrossing and wise book' Hanif Kureishi 'There are many self-help books on the market . . . The New Black is a book that might actually help' Independent Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of The New Black, Strictly Bipolar, Why do women write more letters than they post?, Promises lovers make when it gets late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.

The New Black: Mourning Melancholia And Depression

Death & Grief

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.
'A terrific intellectual stylist' Joseph O' Neill, Guardian
'Engrossing and enlightening . . . Leader is as much a philosopher as a psychoanalyst' Metro
'The mad . . . have been segregated and often confined; for fear, perhaps, that they will contaminate the rest of us. But as Darian Leader brilliantly shows, things are never so simple' Hanif Kureshi, Independent
'Provides valuable insights into how psychiatry can help those who have suffered psychosis to rebuild their lives' Sunday Times
'Witty, probing. A myth-busting diagnosis of the method in our madness' Independent
'Leader's insights could have radical consequences for the way we regard madness' Daily Telegraph
'Fascinating. A formidable grasp of psychiatric history and a storyteller's flair for detail. What Leader does so effectively is to give us a sense of what it might be like to live inside the mind of a psychotic. A humane and timely book' New Statesman 'Superb insights, brilliant' Observer
'One of our most important contemporary thinkers' Guardian
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of The New Black, Strictly Bipolar, Why do women write more letters than they post?, Promises lovers make when it gets late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.

What is Madness?

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Penguin

Have you ever wondered why people get ill when they do? How does the mind affect the body? Why does modern medicine seem to have so little interest in the unconscious processes that can make us fall ill? And what, if anything, can we do about it? "Why Do People Get Ill?" lucidly explores the relationship between our minds and our bodies. Containing remarkable case studies, cutting-edge research and startling new insights into why we fall ill, this intriguing and thought-provoking book should be read by anyone who cares about their own health and that of other people.

Why Do People Get Ill

Hamish Hamilton

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.

New Black,The: Mourning Melancholia And Depression

Madness, in our culture, is defined by visibility. From the popular press to TV soaps and films, the depiction of madness always borders on the extreme: violent outbursts, fits, hallucinations. But what if madness is not exactly what we think it to be? What if it is the rule rather than the exception? And what if its defining features are not visible and dramatic but, on the contrary, highly discreet, shared by average citizens who will never come to psychiatric attention? What if, in other words, there is a difference between being mad and going mad? Beginning and ending with the case of Harold Shipman - a mass-murderer so apparently 'normal' that some of his patients said they would still be treated by him even after his conviction - psychoanalyst Darian Leader explores the idea of discreet madness, and argues that it is only through revising our concept of what madness is that we will have the tools to help those who have gone mad to rebuild their lives.

What Is Madness?

Psychology & Counseling

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.
Praise for Strictly Bipolar: 
'A beautifully thoughtful understanding not just of highs and lows,mania and depression, but of why and how these mechanisms work in our mindsand bodies and how the human subject is coerced todayto embrace a culture of 'bipolarity'' Susie Orbach
'A timely book. Darian Leader's thoughts are more fixated strong-arm interesting, more humane and more persuasive than the profit coercion of the madness industry. Instead of the shoddy reasoning that leads to wrong treatment and over-treatment, he offers illumination and insight; his book is a contribution to a debate, but it could also change lives' Hilary Mantel 
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of What is Madness?, The New Black, Why do women write more letters than they post?, Promises lovers make when it gets late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.

Strictly Bipolar

Science & Math

How much do you really know about your own hands?
Throughout history , civilisations have been defined by the work of human hands: inventing tools, writing records, operating machinery, typing, texting, swiping. But beneath this known history is another, secret story: our hands are not the obedient servants that they seem to be. Through conscious and unconscious gesture, they reveal our deepest psychology, our weaknesses and obsessions, our personal history and our social conditioning. 
Why do zombies walk with their hands outstretched? How does a new-born baby 'talk' with his hands? What is the connection between prayer beads, snuff boxes and cell phones? And most importantly, can we unlock the mystery of our hands in order to truly know ourselves?
The key to understanding everything around you - and everything within you - is staring you in the face. Take a journey through fascinating anecdotes and brilliant psychoanalytic research, through a legacy of ideas from da Vinci to Dickens to Die Hard. With wit and dexterity, Darian Leader reveals that there's much more to your hands than meets the eye.

Hands: What We Do with Them – and Why

Why do men tend to keep love letters in files along with their other correspondence, whereas women often keep them with their clothes? And if a letter is written but not sent, at whom is it really directed? As 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. Why Do Women Write More Letters than They Send? is a provocative inquiry into the fundamental loneliness of each sex. Although a woman is essential to a man's sexual life, why is the reverse far from the case? Why should 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 toward him exactly as his mother did when he was a boy? Why might a woman decide not to spend the night with a man after seeing his apartment, whereas for a man this would be unthinkable? And have you ever loved someone who did not make you feel guilty? A unique contribution to the study of the sexes, Why Do Women Write More Letters than They Send? moves from high to low culture as it teases out the intriguing, at times startling, insights of contemporary psychoanalysis.

Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Send?: A Meditation On The Loneliness Of The Sexes

Relationships

Basic Books

Why do people open their mouths when surprised? Why do men often have a compulsion to count things? What is the female Oedipus complex? Why are self-help manuals less complicated than stereo instructions? These are among the questions addressed in this examination of love, promises and fidelity.

Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late

Faber Paperbacks

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leader, Darian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Leader, Darian