What is Madness?

Description

The widely acclaimed author of The New Black returns with this brilliant exploration of madness What separates the sane from the mad? How can we 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. And by exploring 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.

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and the author of Introducing Lacan, Why do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?, Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late, Freud's Footnotes, Stealing the Mona Lisa, Why do People Get Ill, co-written with David Corfield, The New Black, What Is Madness, and Strictly Bipolar. He practises psychoanalysis in London, and he is a member of the College of Psychoanalysts and a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. His new book, Hands, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in July 2016.

Engrossing and enlightening . . . Leader is as much a philosopher as a psychoanalyst * Metro * Fascinating, humane and timely . . . Leader forces us to rethink our assumptions about 'mental health' with a formidable grasp of psychiatric history and a storyteller's flair for detail -- Lisa Appignanesi * New Statesman * Witty, probing . . . A myth-busting diagnosis of the method in our madness * Independent * Wonderful * Bookseller * [Says] something that very much needs to be said * Irish Times *