The New Black
Mourning, Melancholia and Depression
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leader the British psychoanalyst who famously described shrinks as "mutants scavenging after a nuclear holocaust" gives the profession a sound scolding for mishandling and misunderstanding depression. Our current idea of depression, he says, was created to fit the symptoms (such as insomnia and lack of appetite) that antidepressants treat. Leader goes back to Freud's classic 1917 essay, "Mourning and Melancholia," to show what depression is really about: the loss of an important relationship. He presents a thorough and thoughtful review of what happens when the work of mourning ("detaching ourselves from the loved ones we have lost") or melancholia (where what is lost is not so obvious to the patient) goes undone. He also rails at the erosion of public mourning rituals that can ease the process. Leader manages to bring not just a fresh look at Freud and grieving but adds rich context from his own case studies and the culture around us, from John Cleese's hilarious eulogy for his Monty Python colleague Graham Chapman to Brokeback Mountain. It's an astounding analysis of a pressing mental health issue that melds old and new.
