Saturday 9th February 2019
11.30- 14.30
Grand Canal Hotel, Grand Canal Street Upper, D04 X5X7
How and why do we sleep? What keeps us awake?
Darian Leader, psychoanalyst and author, weaves together cultural, social, economic and psychoanalytic influences in pursuit of the truth about insomnia
One in three adults sleeps badly. Sleeping pill prescriptions have increased dramatically over recent times. Bookshelves and browser histories are littered with experts promising to ‘fix’ our insomnia.
But is this so-called sleep crisis anything new? It seems our relationship to sleep has always been irregular and changeable, shaped by social conventions, commercial imperatives and personal psychologies. Beneath the headlines and the promised ‘cures’, it seems that there is no such thing as a perfect night’s sleep.
Darian Leader reveals the history and pathology of sleeplessness – from the industrial revolution to Freudian dream analysis to the fears around blue light on our phones. Along the way, he dispels the pervasive myths and anxieties around this most universal human experience.
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Darian Leader is a 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, Strictly Bipolar, and Hands.
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.
Photo Credit: Angus Muir