The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Why Can't We Sleep?

Why Can't We Sleep?

Summary

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Why Can't We Sleep by Darian Leader.

One in four adults sleeps badly. Sleeping pill prescriptions have increased dramatically over the last three decades and our bookshelves and browser histories are littered with experts promising to 'fix' our insomnia.

But is this so-called sleep crisis anything new? Our relationship to sleep has always been irregular and changeable, variously shaped by social conventions, commercial imperatives and personal psychologies. Look beneath the headlines and it seems that there is no such thing as a perfect night's sleep.

Here 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.

About the author

Darian Leader

Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst and the author of many books, including The New Black, What Is Madness? and Is It Ever Just Sex?. He practises psychoanalysis in London, and he is a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts UK.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more