Hands: What We Do with Them – and Why - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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, 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.

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'Leader writes beautifully, with majestic clarity and an easy flow between argument and case-study' Telegraph
'Urbane and literary, [Leader is] possessed of a range of cultural reference that takes him beyond a narrow circle of initiates' Independent

'Imagine an Umberto Eco more into the self than semiotics, or Oliver Sacks as an agony aunt. Brilliant' Guardian

Aus dem Klappentext

For anyone curious about how human beings work, the answers are hidden in plain sight: in our hands.

The history of civilisation is a history driven and defined by how we have kept our hands busy. From early tools to machinery, from fists to knives to guns, from papyrus to QWERTY to a swipeable screen, the hands have always been kept occupied.

We might assume there are obvious reasons for this incessant activity - our hands are a functional tool for navigating the world. But in reality there is much more at play than mere necessity. Why can't we keep our hands still? How are physical gestures linked to mental turbulence? And what might this reveal about ourselves?

Drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, modern technology and child development, Hands presents a unique and fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands, and why.