Is It Ever Just Sex?

By: Darian Leader

Narrated by: Dakota Blue Richards

Brought to you by Penguin.

A delightfully thought-provoking study of why we have sex, from award-winning psychoanalyst Darian Leader

‘It was just sex…’
It’s a familiar claim. But it’s also an impossibility, as Darian Leader shows in this delightfully thought-provoking study.
Our bodies aren’t just sticks that make fire when you rub them together, and our minds don’t simply stand by – as we can see from the pain, heartache and regret that so often accompany the highs of sexual excitement.
As acclaimed psychoanalyst Darian Leader argues, with his trademark clarity, energy and wit, sex is always about so much more than itself – it’s about phantasy, anxiety, guilt, revenge, violence, love. Drawing on his long analytic experience, historical research and case studies to explore their importance to every aspect of our sexual lives, Leader brilliantly reveals what we are really thinking about when we think about sex – and what we are really doing when we do it.


‘Insanely readable! I loved it’ Slavoj Žižek

'A thoroughly engaging and ever-illuminating read' iNews

'One of our most important contemporary thinkers' Guardian

'Leader is as much a philosopher as a psychoanalyst and his ideas are engrossing and enlightening' Metro

©2023 Darian Leader (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Sensitively written and full of insight . . . Leader’s examples are highly accessible . . . undoubtedly compelling

The revered psychoanalyst has penned a thoughtful book about our everyday sexual lives – and why there is no such thing as “just sex”. With a convincing argument as to why it is so much more than that, this is a thoroughly engaging and ever-illuminating read

Leader writes beautifully, with majestic clarity and an easy flow between argument and case-study