Assuming the voices of psychoanalyst, scholar, and postmodern polimicist, Kristeva discusses both the conflicts and commonalities among the Greek, Christian, Romantic and contemporary discourses on love, desire, and self... the analytical work is punctuated throughout by the personal, so that intelligently moving thoughts on motherhood aptly intervene. Kristeva makes a very strong case for the claim that the goal of analysis is not a truth in, but a dynamic rebirth of, the analysand via language.

Julia Kristeva, internationally known psychoanalyst and critic, is Professor of Linguistics at the University de Paris VII. She has hosted a French television series and is the author of many critically acclaimed books published by Columbia University Press in translation, including Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature and the novel, Possessions.

Translator's Note
In Praise of LoveI.
Freud and Love: Treatment and its Discontents
II.
Manic Eros, Sublime Eros: On Male Sexuality
A Holy Madness: She and He
III.
Narcissus: The New Insanity
Our Faith: The Seeming
IV.
God is Love
Ego Affectus Est. Bernard of Clairvaux: Affetc, Desire, Love
Ratio Diligendi, or the Triumph of One's Own. Thomas Aquinas: Natural Love and Love of Self
V.
Don Juan or Loving to be Able to
Romeo and Juliet: Love-Hatred in the Couple
Stabat Mater
VI.
Throes of Love: The Field of the Metahpor
The Troubadours: From "Great Courtly Romance" to Allegorical Narrative
A Pure Silence: The Perfection of Jeanne Guyon
Baudelaire, or Infinity, Perfume, and Punk
Stendhal and the Politics of the Gaze: An Egotist's Love
Bataille and the Sun, or the Guilty Text
Extraterrestrials Suffering for Want of LoveNotes