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.

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. Choice

• 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