Description: Her analysis deals with the role of narcissism and idealization in the formation of a love object. She accounts for the role of the death drive by coining the term "love/hate."
Brief description: Julia Kristeva is professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works and novels, including The Severed Head: Capital Visions, This Incredible Need to Believe, Hatred and Forgiveness, and Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila, all published by Columbia. She is the recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought and the Holberg International Memorial Prize.
Review Quotes: 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"