New Maladies of the Soul

by Julia Kristeva, Ross Guberman (Translator)

Overview

These days, who still has a soul? asks Julia Kristeva in her psychoanalytic exploration, New Maladies of the Soul. Hailed by Peter Brooks in the New York Times as "a critic of great psychoanalytic insight," Kristeva reveals to readers a new kind of patient, symptomatic of an age of political upheaval, mass-mediated culture, and the dramatic overhaul of familial and sexual mores. The book poses a troubling question about the human subject in the West today: Is the psychic space that we have traditionally known disappearing?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231099820
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/11/1995
Series:	European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 10.58(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

Kristeva offers a challenge for psychoanalaysis to open itself up again: to break down from its position of the one who is presumed to know.

International Journal of Psycho-Analysis

"Do you have a soul?" asks the first sentence of this book, and at the end the reader is still uncertain how the author answers that question. Based on the book's title, one guesses that Kristeva (The Old Man and the Wolves, LJ 12/94; Strangers to Ourselves, LJ 4/1/91) would answer in the affirmative. But what are these new maladies? There's nothing new about the psychiatric illnesses discussed in the first half of the book-obsession, perversions, and depression have been around for quite a while. The second half, entitled "History," rambles around world literature, with cryptic references in Lacanian doublespeak to the Bible, Madame de Stal, James Joyce, and the women's movement. A more appropriate opening might have been "Does this book have a point?" Large academic and research libraries whose patrons have postmodernist inclinations will need this book; others can skip it.-Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wa.

Library Journal

Kristeva draws on 15 years of experience as a practicing psychoanalyst to reveal a new kind of patient, symptomatic of an age of political upheaval, mass media culture, and deterioration of values. She reinterprets Freud and Lacan in light of this new type of patient, and discusses case studies that illustrate how common psychiatric disturbances are manifested in today's patient. She discusses women's experiences and contributions, and explores art, literature, and theories of language. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Kristeva once again demonstrates her uncanny ability to dissect and expose the bloody and erotic scenarios of psychic life.

Journal of Religion and Health