Historias de amor

by Julia Kristeva, Araceli Ramos Martín (Translator)

Ser psicoanalista es saber que todas las historias acaban hablando de amor. La queja que me confían los que balbucean a mi lado siempre tiene su origen en una falta de amor presente o pasada, real o imaginaria. Y sólo puedo entenderla si yo misma me sitúo en ese punto de infinito, dolor o arrebato. Con mi desfallecimiento, el otro compone el sentido de su aventura.
Nuestra sociedad no tiene ya código amoroso. En cada relato privado, íntimo, inconfesable, buscamos descifrar los meandros de ese mal que tiene una relación tan extraña con las palabras. Idealización, estremecimiento, exaltación, pasión; deseo de fusión, de catástrofe mortal tendida hacia la inmortalidad, el amor es la figura de las contradicciones insolubles, el laboratorio de nuestro destino.
¿Filosofía, religión, poesía, novela? Historias de amor, de Platón a santo Tomás, de Romeo y Julieta a Don Juan, de los trovadores a Stendhal, de la madona de Baudelaire a Bataille. Las grandes elaboraciones simbólicas no dicen nada que no se escuche en la sombra, cada día. Estar psíquicamente en vida significa estar enamorado, en análisis o presa de la literatura. Como si toda la historia humana no fuera más que una inmensa y permanente transferencia.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Feminism, Love, Psychoanalysis, Theory, Psychology

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).

Reviews

[Mike]

Julia Kristeva, most often in America thought off as a feminist or gender theorist akin to Cixous or Butler, is foremost a linguist concerned with literature and also a practicing psychoanalyst. It is from these approaches that she comes to us in this superb book. "Tales of Love" is concerned with all manner of love, from the Christian agape to sexual love to brotherly love to parental love. Via her close readings of literature ranging from the Bible to Shakespeare, Kristeva examines what the nature of love is via its many manifestations. When Kristeva examines romance and romantic love she is at her finest, using her vastly encompassing background in human psychology as well as her work on the early European novel and Proust to discern how literature and human experience alike render romance.

While meant mainly as a work of scholarship and probably most read by students and scholars approaching feminist issues via Kristeva's gaze or those interested in her work on literature, this book really is useful in understanding love on a primary, personal, level. I walked away after finishing it feeling that not only did I have a better understanding of literature and the literary use of romance, but also seeing how powerful and helpful Dr. Kristeva must be as a psychoanalyst because she is adeptly able to reach the core of human emotion. It is a long work but easy to approach in sections though it does require some background in Western literature and the classics to really appreciate in full.

[Elise]

It should not have come as a surprise, but this work is very Freudian. I could not make it through the entire thing. Kristeva posits, along with Freud, that there is only one libido, the male libido. It was at this point that I stopped reading the book, but I really should have quit before then for her constantly pathologizing homosexuality and relegating it to inferiority. Yes, it is a dated work (1983), but other feminists from even before this book was published were critiquing Freud or using Freudian concepts to sculpt feminist critiques, such as Laura Mulvey did in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975). Kristeva herself is supposedly a feminist, but really I could not tell by anything that I read in this book.

[Natalie]

“love is only for the time being and forever.”

[Jacob]

Certainly the most beautiful work on the subject of Narcissism, God, and Love ever attempted in the philosophical canon. Gift it to the Zizek fanboy in your life. Show him there's other ways to be a post-Lacanian.

[Annouchka]

a real exegesis. thank god for a theorist in possession of a heart!

[Ella]

I’m so exhausted by Freud.

[Jorge Obed Guevara Tirado]

Libro bastante difícil para personas que no estamos tan familiarizados con términos y conceptos psicológicos, al final me queda una sensación de insatisfacción pues creo que para poder haber abstraído toda la información del libro tendrían que haber leído alguna obras claves que se utilizan para abordar las diferentes teorías de la autora. En resumen , se podría decir que el libro es un análisis de los discursos amorosos a lo largo de la historia humana, desde "El cantar de los cantares" del Rey Salomón hasta "Rojo y Negro" de Stendhal. La autora al final del libro insinúa que la modernidad carece de un discurso amoroso ya que pareciera no poder desarrollarse uno propio del tiempo al cual pertenecemos, a lo mucho podemos vivir el amor a través de los discursos del pasado los cuales podemos entender por la evidencia dentro de las obras de Platón, Shakespeare, Baudaliare, Stendhal, Freud, Santo Tomas entre muchos otros.
Recomiendo el libro solamente si se tiene mucho tiempo libre o si se viven inquietudes respecto a la interpretación del amor en el espacio psíquico personal, no es un mal libro pero es un ensayo muy complejo el cual utiliza lenguaje académico para ordenar las ideas de la obra.

[jacob]

kristeva is by far the best psychoanalysis and while this work is poorly structured and a bit confused, it contains an absolutely admirable density of ideas. “love” is of course a massive topic and this should not be the first theory one reads on it, but kristeva takes a measured approach that neither over-categorizes nor over-idealizes love, allowing its many facets to be explored.

reading the book can be tough—the first section is an absolute brutality of freud and even some of the best parts require multiple rereads. but when it’s clicking - like in the historical tracing of narcissus/agape or in the amazing conclusion which serves as a manifesto for kristevan psychoanalysis - there is really nothing like that.

[Ari]

Dense esoteric labyrinth; fascinating, however unripe or undercooked; (Satisfyingly enough) gemmed with explications worth marking for reference and return. Owing to the texts scholarly nature, a proper formulation is left to be desired. The needle is rather loosely thread.

[Danae]

Excelente. Cargado al psicoanálisis pero de forma muy rigurosa. Con razón la señora Kristeva se desmarca de las lecturas recientes que le adjudican cosas nada que ver.

[ella]

starting this to heal from the Kr

[amélia ☆]

eu sabia!!!!!!

[Michael]

Kristeva tops Lacan, I think. She actually seems to be talking about human beings, and she is right about the imaginary.

[Shanna]

Forgotten in Oklahoma :(