This book is concerned with the notion of the "stranger" -the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own- as well as the notion of strangeness within the self -a person's deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self. Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle (...) Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. She discusses the legal status of foreigners throughout history, gaining perspective on our own civilization. Her insights into the problems of nationality, particularly in France are more timely and relevant in an increasingly integrated and fractious world. (shrink)

Finally, several contributors provide a sampling of international perspectives on the impact of AIDS in other nations. When AIDS was first recognized in 1981, most experts believed that it was a plague, a virulent unexpected disease. They thought AIDS, as a plague, would resemble the great epidemics of the past; it would be devastating but would soon subside, perhaps never to return. The media as well as many policy makers accepted this historical analogy. Much of the response to AIDS in (...) the United States and abroad during the first five years of the epidemic assumed that it could be addressed by severe emergency measures that would reassure a frightened population while signaling social concern for the sufferers and those at risk of contracting the disease. By the middle 1980s, however, it became increasingly clear that AIDS was a chronic infection, not a classic plague. (shrink)

This book contains 13 main entries on the basic Kleinian concepts - splitting, paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, projective identification, envy, internal objects - along with numerous entries on subsidiary concepts and the main post-Kleinian writers - Bion, Segal, Rosenfeld, Joseph and Meltzer.