Does for spirituality what Sophie's World did for philosophy. Theo is fourteen, very clever, reads a lot, loves computer games and the Greek myths. But then, suddenly, he falls ill. His rich aunt Martha decides that they must roam the world to find a cure for his malaise. What follows is a tour of the world's religions and religious sites, with the sceptical, quizzical Theo being shown the varieties and depths of faith that exist in other places, other cultures. All this is handled with real style, pace, wit and clarity. The book is a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to why and how people believe in their God - even Dave Allen would have liked it.

'A strength of the book is its effective balancing of essays that critique traditional religious structures and those that construct radical new modes of thinking about the divine.' - Kelley Raab, St. Lawrence University, Religious Studies Review

Catherine Clement analyzes the plots of over thirty prominent operas -- Otello and Siegfried to Madame Butterfly and Magic Flute -- through the lenses of feminism and literary theory to unveil the negative messages about women in stories familiar to every opera listener.

The Weary Sons of Freud lambasts mainstream psychoanalysis for its failure to grapple with pressing political and social matters pertinent to its patients' condition. Gifted with insight and compelled by fury, Catherine Clement contrasts the original, inspirational psychoanalytical work of Freud and Lacan to the obsessive imitations of their uninspired followers-the weary sons of Freud. The analyst's once attentive ear has become deaf to the broader questions of therapeutic practice. Clement asks whether the perspective of socialism, brought to this study by a woman who is herself an analysand, can fill the gap. She reflects on her own history, as well as on that of psychoanalysis and the French left, to show what an activist and feminist restoration of the talking cure might look like.

A comparison of Western and Indian philosophies using syncope, to describe the escape from self and the rapture of uncertainty in human endeavour.

Published in France as La jeune née in 1975, and found here in its first English translation, The Newly Born Woman is a landmark text of the modern feminist movement. In it, Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément put forward the concept of écriture feminine, exploring the ways women’s sexuality and unconscious shape their imaginary, their language, and their writing. Through their readings of historical, literary, and psychoanalytic accounts, Cixous and Clément explore what is hidden and repressed in culture, revealing the unconscious of history.

The Call of the Trance is a magnificent book that takes us to the unchartered frontiers of the forbidden. From initiation ceremonies to crises of hysteria, from suicide attempts to the ecstasies of witches, Catherine Clement explores in simple but scholarly terms the responses that civilizations have offered to the humanistic need for escape from the body. These "eclipses" from life and reality, pursued by people across cultures, are elusive and invariably inexpressible. Clement details this phenomenon through the past and the present, from the witches of Loudun to current Mongolian shamans and from the eighteenth-century convulsionaries of Saint-Medard to Greeks of today, who follow in the footsteps of their earlier practices. Along the way, she questions the countless ways humans push back the limits of the mind and body, and she shows how, from Dionysian antiquity to our own day, the ecstasy of the trance state shows up in anorexia, rock music, rap, sexual reassignment, eroticism, and even Twilight-style vampire stories.

Germany, 1975. Two women near the end of their lives come together at the bedside of an old man, after having spent the last fifty years vying for first place in his heart. While one of the 20th century's greatest minds slumbers in the grip of nightmares, the two enemies sit in a nearby room and declare a truce. One is the man's wife, a woman who has always played her role as the devoted mother and the obedient, bourgeois Hausfrau to the Great Man and the tyrannical husband. The other is his former student and lover, nearly twenty years his junior. She is the Jewish intellectual consumed by her clear-sightedness. He is the brilliant and famous philosopher, now tormented by his Nazi past.
In this wide-ranging score, each performer has an individual theme, yet each shares some of the notes of the others. But, above all, this fugue for three voices reveals the mark of the greatest tragedy of the century: for the characters are Martin Heidegger, his wife Elfriede, and Hannah Arendt.
Catherine Clement skillfully paints a chiaroscuro portrait of forbidden love, recreating a famous love affair while turning the subtle intricacies of philosophy into memorable, enduring fiction.