Is today's thinking conditioned by body-mind dualism? A rebellion against the biological order seems to have silently infiltrated our world view. Suicide bombers appear to share the fascination with destruction, of writers such as Mishima, Pasolini and Foucault. A liberation from the body to reestablish a - possibly mystical - union of soul and cosmos and an assertion of the mind's omnipotence appear to be common features of forms of behaviour that seem to be taken for granted in contemporary thought. Is the new misogyny, which rejects motherhood in the name of feminism, contributing in any way to these trends? This review of our society by a woman psychoanalyst - a non-medic and graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris - presents a sharp and rigorous analysis of the strange and violent mechanisms that are erupting in the world today.

Translated by: Sophie Leighton