A theoretical review which has a guiding thread: the illumination of the impasses of binary thought and of the essentialist conceptions of women and the feminine. This title discusses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty and the passing of time.

Contents1 The feminine position: a heterogenous construction2 The feminine, the pre-discourse and the symbolic3 At the limits of the feminine: the Other4 The feminine in the middle stages of life 5 Love and power. The conditions of love in the Freudian discourse6 Itineraries of love life 7 Maternity and female sexuality in the light of the new reproductive techniques8 Femininity and desire 9 Toward a deconstruction of universal femininity 10 Between sex and gender: the paradigm of complexity