My Mother, My Daughter, My Self

My Mother, My Daughter, My Self is a significant self-revelatory work which chronicles the separation process between mother and child, focusing most specifically on the mother/daughter relationship. The book asks a core question for all mothers and adult children: how do we perform the perplexing, sometimes terrifying act of separation from our mothers and our children while simultaneously marching toward the unknown terrain of individuality? How do we yield to this inevitable process of emotional separation from that which was once our own self? The author uses her own experiences as a daughter, as a mother of a newly-adopted baby, and as a psychoanalyst to explore an essential truth: that our relationships with our mothers affect our other significant love relationships, our values, our self-esteem, and our sense of satisfaction, often throughout the whole of our lives. She also uses the experiences of some of her patients, taken from her forty years as a practicing clinician, to provide further fascinating insights and illustration.Readers are gifted with both an internal parenting 'guide' as well as a deeply profound memoir about the internal process of being a mother that is so crucial, yet rarely looked at so intently.