A psychoanalyst uses storytelling to explore the complex and, for some women, all-consuming and difficult mother-daughter relationship. The prolific Chernin (My Life as a Boy, 1997; In My Father’s Garden, 1996; Crossing the Border, 1994; etc.) envisions the psychological life of women as made up of seven stages: idealizing the mother, seeing her from a new perspective and revising the idealized image, blaming the mother and feeling rage toward her, forgiving her, identifying with her, letting go of the attachment to her, and finally taking one’s life into one’s own hands. This latter stage is marked by a breakthrough moment that Chernin calls “giving birth to one’s mother.” The symbolic new mother can now give birth to the daughter’s new self, and thus is established a new mother-daughter relationship. To illustrate these stages, Chernin has created characters based loosely on real women she has known. The storytelling format varies: Sometimes Chernin introduces a character and has her tell her own mother-daughter story; sometimes Chernin narrates; sometimes Chernin and the storyteller interact in a dialogue. Yet there is a certain sameness to six of the seven stories—their main characters, whether abused, neglected, or controlled, seem to be singularly obsessed with their mothers. Only in the seventh, in which a mother recounts the ordeal of her daughter’s chaotic wedding preparations, does a bit of life-restoring humor emerge. Chernin presents her own mother and daughter in a banal epilogue that unintentionally raises the question of how differently those two might have written their scenes. Readers who identify with intense and troubled mother-daughter relationships may find Chernin’s views on women’s psychological development plausible and these accounts sympathetic and engrossing; others may find themselves muttering, “Get a life!”
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88096-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
A leading psychologist deploys his theories of perception and creativity to explain the success of prominent 20th-century leaders. Gardner (Harvard; Multiple Intelligences, 1993, etc.) links his theories of childhood perception to the practice of leadership in adults. In arguments that call to mind the classical tradition of rhetorical scholarship, he stresses the sheer importance of effective storytelling. His great leaders are capable of persuading and motivating diverse audiences with a variety of rhetorical techniques. Some of their most successful stories go beyond words to actions, gestures, and images and resemble the stories used by five-year-olds to organize their perception of the world. Gardner's stress on storytelling is worked out in biographical sketches of (mostly American) leaders, including Margaret Mead, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., George C. Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King. Thrown in to give his argument a cosmopolitan dimension are Pope John XXIII, Jean Monnet, and Margaret Thatcher, but the focus remains firmly Western, despite allusions to Gandhi. Simple stories are often the most effective, according to Gardner, who is a good storyteller himself. His tales of 20th-century leaders are simple but memorable. But his principle of selection remains puzzling: His list appears to have been chosen from those who have appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Furthermore, the beneficial influence of these leaders is taken for granted. Gardner quite rightly dismisses populist critics who downplay the importance of leadership. But he never addresses skeptics who take a dim view of the disastrous consequences of 20th-century military and geopolitical leadership, or the modern national security state that some of Gardner's heroes worked hard to create. With its reverence toward leadership, this celebratory book will be useful for seminars and conferences for aspiring leaders. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-08279-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A harrowing tale of one woman's journey into the depths of her own psychosis.
The author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (2005) searches for the root of her unbridled anger.
In the prologue, Zailckas sums up the impetus behind her second memoir: “I set out to write an objective book about modern remedies for anger and I ended up with an achingly personal account of why I went looking for remedies in the first place.” The story begins at the author’s low point—fresh from a break-up overseas—and quickly sweeps the reader into her desperate search for acceptance and compassion from a family that had rarely shown either. Her rocker ex-boyfriend—whom she humorously nicknames “the Lark” (“he shared the bird's talents for both singing and flight”)—was not the cause of her rage, however, but rather the entry point that allowed Zailckas to delve deeper into the anger issues that have long haunted her. While the author’s brutal depictions of rage—regularly directed at loved ones and strangers alike—often leaves the reader feeling slightly disgusted by the her egregious behavior, these strong feelings are the result of the reader's investment in the outcome. When Zailckas's therapist asked her to construct a personal ad, the author was unsure how to proceed: “Stunted rage-a-phobe seeks mother substitute for validation eternal? Must enjoy impassivity, mixed messages, and occasional blasts of displaced aggression?” Her sharp sense of self-deprecation, while comically dark, passes far beyond the boundaries of humor into a terrain of frank, and often brutal, self-assessment. Throughout, Zailckas is keenly aware of her inability to cope with anger. While the trajectory of this anger shifts from her boyfriend to her family, with the help of her therapist, she eventually hones in on its true source—her mother. Yet as the reader soon learns, discovering the source of her anger is only the first small step toward ridding herself of the problem.
A harrowing tale of one woman's journey into the depths of her own psychosis.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02230-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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