Alice had her looking glass, the Evil Queen spoke to the magic mirror on the wall and J.K. Rowling explored the Mirror of Erised in her Harry Potter novels. What did they have in common? All of these mirrors represented distortions of mothers and the offspring who gazed upon them.

“If you also see your mother when you look in the mirror, you are not alone,” says Laura Arens Fuerstein Ph.D., author of MY MOTHER, MY MIRROR: RECOGNIZING AND MAKING THE MOST OF INHERITED SELF-IMAGES. Fuerstein, an analytic therapist with over 30 years of clinical experience, explores a mother’s influence without blaming Mom. “This book does not point the finger at your mother for your problems. Instead it highlights a hidden pattern passed on from mother to daughter that distorts each mother’s self-image, which she unwittingly transmits to her daughter.”

Lively examples of the dance of dysfunctional relationships presented in MY MOTHER, MY MIRROR draw on well-known movies, plays, novels, fairytales, personal narrative and biographies of such famous daughters as Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Sylvia Plath and Eleanor Roosevelt. Their twisted pas de deux was the result of a distorted self-image the author refers to as the Carnival Mirror.

But the Carnival Mirror can be smashed and replaced with a glass that reflects a truer self. Fuerstein helps readers to identify the distortions, confront their source, safely feel the emotions they stir and move beyond them to a better understanding of the mother who generated the image and an ability to lessen the daughter’s chance of inheriting it.

Examples include such famous Mother/Daughter pairs as:

• Little Girl Mother and Mini Momma Daughter (Judy Garland)
   

• Jealous Queen Mother and Snow White Daughter (Jacqueline Onassis)
   

• Stage Mother and Show Girl Daughter (Natalie Wood)
   

• Out-at-Sea Mother and Adrift Daughter (Princess Diana)

These Carnival Mirror images are often implicated in eating disorders, body image and sexual problems, substance abuse, depression, parenting, career and marital issues especially when the daughter marries a male version of her mother.

To help women move past unhealthy inherited self-perception Fuerstein introduces five thought links that sharpen focus and feeling. The thought links are:

1. Separating mother and daughter self-images.

2. Uncovering hidden anger at the childhood mother.

3. Uncovering hidden love for the childhood mother.

4. Uncovering hidden sadness related to the childhood mother.

5. Building on earlier thought links to find a truer self-image.

At the end of each chapter, MY MOTHER, MY MIRROR provides thought-provoking questions for reflection, writing touch tools to record feelings the chapter evokes, and reading touch tools that link the chapter with insightful literature. This perceptive book from a leading expert in women’s issues will make a fundamental difference for generations of women on their healing journey toward discovering a truer self.


REVIEWS:

To every daughter and every mother of a daughter, My Mother, My Mirror offers a fresh look at the feelings of inadequacy so common in women. Few self-help books contain the intellectual and clinical sophistication informing this lively, readable work. Laura Arens Fuerstein translates the jargon of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychological science into images and metaphors that resonate poignantly with deeply felt female experience. She writes from her expertise yet never patronizes the reader. She is frank about the painful consequences of our mothers’ (and their mothers’) limitations, yet never descends into mother-blaming. With this contribution, her therapeutic skills reach far beyond her clinical office and give readers new opportunities to grow into their best selves.

--Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D. (Rutgers Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology)


A valuable resource for both the lay audience and clinicians alike, My Mother, My Mirror offers a thoughtful and engaging perspective on mother-daughter relationships in all of their complexity. Combining psychoanalytic theory, rich clinical examples and tools for change (such as mindfulness and self-reflection), Laura Arens Fuerstein provides a route for mothers and daughters to examine and re-evaluate the attitudes, beliefs, images and emotions, transmitted across generations, that serve to keep them bound in self-defeating distortions. She is a compelling storyteller, and her examples, drawn not only from her clinical work but from works of fiction, biographies, memoirs, fairy tales and mythology, provide vivid and engaging illustrations that bring theory to life. Notably, while seeking to help readers understand and acknowledge their inherited self-images, she refrains from blaming mothers (who, after all, are recipients of their own psychic inheritance), and ultimately helps to promote a freer and more authentic sense of self.

--Melinda Parisi, Ph.D. (University Medical Center at Princeton Eating Disorders Program)


In her practice, therapist Fuerstein has found that many of her female clients' core problems center on a negative body image* and that this distortion was handed down by their mothers, grandmothers, and so forth. Readers learn how to rid themselves of this problem, as Fuerstein amasses research, case studies, and sound psychological concepts. An excellent addition to women's studies or psychology collections.

-- The Library Journal Review



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Laura Arens Fuerstein, Ph.D., has worked as a certified psychoanalyst and couples therapist for over thirty years, is a popular speaker at conferences about love, sexuality, body-image, women’s issues and the mother-daughter relationship, and is a published author who writes on those subjects. She received her doctoral degree from New York University and is a graduate of the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training. She is in private practice in Highland Park, New Jersey, where she treats patients and leads supervision groups.

Visit Laura Arens Fuerstein's Website