When Nancy Friday began her research for My Mother/My Self in the
early 1970s no work existed that explored the unique interaction between
mother and daughter. Today psychotherapists throughout the world
acknowledge that if women are to be able to love without possessing, to
find work that fulfills them, and to discover their full sexuality, they
must first acknowledge their identity as separate from their mother's.
Nancy Friday's book played a major role in that acceptance. The greatest
gift a good mother can give remains unquestioning love planted deep in
the first year of life, so deep and unassailable that the tiny child
grown to womanhood is never held back by the fear of losing that love,
no matter what her own choice in love, sexuality, or work may be.
Through candid self-disclosure and hundreds of interviews, Friday
investigates a generational legacy and reveals the conflicting feelings
of anger, hate, and love that daughters hold for their mothers - and why
they so often "become" that mother themselves.
