Product Description

Guilt. Affection. Embarrassment. Friendship. Anger. Love - who can bring out all these feelings, and often in the same day? Your mother. No matter how mature or successful we are in our adult lives, with one word our mothers can somehow send us scurrying back to childhood. Can mothers and adult children ever learn to set aside their earlier relationship and talk to each other as adults? In this warm, funny book, dozens of revealing stories from well known personalities from politics and show business show that it is possible to improve your relationship with your mother - or at the very least begin to understand it. Alyce Faye Cleese and Brian Bates include a practical ten-step plan and questionnaire to help you get back on track with your mother. You will learn to address specific issues and develop valuable insights that will help you start thinking about your mother in a profoundly new way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30218 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Sunday Express
"Alyce Faye Cleese embodies all the qualities associated with good mothering - wisdom, compassion, generosity and warmth"

Robin Skynner
"A powerful , compelling book"

Stephen Fry
"Does for mothers what Dian Fossey did for gorillas. A tremendous achievement"

Customer Reviews

A great mixture of insight and enjoyment
This book has the wrong title. It sounds like a 'How to' book but it's much more than that. You get a rare insight into other people's psychology and the ways they deal with their own relationships with their mothers. Some are famous, some unknown but all are fascinating. And it's mainly through those insights that we as readers can analyse our own relationships with our mothers and alamost always learn something new. The authors have a lively style, unstuffy and fluent, and it's a joy to read. Because it's so easy to read you can get through it quite quickly but it's worth returning to because some of the content is quite profound.

great approach to integrating our mothers and ourselves
This is a very clear account of how to come to terms with the mother figures in our lives and accept and/or improve the relationship to further our own growth. It is a compelling account of how many people, some well-known, have struggled to learn from this primary relationship. As a psychotherapist working with individuals and families, I especially appreciated the emphasis on acceptance and forgiveness as a way of resolving the conflicts. Many different types of mothering are presented and ten steps that can be helpful in reaching a more satisfying relationship. I hope the authors will give us a book on managing our fathers as well.

Mrs. Alyce Faye Cleese lives up to the cover
I first picked up this book for two reasons. The lesser of the two would be for the copy of "Whistler's Mother" on the cover, but my primary reason was for the last name, Cleese. I, a long with half the world (civilized and un) think of the great John Marwood Cleese in association with that name. But Cleese (Alyce Faye) lives beyond her husband's golden rays in this serious and often funny book. I'm recommending it for the Indiana University school of Psychiatry for the next semester. Good Job Mrs. Cleese!!!!!!!