cover image Beyond the Myths: Mother Daughter Relationships Psyc Hist Lit Everyday Life

Beyond the Myths: Mother Daughter Relationships Psyc Hist Lit Everyday Life

Shelley Phillips. Penguin Books, $14.95 (464pp) ISBN 978-0-14-025186-9

Phillips, an Australian psychologist who also holds degrees in history and English literature, attempts a broad interdisciplinary analysis of the ways mothers and daughters overcome the myths that divide them. She overreaches, however, making broad generalizations in areas such as religion in which she is less well-informed. For example, in her chapter on Christianity and the mother-daughter relationship, she skips directly and unapologetically from the Hebrew Scriptures to the European Middle Ages. Her genuine feminist insights--such as seeing potential benefits in mother-daughter conflict, and looking at the psychological effects of the birthing and mothering process on the mother as well as the child--are buried in too much verbiage about too many topics about which Phillips knows too little. The book is divided into two sections, the first an overview of the mother-daughter relationship through the developmental process, and the second an overview of literary history. Each has merits, but in the first section Phillips is on firmer ground. (July)