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For Mothers of Difficult Daughters, Charney Hearst, 1998 */
Mar 2012 note - I read this book in 1998, before I had ever talked to any self-harming teens. When I looked at this file again, I felt chills through my body due to what I have learned about emotionally abusive mothers since then and their devastating effects on sensitive, intelligent females. These notes are written very informally. I may clean them up later if I have some time. S. Hein --
When I heard of this book I felt immediately repulsed by it. It was even worse than I could have imagined, though. The first paragraph starts off the victimized mother syndrome. She (Hearst) was called into court because her daughter got in trouble. She says "...my daughter was the reason we were there..." ie she blames her daughter from start to finish. The judge told her to get her act together. She said she was furious at the judge's "unfair assumptions." She said at that moment she became a "mother's advocate." I am almost sick to my stomach. Even calling a child "difficult" is damaging to the child. So who does it serve to label a child "difficult" or anything else? It serves the parent. It helps them avoid responsibility. She is VERY defensive. Paints herself to be a perfect mother. Says she was getting straight A's at her college courses which she was taking while her 5 teenagers were "in school." As if she wasn't taking any time away from them. And what was she studying? PSYCHOLOGY! Now she is a PhD. I would love to interview the 5 kids about how great of a mother she is. I bet not one of them can tell me how they feel. She says, "I had my act together." "It was my daughter's actions that were the problem." I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I am reading this but still I am having trouble believing it. Yet, thinking that this woman really believes she is right, and worse, that she is convincing other mothers that there is no cause and effect between what they do and their kids, is really saddening and frightening. And discouraging. Yet, by my little part in protesting such misinformation, I am doing something at least. Anyhow, she says she felt humiliated, shamed (I wonder what church she was raised in- I would guess Catholic) She says: "All we can do is try our best to raise them and love them well." p. xiv What a copout! She can do a lot more. She can take a look at herself for example. She can join a therapy group instead of thinking she knows how to run one! She can listen to her kids. She can ask them how they feel. She can admit she is insecure and defensive and has low self-esteem. Anyhow, I suppose Ms. PhD Hearst will claim that not only is the parent not the cause, but that the CHILD causes the parent to react. ie the child in control! come on. I feel disgusted. Totally repulsed. I feel insulted on behalf of my own intelligence, personal experience, observations and research. She labels her daughter as "my weed-growing daughter." That is real helpful to building a bond between them. How could anyone award you a degree in clinical psychology? It "should" taken from her. I am outraged. on page xv she says this book categorizes difficult daughters according to types That is the last thing we need!!!! More categories!! More labels! Someone, wake this lady up! Wake her up from her fantasy which she has created to protect her own self-image! She suggests mothers never give up hope. HOPE IS A WASTE OF TIME, said Micheal Wickett, and I agree with him. Instead, never stop listening to your kids. That is a hell of a lot more productive than hoping. I suppose she will suggest the "pray" also. That is real good advice! Okay, I am getting sarcastic- and we know sarcasm is anger in disguise. btw the subtitle is "How to enrich and repair the bond in adulthood" I am not making this up. Who believes that blaming you daughter will repair any bonds? Well, maybe if the bond was based on dysfunction in the first place. Interesting how when daughters become mothers, they often start defending their own mothers. Anyhow, here are the three "categories:" dependent (duh, aren't kids supposed to be dependent???), dissatisfied (I wonder why) and distant (can you really expect anyone except defensive mothers to believe daughters can be "distant" by their own nature?) It is plain to tell that she is a master of invalidation, turning things around and other defenses. She mocks her daughter, minimizes the term "child-abuse." She is in complete denial. She says daughters have long memories, they want to know why the mothers did things to them. She says the mothers want to know why the daughters don't "just get over it" (like Gretchen's mom, liked to say to Gretchen- there is one person who will love this book (G's mom)- another unhappy person institutionalizing her pain and dysfunction by counseling others- I think she calls her self a sex therapist, no I am not making this up, but my memory could be wrong.) p 5/6 talks about a group therapy she was in (required for her degree so it was full of other psych students). They attacked her as being a bad mom. The facilitator didn't ask her how she felt. Didn't help her see that she felt defensive bc she was insecure and she knew what they were saying was true. He could have prevented this book. But he didn't understand as much as I do! And I was a business major! Now she claims she has a great relationship with her most "most rebellious" daughter. Calls her "dutiful." Ah, yes, that is a great quality. In other words, her guilt trips finally paid off! On page 7 she says dissatisfied daughters are: irritable, unhappy (I wonder why), and disagreeable. Does she really believe this is helpful? Yes, I forgot, it helps the mothers deny their responsibility. p 8 she talks about the myths daughters have, but doesn't explain that the mothers gave the daughters these ideas. She does say the mothers agree with the myths, but again, she misses the cause- effect relationship. As I suspected, she starts to disclose her religious beliefs. She believes daughters should "Honor thy mother" as the "Old Testament decreed." Decreed, that is an interesting word. Synonyms: announce, command, order,
proclaim, pronounce She mentions something about Jewish moms. She could be Jewish herself. Catholics and Jews are very similar in the way they use fear, guilt, obedience, punishment etc. End result is they both produce kids with low self-esteem. She says daughters tease mothers too much, make too many "gibes" at them. Says laughter can be cruel, even toxic. Hmmm. I wonder where these girls learned this technique.... Certainly not in their own homes! Must have come from "out there" somewhere. The media, etc. etc. Sure, there are lots of scape goats. Seek and you will find them! p 11 She says research show that in families with strong ethnic or religious ties the mother is still respected. Could that be "feared"? She says when families get more affluent respect dwindles. Ahh, so maybe it is also "needed." ie when the kids need the parents financially, they do things which we call respecting. But I doubt it is really respect. And I doubt respect comes and goes with either ethnicity, religion or income. It all depends how you define respect. p 12 she assures mothers that they "have done nothing wrong." Even against their protests when they say "I must have done something wrong," she says "Not necessarily." Then she claims that "Nearly every mental condition that was once ascribed to bad mothering has turned out to be either genetic or caused by the biochemical make up of the brain." I wonder if she considers unhappiness, low self-esteem and insecurity "mental conditions." Also, I wonder if she realizes or admits that parents actually affect the biochemical makeup of the brain even after the baby is born. (Goleman, among others, cites this research.) She acknowledges that trauma can affect someone, but asks tauntingly, "How many of us have been traumatized?" Let me see what Golemans book said about trauma... on page 204 of the hardbound book he quotes someone as saying that repeated incidents of minor abuse and uncontrollable stress can have the same biological impact as a one time traumatic event. I wonder how she defines trauma. As repeated invalidation? Repeated guilt, punishment, fear, threats? I doubt it. But I would. p 15 she says that if daughters can't make decisions it is likely that they were born with "an indecisive nature." She again minimizes the role of the mother by mockingly saying "unless you battered her or told her everyday she was worthless..." it was genetics, not you. I wonder if she realizes the many ways a parent can say "you are worthless" without ever using those words. I also wonder what she thinks about Martin Seligman's research on learned helplessness. And I wonder what she thinks of the book "Toxic Parents." I would like to see her go up against the author of that book. I would like to see her totally discredited and exposed. In other words, I want to see her power taken from her. She is misusing it. Abusing it. She says "In most cases, Mom is not to blame for a daughter who can't sustain friendships, or succeed in a career, or lose weight" p 16 and 17 She first says mothers want to know, if I am not the problem, then what is? Hearst evades this question. She says "there is no easy answer." Sure there is Charney, you just gave us one: Genetics! Hooray for genetics! Let's blame genetics for everything, not just the 50% which Hearst claims it account for. After evading the above question she switches the subject and then basically advises mothers to stop validating their daughters and to stop feeling empathy for them. In other words to treat them more coldly, to emotionally detach and distance themselves. She gives an example of how she invalidates one of the mother's feelings and tries to force her to change not only her beliefs but her feelings for her daughter. I am amazed. "My daughter is like a lost soul," one of her clients wept. So the client is crying. The brilliant therapist says, "No, she's not. You are the lost soul." Then she (Hearst) proceeded to attack the daughter, believing, I am sure, that she was helping the client raise her awareness. Even if everything Hearst said was literally true, that is a horrible way to counsel someone. It is far better to let the client come to their own conclusions. It is obvious to me that Hearst has a big need to control. Each time she "converts" someone to her way of thinking, she feels more secure. Just like religious people. "Therapists" like this attract people so insecure they want someone else to tell them what to do and what do think and believe. These poor clients don't trust their own feelings or own intuition. They are vulnerable and people like Hearst exploit them and create dependency. She also tells her clients they shouldn't feel guilty. That they did the best they could, etc. etc. I am sure she has a big following, just like all the people who take the Course in Miracles. Mar 2012 note - Now I can add Nigel Latta to the list of psychogists that abusive parents would love. On page 18 she claims her book is not for "abusive mothers." But what is abuse? I disagree with her definition. Whenever one person has more power than another and uses this power to fill their own needs, from emotional to sexual, at the expense of another, it is abuse. So when the mother feels neglected and unimportant and lays a guilt trip on her kids to get them to call her more often, for example, it is abuse. p 20 Her mothers' bill of rights! who "gave" her these rights I wonder? It seems she gave them to herself. So what if her daughters did the same thing? What is the point really? Why not just say she "demands" these from her daughters or she will make them suffer?
I have the right to be treated with
respect It does not mean I want to control them. -- I have to laugh at the last line
then at the end she says: I have the responsibility to respect each of my children and to grant them the same rights I expect for myself. As I say elsewhere, most of these "rights" would better be called 'needs." The question then becomes whose needs are more important, the mother's or the daughters? If rights are absolute, then how does anyone decide whose "rights" prevail when there is a conflict of rights? Whoever has the most power, that is usually how. And in the mother daughter relationship, who has the most power for the first 18 years or so? In fact, the mother continues to have the power unless the daughter takes it from her. It is very clear she believes her needs and feelings are more important than her daughters. This is backwards. Such a belief is clearly dysfunctional and counter-evolutionary. on page 44 she gives her "wish list" for what she wants from her daughter, ie she is still trying to change her "grown up" daughters! on p.46 she lists her "reasonable expectations" I got a good laugh out of that one. It seems pretty obvious to me that if she had instilled and mirrored positive feelings in her daughter, most of the behaviors she wants would come naturally. But all of this focus on behavior without looking at the underlying feelings is the same old fashioned stuff that simply DOES NOT WORK in the long run!! It might work for a few generations, but eventually the kids get smart and get resentful and say "forget this guilt trip crap." Parents need to find a new way, a better way, and they need to find it quickly. This better way is what I am proposing. (see Parenting for a sample) Her references are very, very weak. The virtually the entire book is her opinion which was formed to defend her own dysfunction parenting. Her bio says she is Jewish, which helps explain her mentality ie defensiveness, insecurity, low self-esteem, judgmental attitude, lack of compassion, and over-intellectual development at the expense of her emotional brain. In short, high IQ, low EQ. [By the way, I am afraid you may think I "don't like" Jewish people. Au contraire, it is the Jewish Religion and much of the cultural parenting beliefs which I disapprove of. Their families systems are widely known to create insecure adults, so I don't think I am being unfair to the Jewish culture. Because I have found Jewish people to be more intelligent than average, I have usually gotten along with them better than with "Christians," for example. Except for the Orthodox Jews, I have found they tend to value reason more than religion.
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Original
For Mothers of Difficult Daughters, Charney Hearst, 1998 */
read may 98
I had heard of this book and felt immediately repulsed by it. The first paragraph starts off the victimized mother syndrome. She (Hearst) was called into court because her daughter got in trouble. She says "...my daughter was the reason we were there..." ie she blames her daughter from start to finish.
The judge told her to get her act together. She said she was furious at the judge's "unfair assumptions." She said at that moment she became a "mother's advocate." I am almost sick to my stomach.
Even calling a child "difficult" is damaging to the child. So who does it serve to label a child "difficult" or anything else? It serves the parent. It helps them avoid responsibility.
She is VERY defensive. Paints herself to be a perfect mother. Says she was getting straight A's at her college courses which she was taking while her 5 teenagers were "in school." As if she wasn't taking any time away from them. And what was she studying? PSYCHOLOGY! Now she is a PhD. I would love to interview the 5 kids about how great of a mother she is. I bet not one of them can tell me how they feel.
She says, "I had my act together." "It was my daughter's actions that were the problem."
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I am reading this but still I am having trouble believing it. Yet, thinking that this woman really believes she is right, and worse, that she is convincing other mothers that there is no cause and effect between what they do and their kids, is really saddening and frightening. And discouraging. Yet, by my little part in protesting such misinformation, I am doing something at least.
Anyhow, she says she felt humiliated, shamed (I wonder what church she was raised in- I would guess Catholic)
She says: "All we can do is try our best to raise them and love them well." p. xiv What a copout! She can do a lot more. She can take a look at herself for example. She can join a therapy group instead of thinking she knows how to run one! She can listen to her kids. She can ask them how they feel. She can admit she is insecure and defensive and has low self-esteem.
Anyhow, I suppose Ms. PhD Hearst will claim that not only is the parent not the cause, but that the CHILD causes the parent to react. ie the child in control! come on. I feel disgusted. Totally repulsed. I feel insulted on behalf of my own intelligence, personal experience, observations and research.
She labels her daughter as "my weed-growing daughter." That is real helpful to building a bond between them. How could anyone award you a degree in clinical psychology? It "should" taken from her. I am outraged.
on page xv she says this book categorizes difficult daughters according to types That is the last thing we need!!!! More categories!! More labels! Someone, wake this lady up!
Wake her up from her fantasy which she has created to protect her own self-image!
She suggests mothers never give up hope. HOPE IS A WASTE OF TIME, said Micheal Wickett, and I agree with him. Instead, never stop listening to your kids. That is a hell of a lot more productive than hoping. I suppose she will suggest the "pray" also. That is real good advice! Okay, I am getting sarcastic- and we know sarcasm is anger in disguise.
btw the subtitle is "How to enrich and repair the bond in adulthood" I am not making this up. Who believes that blaming you daughter will repair any bonds? Well, maybe if the bond was based on dysfunction in the first place. Interesting how when daughters become mothers, they often start defending their own mothers.
Anyhow, here are the three "categories:" dependent (duh, aren't kids supposed to be dependent???), dissatisfied (I wonder why) and distant (can you really expect anyone except defensive mothers to believe daughters can be "distant" by their own nature?)
It is plain to tell that she is a master of invalidation, turning things around and other defenses.
She mocks her daughter, minimizes the term "child-abuse." She is in complete denial.
She says daughters have long memories, they want to know why the mothers did things to them. She says the mothers want to know why the daughters don't "just get over it" (like Gretchen's mom, liked to say to Gretchen- there is one person who will love this book (G's mom)- another unhappy person institutionalizing her pain and dysfunction by counseling others- I think she calls her self a sex therapist, no I am not making this up, but my memory could be wrong.)
p 5/6 talks about a group therapy she was in (required for her degree so it was full of other psych students). They attacked her as being a bad mom. The facilitator didn't ask her how she felt. Didn't help her see that she felt defensive bc she was insecure and she knew what they were saying was true. He could have prevented this book. But he didn't understand as much as I do! And I was a business major!
Now she claims she has a great relationship with her most "most rebellious" daughter. Calls her "dutiful." Ah, yes, that is a great quality. In other words, her guilt trips finally paid off!
On page 7 she says dissatisfied daughters are: irritable, unhappy (I wonder why), and disagreeable. Does she really believe this is helpful? Yes, I forgot, it helps the mothers deny their responsibility.
p 8 she talks about the myths daughters have, but doesn't explain that the mothers gave the daughters these ideas. She does say the mothers agree with the myths, but again, she misses the cause- effect relationship.
As I suspected, she starts to disclose her religious beliefs. She believes daughters should "Honor thy mother" as the "Old Testament decreed." Decreed, that is an interesting word.
Synonyms: announce, command, order, proclaim, pronounce
Synonym for command: demand, among others.
She mentions something about Jewish moms. She could be Jewish herself. Catholics and Jews are very similar in the way they use fear, guilt, obedience, punishment etc. End result is they both produce kids with low self-esteem.
She says daughters tease mothers too much, make too many "gibes" at them. Says laughter can be cruel, even toxic. Hmmm. I wonder where these girls learned this technique.... Certainly not in their own homes! Must have come from "out there" somewhere. The media, etc. etc. Sure, there are lots of scape goats. Seek and you will find them!
p 11 She says research show that in families with strong ethnic or religious ties the mother is still respected. Could that be "feared"? She says when families get more affluent respect dwindles. Ahh, so maybe it is also "needed." ie when the kids need the parents financially, they do things which we call respecting. But I doubt it is really respect. And I doubt respect comes and goes with either ethnicity, religion or income. It all depends how you define respect.
p 12 she assures mothers that they "have done nothing wrong." Even against their protests when they say "I must have done something wrong," she says "Not necessarily." Then she claims that "Nearly every mental condition that was once ascribed to bad mothering has turned out to be either genetic or caused by the biochemical make up of the brain."
I wonder if she considers unhappiness, low self-esteem and insecurity "mental conditions." Also, I wonder if she realizes or admits that parents actually affect the biochemical makeup of the brain even after the baby is born. (Goleman, among others, cites this research.)
She acknowledges that trauma can affect someone, but asks tauntingly, "How many of us have been traumatized?" Let me see what Golemans book said about trauma... on page 204 of the hardbound book he quotes someone as saying that repeated incidents of minor abuse and uncontrollable stress can have the same biological impact as a one time traumatic event.
I wonder how she defines trauma. As repeated invalidation? Repeated guilt, punishment, fear, threats? I doubt it. But I would.
p 15 she says that if daughters can't make decisions it is likely that they were born with "an indecisive nature." She again minimizes the role of the mother by mockingly saying "unless you battered her or told her everyday she was worthless..." it was genetics, not you.
I wonder if she realizes the many ways a parent can say "you are worthless" without ever using those words. I also wonder what she thinks about Martin Seligman's research on learned helplessness. And I wonder what she thinks of the book "Toxic Parents." I would like to see her go up against the author of that book. I would like to see her totally discredited and exposed. In other words, I want to see her power taken from her. She is misusing it. Abusing it.
She says "In most cases, Mom is not to blame for a daughter who can't sustain friendships, or succeed in a career, or lose weight"
p 16 and 17
She first says mothers want to know, if I am not the problem, then what is. Hearst evades this question. She says "there is no easy answer." Sure there is Charney, you just gave us one: Genetics! Hooray for genetics! Let's blame genetics for everything, not just the 50% which Hearst claims it account for.
After evading the above question she switches the subject and then basically advises mothers to stop validating their daughters and to stop feeling empathy for them. In other words to treat them more coldly, to emotionally detach and distance themselves.
She gives an example of how she invalidates one of the mother's feelings and tries to force her to change not only her beliefs but her feelings for her daughter. I am amazed. "My daughter is like a lost soul," one of her clients wept. So the client is crying. The brilliant therapist says, "No, she's not. You are the lost soul." Then she (Hearst) proceeded to attack the daughter, believing, I am sure, that she was helping the client raise her awareness. Even if everything Hearst said was literally true, that is a horrible way to counsel someone. It is far better to let the client come to their own conclusions.
It is obvious to me that Hearst has a big need to control. Each time she "converts" someone to her way of thinking, she feels more secure. Just like religious people.
"Therapists" like this attract people so insecure they want someone else to tell them what to do and what do think and believe. These poor clients don't trust their own feelings or own intuition. They are vulnerable and people like Hearst exploit them and create dependency.
She also tells her clients they shouldn't feel guilty. That they did the best they could, etc. etc. I am sure she has a big following, just like all the people who take the Course in Miracles.
On page 18 she claims her book is not for "abusive mothers." But what is abuse? I disagree with her definition. Whenever one person has more power than another and uses this power to fill their own needs, from emotional to sexual, at the expense of another, it is abuse. So when the mother feels neglected and unimportant and lays a guilt trip on her kids to get them to call her more often, for example, it is abuse.
p 20 Her mothers' bill of rights!
I have the right to be treated with respect
I have the right to control my own life for as long as I can.
I have the right to an explanation of my children's feelings--I
can't intuit their thoughts.
I have the right to be sad or angry without hiding my feelings
I have the right to protect my children.
I have the right to say no
I have the right to reminisce and be sentimental.
I have the right to talk to my children about my problems.
I do not expect them to provide solutions, just to listen.
I have the right to buy nice things and go places.
I have the right to my own opinions. I do not expect my children
to agree with all of them.
I have the right to miss my children.
It does not mean I want to control them.
At the end she says:
I have the responsibility to respect each of my children and to grant them the same rights I expect for myself.
As I say elsewhere, most of these "rights" would better be called 'needs." The question then becomes whose needs are more important, the mother's or the daughters? If rights are absolute, then how does anyone decide whose "rights" prevail when there is a conflict of rights? Whoever has the most power, that is usually how. And in the mother daughter relationship, who has the most power for the first 18 years or so? In fact, the mother continues to have the power unless the daughter takes it from her.
It is very clear she believes her needs and feelings are more important than her daughters. This is backwards. Such a belief is clearly dysfunctional and counter-evolutionary.
on page 44 she gives her "wish list" for what she wants from her daughter, ie she is still trying to change her "grown up" daughters!
on p.46 she lists her "reasonable expectations" I got a good laugh out of that one.
It seems pretty obvious to me that if she had instilled and mirrored positive feelings in her daughter, most of the behaviors she wants would come naturally. But all of this focus on behavior without looking at the underlying feelings is the same old fashioned stuff that simply DOES NOT WORK in the long run!! It might work for a few generations, but eventually the kids get smart and get resentful and say "forget this guilt trip crap." Parents need to find a new way, a better way, and they need to find it quickly. This better way is what I am proposing. (see Parenting for a sample)
Her references are very, very weak. The virtually the entire book is her opinion which was formed to defend her own dysfunction parenting.
Her bio says she is Jewish, which helps explain her mentality ie defensiveness, insecurity, low self-esteem, judgmental attitude, lack of compassion, and over-intellectual development at the expense of her emotional brain. In short, high IQ, low EQ.
[By the way, I am afraid you may think I "don't like" Jewish people. Au contraire, it is the Jewish Religion and much of the cultural parenting beliefs which I disapprove of. Their families systems are widely known to create insecure adults, so I don't think I am being unfair to the Jewish culture. Because I have found Jewish people to be more intelligent than average, I have usually gotten along with them better than with "Christians," for example. Except for the Orthodox Jews, I have found they tend to value reason more than religion. I have also found them to be more self-reliant, responsible and harder working than the average "Christians." Quite frankly, I believe they are slightly more highly evolved as a race, a belief affirmed by research in the Bell Curve. (See my thoughts on evolution)