Barriers Between Women (PDF)

This book is an exploration of some of the psychological and so­ cial-psychological factors that have created barriers between women. Particular attention is paid to the daughter-mother relationship. The content is based on psychotherapy material, test results and conversations with patients and non-patients across a wide age span. I acquired the material in my various roles as a clinician, researcher and theorist-and, always, as a woman, with whatever special biases and special understandings that might involve. Because much of the book deals with the development of wom­ en's difficulties in relationships with other women, the emphasis will often be on how the growing daughter feels in her relationship with her mother. The mother's feelings will be discussed very little for two reasons: to limit the scope of this book and because much of what applies to the daughter also applies to the mother. It is often due to her own experiences as a daughter that the mother encounters difficulty in rearing her own daughter or feeling com­ fortable about her ability to do so. But it is important for the reader to keep in mind throughout the book that child-rearing is a frighten­ ing, difficult task at least part of the time for virtually every mother. In any long-term relationship, one begins to experience one's own needs, and it is simply human to wish that the other person in the relationship (even an infant or young child) would meet those needs.