How to Manage Your Mother

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 such well-known personalities as Colin Powell, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Farrow, and Lauren Hutton 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 questionaire to help you get 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.

Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese is a well-known psychotherapist with degrees and training from Oklahoma State, Baylor, and London universities. She has treated adolescents at the Tavistock Clinic and works with a wide range of adult patients at her private practice in London. She is married to the actor John Cleese and they live in London and Santa Barbara, California.

Brian Bates teaches humanistic psychology at the University of Sussex. He has published several books in England and the United States and leads seminars in both countries at universities and institutions such as the Open Center in New York and the Esalen Institute in California. He lives near Brighton, England.