How to Manage Your Mother: Understanding the Most Difficult, Complicated, and Fascinating Relationship in Your Life (Us) [Hardcover]

Alyce Faye Cleese (Author), Brian Bates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2000

Does your mother drive you crazy?

Does she interfere in your love life?

Does she criticize your choice in friends?

Does she question every decision you make?

Does she manipulate you or make you feel guilty?

Does she fault your parenting skills?

Does she give too much "well-meaning advice?

Does she have something to say about the way you dress, act, talk, walk, cook, drive, think, feel, and breathe?It's time to manage your mother.

Whether or not we get along with our mothers, their presence affects everything we do. From our earliest memories in their arms, through the rough and tumble of childhood and the roller coaster of adolescence and into adulthood, no relationship is more critical.

But no matter how mature or successful we may be in our adult lives, with one word our mothers can somehow send us scurrying back to childhood. The challenge is for mothers and adult children to set aside their earlier relationship and begin to talk to each other as one adult to another.

In the international bestseller How to Manage Your Mother, noted psychotherapists Alyce Faye Cleese and Brian Bates use dozens of moving, revealing stories from their patients and from celebrities -including Colin Powell, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Farrow, and Lauren Hutton, among many others--to show that it is possible to improve your relationship with your mother or at the very least begin to understand it. They help you to step back and see your mother as a real person with a real past-and with secrets that affect her life today This warm, often funny book includes a practical ten-step plan and questionnaire to help you get on track with your mother. You'll be able to address specific issues between you and develop insights that will better your relationship. You'll never think about your mother in the same way again!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A beautiful and poignant look at what it means to have a mother." -- Steve Martin

"A powerful, compelling book." -- Robin Skynner

"Alyce Faye Cleese embodies all the qualities associated with good mothering--wisdom, compassion, generosity, and warmth. She is a woman eminently well equipped to help readers make sense of the world--and to understand the mothers that shaped their individual worlds." -- The Sunday Express

"An illuminating and fascinating book that has helped me to understand and appreciate my own mother and inspired my relationship with my daughters" -- Sarah, Duchess of York

"This book describes the archetypical qualities we find in all mothers, and gives us insight not only into them but also into ourselves." -- Dr. Miriam Stoppard

"This is a perfect book for anyone who's ever had a mother." -- Kevin Kline

"This is an unusually revealing book. Mothers become the mirrors in which we see ourselves." -- --Michael Palin

"This wonderful book does for mothers what Diane Fossey did for gorillas. A tremendous achievement." -- Stephen Fry

"Wonderful and moving. . . . It made me laugh and brought me to tears more than a few times. But then I'm just like my mother that way." -- Gregory Hines

About the Author

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: ReganBooks; First Edition edition (April 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060393343
• ISBN-13: 978-0060393342
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,752,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting anecdotes, October 16, 2001

By 

audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: How to Manage Your Mother: Understanding the Most Difficult, Complicated, and Fascinating Relationship in Your Life (Paperback)

The author, psychoanalyst wife of actor John Cleese, has access to many celebrities, and I found that the book was entertaining for this reason more than it was enlightening as far as improving my relationship with my mother. The stories ran a wide gamut, and it was comforting to know that so many other people (including celebrities John Cleese, Lauren Hutton, Stephen Sondheim, Mike Nichols, Terry Jones, etc.) have troubled relations with their moms as well, but I didn't particularly find my mother in here. I guess she is uniquely troubled :-)

It is an interesting and quick read whether you are interested in your relationship with your mother, your mother-in-law or your children, but you should not expect this book to solve your problems. It may get a conversation going though, and that is a good start.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shameless and Pitiful Exploitation of Celebrity Connections, December 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Manage Your Mother: Understanding the Most Difficult, Complicated, and Fascinating Relationship in Your Life (Paperback)

I was embarrassed for the author, especially considering her profession; this is the work of a person with painfully obvious self-esteem issues. It's no coincidence that many of this book's reviews point out that the author (who evidently needed some help to write it) is the wife of actor and former Monty Python member John Cleese. (One can almost hear, in the background, the author whining "Hon-ey, how come you never help MY career? I'm tired of just being a shrink!" And John anxiously responding "I'll talk to the publishers, sweetheart; don't worry, they'll love it.") While the book isn't bad, it's quite superficial, and might not have been published had the author not filled it with vaguely relevant anecdotes about her (or her husband's) B-and C-list pals and their reminiscences about their mommys. It's difficult to understand why an author of such a book would find it necessary (or even appropriate) to provide the full names of each of these folks, except to entice readers who can't get enough of any scrap of information about, say, Lauren Hutton, or who are fascinated to discover that actors have less-than-perfect relationships like everyone else. One can't help but wonder why the author, who would almost certainly never have had these clients without her husband's show-biz connections, feels the need to try to capitalize on them in this way as well. In any event, there are many books that offer much more insight and practical advice on how to resolve some of the problems that often arise out of the mother-child relationship.

UPDATE:

This book's primary selling point--the author's marriage to celebrity John Cleese--is no more. Cleese is said to have remarked after the divorce that marrying the author was one of the two things he wouldn't have done if he had his life to live over.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great how-to book on relationships, May 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Manage Your Mother: Understanding the Most Difficult, Complicated, and Fascinating Relationship in Your Life (Us) (Hardcover)

I enjoyed reading Alyce Faye Cleese's book on the mothering relationship. My mother has been dead for many years but the relationship lives on thru memories, thru my relationships with my children and thru other important relationships. The ten steps in the back of the book are especially helpful in dealing with anyone in your life. I bought a copy of this book for each of my children in hopes that it would facilitate better understanding between all of us. The main message of this book to me was mothers are people too and to have an adult to adult relationship with them you must move beyond your child-like view. Great read, hope another book follows this one soon.