Marie Lion-Julin, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, works in the medico-psychological centre of the Hospital of Neuilly-sur-Marne.


The sanctification of maternal love is firmly anchored in our minds. Yet some types of maternal behaviour, whether overprotective or too distant, are hard to cope with and hinder the daughters from becoming autonomous. This can be seen later when the daughters reach adulthood and encounter problems in their relationships and feel generally dissatisfied — situations that lead many of them to consult a therapist.
How does maternal love play such a determining role in a daughter’s life? What are its main features? Why is it important to understand what is love — and what is not? What can a daughter do to stop striving for her mother’s approval, and instead think and live according to her own values?
By examining the phases in a daughter’s life when her mother’s influence is strongest — childhood, adolescence, beginnings of sexuality, maternity — and the range of poisonous relations that can come into being at those times, the author proposes to help women, both daughters and mothers, understand a relationship that “conditions” their lives. So they can set themselves free and feel at liberty to be themselves.


• A reflection based on many case histories of mothers and daughters.
• A dual point of view, presented by an expert who is also a woman.
• The author offers the tools for women to understand and analyse their relationship with their mothers.
• This book is also aimed at daughters who have become mothers, so that they will not reproduce with their own daughters the patterns that shaped them but that also sometimes shackled them.