Is There Life Without Mother?

In this richly textured study of personal growth and creativity hemmed in by childhood disaster, Shengold compares the differing gifts and differing solutions of extraordinary talents as they seek to negotiate a universal longing to refind the mother without sliding back into neglect, abuse, and despair. In the foreground of his analysis are moving portraits of Jules Renard and Anthony Trollope and the densely packed traumatic legacy of their respective childhoods, the one limned in sustained psychological torture, the other framed by neglect and abandonment.
Long acknowledged as a master of the literary-biographic genre within psychoanalysis, Shengold does not view the study of creative individuals as the occasion to make pontifical pronouncements about the nature of creativity. Rather, he sees such study as affording the opportunity to borrow from genius, insofar as the gifted writer who is psychologically astute often captures the challenges of life and the nuances of suffering in language that "ordinary" patients would use, if only they could. By integrating literary analysis with biographical data, Shengold arrives at an appealingly direct, demystified approach to great literature as a vehicle for apprehending the intricacies of enduring psychological dilemmas. For the solutions of truly creative individuals not only reflect an artistic temperament wed to extraordinarily gifts; they illuminate the solutions we are all in search of.
Elegantly sparing in language and judicious in presenting source material, Is There Life Without Mother? is abundantly generous in the wealth of understanding it provides and the deeper reflection it provokes. From the subtleties of identification as a means of consolidating identity in the face of neglect to the return of the traumatic as a fate that even a writer's "literary revenge" cannot circumvent, this work takes the reader deeper into the wellsprings of personality change than that it is usually possible to go.

Leonard Shengold, M.D., making use of literary works and lives to illustrate his clinical observations, has written extensively on clinical subjects such as incest and child abuse(soul murder), on historical subjects such as Freud biography, and on literary subjects such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Chekhov, and Orwell, among others. Dr. Shengold is a Clinical Professor at New York University Medical School and a Training Analyst and former Director of the NYU Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is a recipient of the Sigourney Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychoanalysis.

Part I: Biography. Another Impossible Profession. Artistic Creativity. Clinical and Literary Examples. The Primal Parent: A Patient's Cry. Part II: Literary Lives. Jules Renard: Soul Murder in Life and Literature. Trollope: His Life and Creativity. School Days and After: Disorder and Early Sorrow, and Recovery. Trollope's Writing Method. Daydreaming in the Service of Creativity and of Sexuality. Identity and Fiction: Father and Son. Identity and Fiction: The Nuances of Resentment. What Was Trollope Like? Trollope's Love for His Characters 14. Trollope's Death 15. Trollope with Mother. Part III: Conclusion and Epilogue. Conclusion and More Literary Examples. Epilogue: Multiple Personalities.