'Ilene Lefcourt draws on over 35 years of a changing culture for women, while running parenting groups for mothers and their infants and toddlers. This is a wellspring of knowledge in the creation of optimal daughter-mother engagements that may help ”promote a little girl developing a strong, clear voice and becoming a woman who knows her own mind and expects her voice to be heard.” This book is an antidote to eons of female demure silence, fostered in the name of a “femininity” that is destructive to the ability of women to hold their own in a patriarchal society.The text is lively and available, with informative, emotionally telling vignettes of pitfalls and successes. It shows how women help each other in the groups, fostered by the author. The growth and responsiveness of these (lucky) children, form the cherished centerpiece.The book should be read by all mental health workers -- not only child and family workers, but also therapists with mothers in their practices, and psychoanalysts, who hear sorrowful adult daughters rejecting being “like my own mother.” The more we learn from the observations of fine practitioners like Ms. Lefcourt, the more we can appreciate the psychic complexities and range of mother-daughter bonding and their surrounding networks of internalized family figures. No longer are female-to-female dynamics unworthy of such detailed study, as in the past. Little girls can be helped towards a sturdier psychic future.'Rosemary H. Balsam, M.D., Associate Clin. Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Medical School; Training and Supervising Analyst Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis; author, Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis; ed, of two volumes on the work of Hans Loewald, 2024; The Sigourney Award for psychoanalytic excellence, 2018.'Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years is a treasure trove of wisdom that evokes childhood memories and leads to personal reflections that enrich the valuable information, and a deep attunement to a little girl’s developing mind. This book invites mothers to claim their own minds and voices at a time when a baby’s enormous needs can eclipse their own.Drawing on 35 years of experience as the director of an early childhood center in New York City, Ilene Lefcourt generously shares her remarkable knowledge and her cogent understanding of the minds of mothers, babies, and toddlers in these crucial and formative early years of life. Ms. Lefcourt has a deep understanding of how intergenerational issues when not reflected upon can readily take up residence in the nursery. It is rare to read a book about early development that can have such a profound impact and be equally valuable to mothers and professionals.Susan Coates Ph.D. Clinical Professor of Clinical Psychology, Columbia University Medical Center; Faculty, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. 2016, Can Babies Remember Trauma, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 8:115-148. 2003, September 11 Trauma and Human Bonds. Routledge, London New York. 1998, “Having a Mind of One’s Own and Holding the Other in Mind.”'Writing in a clear, articulate style, Lefcourt brings a sophisticated psychoanalytic perspective to early development without ever losing the immediacy of her subject-- the everyday experience of mothers and daughters and how that experience is woven into the daughter’s emerging sense of herself. Grounded in vivid descriptions drawn from her 35 years leading mother-baby groups, Lefcourt illuminates the role played by the mother’s feelings and ideas about being female in her responses to her little daughter’s behavior. She smoothly balances her accounts of struggles with those of successes, of conflicts with those of resolutions, offering gentle guidance to mothers who read the book. In addition to mothers of daughters, teachers, students of child development, and all of us who are daughters, will learn a great deal from this wonderful book. In addition to the powerful content—my passion these days is to bring psychoanalytic knowledge to front-line caregivers. Lefcourt does this beautifully.'Alexandra Harrison, M.D. Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; assistant professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; founder, Supporting Childcare Givers – Infant-parent mental health training nonprofit throughout the world'Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years is Ilene Lefcourt’s most recent contribution to the literature on the early development of the parent-child relationship. This rich volume completes a quartet of books that draw upon Ms. Lefcourt’s vast experience running a center for parents and their very young children. The book incorporates an enormous amount of literature and knowledge relating to the first three years of life, as well as being written in simple and elegant prose that makes complex ideas lucidly understandable.Ms. Lefcourt reveals with clinical acuity, how aspects of a mother’s history and her own unconscious representations can affect her relationship with her daughter. As in the best writing, this is always done through the technique of “show, don’t tell”. Ms. Lefcourt illustrates her book with moving vignettes: beautifully written composites which demonstrate how readily the mother-daughter relationship can activate a mother’s unconscious and lead to troublesome repetitions of the past in the present. Given the greater likelihood of identification (or dis-identification) with a child of the same sex, it is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Lefcourt is easily one of the most informed insiders to report back from this domain. It is perhaps not surprising that this latest volume would focus specifically on the development of the mother-daughter relationship.Ms. Lefcourt is a master at illuminating, in her vivid examples which are always skillfully interpolated with developmental theory, how the past can become the present if a mother is not given the space to reflect upon the ways her daughter’s very existence can trigger unconscious reverberations of the past. The fortunate mothers in her groups benefited not only from Ms. Lefcourt’s astute observations as the leader of the group, but also from their own identifications with other mothers and daughters, and were able to develop the crucial tool of reflective function. Sensitively spotlighting the personal and cultural prism of gender to refract aspects of development, Ms. Lefcourt’s latest book is actually a handbook that should be required reading for any and all mothers who are raising young daughters. It has depth, practicality, and most of all it makes riveting reading.'Susan Scheftel, Ph.D. Assistant clinical professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research; Former program chair Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine; vice president, Margaret Mahler Foundation for Child Development, Author, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Papers on Childhood and Creativity'As a researcher who has been studying and following families at high risk for depression across generations for 40 years, it is absolutely refreshing to read Ilene Lefcourt’s book about mothers and daughters. The detailed clinical stories are fascinating as they provide insights into the mechanisms, that is, how disturbances in mother-daughter relationships can begin. Most importantly, this book provides helpful directions on how relationships can be repaired and how the damage may have happened in the first place. Mothers with daughters of any age will recognize the origins of current interactions with their daughters and will benefit from their insights. In addition to being a useful parenting book, Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years is an important enrichment to research studies.'Myrna M. Weissman, Ph.D. Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry. Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Inventor of Interpersonal Psychotherapy. Weissmam M. and Mootz, 2024 Interpersonal Psychotherapy: A Global Reach. Oxford Press
