""Is there life without mother?" is a patient's plaintive summary, after years of analysis, of his ongoing struggle to find his own identity. But the question is also, as Leonard Shengold reminds us, an essential part of the human predicament - a developmental conundrum and, for some, a psychological ordeal - where personal transformation counts for a great deal but also perhaps for very little.".

"In this 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 Reynard 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."--BOOK JACKET.