Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina by saying that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I want to add to his insight by saying that each unhappy mother-daughter pair is unhappy in its own way, too. When a girl is very young, her mother seems so big. Her mother is present or absent, smothering or neglecting, critical, unpredictable, envious, controlling, or kind. A daughter’s sense of self forms within this maternal matrix, influencing how she sees her female body, as well as how she relates with other girls and women. The relationship can even set the tone for life as a whole. Life itself may feel like an all-powerful mother who capriciously withholds, attacks, or loves. Even after a daughter becomes an old woman, part of her may still feel like a child who longs for her mother’s unconditional acceptance.

The relationship of mother and daughter is among the most primary in human life. Some of the oldest myths are of mothers and daughters, such as the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, who is abducted and raped by Hades, then taken against her will to the underworld. The story can be read as a mythic enactment of the ways in which the mother-daughter relationship suffered great injury over the arc of history. A system developed that served the psychological needs of men, and women adapted in ways that were most likely to bring rewards from males. Mothers inevitably were entangled in a system that diminished both themselves and their daughters.

In recent decades, it seems as if we have been waking up from a spell in a fairy tale, blinking at the light and looking around us in a confused daze. Patterns that were unconscious only a few years ago are suddenly glaringly obvious, even laughable. These realizations highlight the ways in which the millennia of gender imbalance created disequilibrium within women’s inner lives, and contributed to enduring tensions between mothers and daughters.

I have come to this conclusion partly because of my clinical work, and partly because of my own story. My mother was born before women could vote, and her mother was born in pioneer America—long before women questioned the roles into which they were born, and long before women could be respectable and still earn their own living. It went without saying that basic survival required that women be pleasing to men. This formed the background of how my mother became a trophy wife. She hoped that I would be one, too. But when I was eleven years old, I suddenly grew far too tall to fit the male-defined ideal of the times. For my petite mother, my sudden height was a source of overwhelming anxiety. What would become of me? What man would want me? She tried everything to make my horrifying size manageable, with lessons in ballet and modeling for which I had no aptitude. It was a painful experience for both of us. She even talked of an experimental surgery in Sweden in which thigh bones were shortened to reduce the height of girls who were “too tall.” In retrospect, it is clear that she was gripped by the unexamined values of the times.

Because each unhappy mother-daughter pair is unhappy in its own way, when I hear women talk about their mothers in my clinical practice, I hear stories that differ widely from my story. I hear of mothers who were never home because of work, mothers who passively submitted to routine spousal beatings, alcoholic mothers who were mean drunks, competitive mothers who were obsessed with men and dating, and mothers who were profoundly incapable of mothering. The variations are endless. When I listen, it is obvious that these mothers were struggling within a cultural system that had devalued women for generations. The assumptions were not questioned because they were ingrained and invisible.

The injury to the mother-daughter bond casts another shadow. When a daughter grows up to become a mother herself, both her daughters and her sons are affected. From men, I hear of seductive and sexualized mothers, castrating and controlling mothers, cold and narcissistic mothers, and so on. These mothers likely bear the imprint of an unhappy mother-daughter pair. Sons, too, carry this burden.

In this early 21st century, the world is moving into a post-patriarchal culture, and we are engaging in a host of healing conversations, many of which are taking place in our therapy offices. What follows are my ideas for topics of relevance to mothers and daughters, both inside and outside our consulting rooms.

Assess family history. What was the power structure within the cultural setting, and what was its impact on women and their sense of self? This conversation is too important to be passed over or briefly summarized. Details are central, and merit exploration and elaboration.

Take a frank look at repressed rage. Many women carry rage, which is one of the reasons Demeter’s story is perennially fascinating. The rage is the inevitable legacy of history. It is toxic and dangerous to women themselves, as well as to their partners and children.

Identify the voracious inner critic. Rage can turn inward and feed masochism, transforming into self-attack. Nothing seems good enough. This attitude especially affects women’s relationship to their bodies, which are often seen as perennially defective. The inner critic also attacks our creative work, destroying our efforts before anything has a chance to breathe.

Explore our biases as therapists. I was raised before the women’s movement of the 1970s, and I have been startled to discover how much subtle misogyny I absorbed early in my life. When unconscious, these attitudes result in a tendency to overvalue a masculine worldview, or to uncritically align with masculine (“traditional”) definitions of women and the feminine. I experienced this aspect of bias some fifteen years ago in my own therapy. My therapist was a happily married woman of my mother’s generation. She was eager for me to find a husband, encouraged me to date, and counseled me to be submissive and pleasing to whatever man I met. In her view, this was how women were most-deeply fulfilled because it aligned with her definition of a woman's feminine nature. It is a cautionary tale of a therapist’s well-intended bias.

Reflect on how we define “feminine.” Most definitions of femininity were written or constructed by men, or have their roots in the past when women and feminine attributes were defined exclusively from a masculine perspective. Freeing the feminine from these accretions will take time.

Give space to the negative emotions that often swirl between mother and daughter. These feelings include competition, envy, resentment, anger, criticism, control, and outright hatred. I sense that mothers and daughters cannot find their way into a relationship that is more available to delicate and positive feelings without first taking an honest look at what hurts, at the specific details of what went wrong and why. The pain must be seen, owned, worked on, and digested.

These discussions, along with scores of others, are just beginning. In the myth of Demeter, Persephone eventually returns for part of the year, though both goddesses end the story having been initiated and irrevocably changed.

In the contemporary setting, not all mothers and daughters are available for this kind of underworld process. A mother may have died, or not be psychologically able—although a daughter’s solitary work can bear its own fruit. And not all women may want to open themselves to these difficult and often raw conversations. But for those who do want to do this work, mutual understanding can grow. The two women may find themselves very gradually moving toward appreciation, reconciliation, and, possibly, even deep love.

Janis Jennings is a licensed psychotherapist and has a PhD in Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. At this time, she is an analytic candidate in training at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles.