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Momma and the Meaning of Life is a sometimes painful account, not of a therapist and his work, but of a man who happens to be a therapist. The book is comprised of an account of his personal epiphany, two extended case stories, a fictionalized therapy, and a parable. The red thread that unites them is the search for truth. Once this question is answered, a much larger one looms up: Whose truth?
Long after his mother has died, the author remains shackled to her by his hurt and angry child's version of the truth. He finally asks what her truth might have been. He realizes that she was not put on earth to bedevil him, but that she was a person with her own wishes, hurts, and frustrations. With the understanding of her personhood, his own full personhood can emerge. The shackles fall away.
His case presentations put the battle for truth on center stage. Whose truth would prevail—his or the patient's? Ultimately hers did, but she sure had to fight for it. A parallel battle for truth was waged between Yalom and me. With my scribblings in the margin, I screamed at him much as the patient screamed