On Discovering Mother has a First Name

A young woman who had always been viewed as precociously mature in her relationships responded to the information that I would be absent for a week by asking a series of personal questions. She wanted to know if I was married, whether I had children, where I lived, and what I would be doing during that week and with whom. When I suggested that her thoughts about the questions might be more useful than the answers, she felt somewhat rebuffed—although she disavowed any discomfort. She went on to speak about her closeness to her mother. The two of them had a marvelous thing, she said; they were more like confidantes than mother and daughter. Each could discuss topics with the other that she imagined most relatives customarily avoided. Their long talks were reminiscent of college roommates. The two of them were truly "friends."

A childhood memory surfaced suddenly; it had been unavailable until that moment. At first it seemed to her only a trivial recollection. When she was three, her mother had been depressed following the birth of a new child. The depression had caused her to become remote and relatively unavailable for a period of time. The patient had no memory of all of this, although she had heard about it from her parents on quite a few occasions. The new memory that was hers at the moment was the recollection that during that period she had discovered that her mother had a first name—Gloria. Mother was not only "mommy"; she was also "Gloria." She recalled how excited she was about the discovery; and then she wondered about the surfacing of the memory in the session.