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It is daunting to contemplate a memoir about a 7-year-old boy who came home one day, ate some chocolate chip cookies, and then happened upon his mother in the cellar, where she had hung herself. The memoir is about trauma, but its merit far exceeds the often too predictable genre of the trauma memoir. Richard Brockman grows up and in many ways thrives: undergoing psychoanalysis to work through the trauma, becoming a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Columbia University, an author of a scholarly book about the mind, and a playwright as well.
As Brockman proposes, there are two stories here that envelop each other—one about his history and experience (and treatment) and the other, reports from neurobiological research that help to elaborate his history and experience. One feels a lot and one learns a lot, and reading this memoir inspired me to reflect further about the two realms that define this work.
Brockman relies on his own memory, supplemented especially by conversations with his aunt, his mother's younger sister, to trace his life story from birth onward. Making sense of his developmental history means that he must pursue a detailed account of what was going on with his mother who had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He fully embraces that over and beyond the enormous impact of his mother's suicide, his earlier life experiences must be taken account of in considering the development of his personality.
Brockman's interest in psychoanalysis and neuroscience converges, as he faces that his mother was depressed before and after his birth and that he was nurtured in an inconsistent way during the pre-Oedipal stage. According to his aunt, whom he informs us, may not be the most reliable source, his mother was not ready to become a mother (p. 69), struggled to be able to breastfeed (p. 66), experienced her son as clingy and always crying (p. 76), allegedly had a lover (p. 66), and was not a very good mother (p. 79). More chillingly, Brockman mentions that a