Mothering and Incest: A Book Review
By Rosie Rosenzweig,
Resident Scholar in Women’s Studies
Brandeis University.
A Long Journey to Joy: A Memoir of a Counselor's Recovery
By Dr. Yonah Klem
A well-endowed woman in a 1970s confessional encounter group tells of the teenage sexual relationship she had with her father. Even though it is past the scheduled conclusion of the weekend, we were all riveted by her narration and made no move to leave. Following this, she entices a handsome actor to take her home to New York from our New England retreat. He dumps his long time partner who must now scavenge her transportation back to the Big Apple. This incest survivor privately describes to me her history as “the other woman;” she seems to be “screwing” her mother with each new conquest.
A decade ago on another retreat, my roommate tells me of her ongoing teenage incestuous relationship with her father. In this story, the incest survivor reports it to her mother who takes action. Her mother confronts her husband to protect her daughter. The father retreats to the next room and commits suicide.
And then there is Dr. Yonah Klem’s uncaring mother in Klem’s memoir, A Long Journey to Joy: A Memoir of a Counselor's Recovery, whose concern is only for the predators who assaulted her then teenage daughter. This book is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in the topic of incest, and specifically in the rare reporting of Jewish incest. The ongoing therapy and spirituality present here could become a textbook for recovery in any therapist or rabbinical training. More specifically, it can be a landmark personal account extremely useful in the new emerging field of Spiritual Direction, born in a California Christian College.
Klem buried her disturbing memories of Jewish incest because she was admonished for her depressions with her mother’s constant admonition to “snap out of it!” Both her parents colluded to cruelly thwart their 20-year old daughter from sharing an apartment with her girlfriends. Klem then became almost “crazed with anger.” Her mother kept reminding Klem that her ongoing responsibility was to keep the men in the family fixated in their emotional needs. At one point Klem promised her unconscious self not to uncover too many secrets until her mother dies. For the most part, she kept true to this sequenced timing of her own recovery.
The narration of uncovering the painful memories describes the list of alarming symptoms in the victimized children beginning with: always suicidal. After many years of probing, these clues eventually solved the mysteries of her depression. Klem’s first alarming memory is of herself at three without a bed to call her own, sleeping on chairs in a multi-family home. Here she is frightened out of a deep sleep by some large figure standing by. Then there’s the terrifying dream of a large man approaching her with a huge erect penis that makes the reader have chills. After she is married to a thankfully stable scientist, she accompanies him on a trip to Europe where an incident sends her into bed and a deep depression: a group of men approach her alone on the street and one grabs her breast and walks on. Another time, a visit to a museum displaying a nude woman with her legs open overwhelms her with shame and self-loathing. Additionally driving in a car where the windshield becomes coated with a light rain makes her continually nauseous. Ongoing cramps and pain engulf her stomach at other times.
A book reviewer is not supposed to be a spoiler disclosing the uncovering of any mystery, but I will add that after much therapy and ongoing spiritual guidance, memories were uprooted, solved, and redirected. You’ll have to read the book that un-layers like a mystery novel with disturbing revelations.
Dr. Klem eventually through dance therapy, studying for her counseling doctorate, and the specific spiritual application of Gestalt therapy wherein a spiritual advisor or guide is created, named, and given voice for direction to a healthy and whole spiritual life. And then there was music. Klem still takes dance and voice lessons to this day, and has a sustaining spiritual practice and community. Currently retired, she is devoted to a healthy mothering of her children and grandchildren.
The author of A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la, a memoir about meeting her Buddhist son's gurus,
Rosie Rosenzweig is a Resident Scholar in Women's Studies at Brandeis University in Boston.
She is also an ordained teacher (Morah L'Hitbodedut) of Jewish Meditation.
