Overview

Part One of Joan Carol Lieberman's two-part autobiography, OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, reveals the genesis of her family in prose and photographs. The book's title comes from early recognition that her survival was dependent on maintaining a safe distance from her mother, the descendant of prominent Mormon pioneers, who tragically developed paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the author's birth. Perpetually alert to the distance between herself and others, her narrative draws upon the attachment theory of D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Her atheist father was a USDA research entomologist, who conducted the first experiments using DDT for agricultural purposes in Delta, Utah. After World War II, the author's family moved to Logan where she found safe harbor in the Mormon Church having followed a playmate to a Ward House, where her presence was welcomed. Knowing her mother would never follow her there, she felt the Mormon Church was a safe place to hide. She was fourteen when her father was transferred to Bozeman, Montana and she left Mormonism behind. Less than a year later, her father was sent to Bakersfield, California, where the author finally read the medical literature on paranoid schizophrenia. In that era, experts believed schizophrenia was caused by perverse mothering. She concluded that she was doomed, a fear that haunted her for the next twenty years. After studies in pre-med at the University of California at Berkeley, she traveled in Europe and worked as a medical volunteer in Africa. By the time she returned to Berkeley, the author had become an increasingly formidable and resilient woman, able to withstand the sadness of her mother's illness with the fortitude of a well-adjusted adult. Granted excommunication from the Mormon Church on the grounds of apostasy, she faced illegitimate pregnancy, a shotgun marriage, divorce, and single-working motherhood. She broke through the glass ceiling facing women in 1968 and kept going. Her poignant, painstakingly detailed journey is both exhaustive and intimately personal. Locales include: Salt Lake City, Delta, and Logan, Utah; Yellowstone, Wyoming; Bozeman, Montana; Bakersfield and Berkeley, California; Europe; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Troy, Idaho; and Boulder, Colorado.

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Reviews

A searingly honest chronicle of motherhood and mental illness, drawn from the bittersweet memories of a daughter. Kirkus ReviewsThis book was on her husband's bucket list. Reading it should be on yours. Monroe E. Price, J.D., Director of the Annenberg Center for Global Communications, University of PennsylvaniaMaybe astounding stories like those in OPTIMAL DISTANCE only happen to people who can tell them with her sensitivity and skill. Joan Carol Lieberman's wise narrative shines and inspires. Patricia Hampl, MacArthur Fellow and author of four memoirs: A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, I Could Tell You Stories, and The Florist's Daughter.Part One of OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, is a profound exploration of the nature of attachment and mental illness. Joan Carol Lieberman's mother developed paranoid schizophrenia in 1942, shortly after her birth. For the next four decades, until her mother's death in 1982, prominent experts continued to blame schizophrenia on inadequate mothering -- labeling the mother of those suffering from schizophrenia as schizophrenogenic or refrigerator mothers. The author's heartfelt narrative of how she sought optimal distance from her mother's dangerous impulses is a memorable reminder of how much damage was done to patients and their families by mistaken theorists like Frieda Fromm-Reichman and John Nathaniel Rosen. More importantly, she reminds us of how far we have yet to go to find a cure for this devastating disease which strikes one out of every one hundred of us. Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology, winner of the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.

A searingly honest chronicle of motherhood and mental illness, drawn from the bittersweet memories of a daughter. Kirkus Reviews This book was on her husband's bucket list. Reading it should be on yours. Monroe E. Price, J.D., Director of the Annenberg Center for Global Communications, University of Pennsylvania Maybe astounding stories like those in OPTIMAL DISTANCE only happen to people who can tell them with her sensitivity and skill. Joan Carol Lieberman's wise narrative shines and inspires. Patricia Hampl, MacArthur Fellow and author of four memoirs: A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, I Could Tell You Stories, and The Florist's Daughter. Part One of OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, is a profound exploration of the nature of attachment and mental illness. Joan Carol Lieberman's mother developed paranoid schizophrenia in 1942, shortly after her birth. For the next four decades, until her mother's death in 1982, prominent experts continued to blame schizophrenia on inadequate mothering -- labeling the mother of those suffering from schizophrenia as schizophrenogenic or refrigerator mothers. The author's heartfelt narrative of how she sought optimal distance from her mother's dangerous impulses is a memorable reminder of how much damage was done to patients and their families by mistaken theorists like Frieda Fromm-Reichman and John Nathaniel Rosen. More importantly, she reminds us of how far we have yet to go to find a cure for this devastating disease which strikes one out of every one hundred of us. Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology, winner of the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.

Author Information

Joan Carol Lieberman has been a management consultant and speech writer for forty years working with lawyers, doctors, and women in professional leadership positions. At age seventy-five she continues to consult and write for long-time clients. Born a Gentile in Utah, she spent her childhood in two small Mormon towns, Delta and Logan. Her father was a federal research entomologist, distantly related to Simon Bamberger, Utah's only Jewish governor. Her mother, whose ancestors were among the first Mormon pioneers to arrive in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, tragically developed paranoid schizophrenia shortly after the author's birth. Schizophrenia is a devastating and incurable biological mental illness that effects one out of every one hundred people. The title of OPTIMAL DISTANCE comes from the author's need to keep a safe distance away from her mother whose mental illness triggered episodic murderous impulses toward the author. The roots of Joan Carol Lieberman's unusual two-part autobiography can be found in a pink diary she received on her fifth birthday, a gift that converted her into a devout diarist. As an only and often lonely child, she found comfort in telling an imaginary listener her concerns and worries. Her father's research assignments meant she started high school in Bozeman, Montana and graduated in Bakersfield, California. After studies at the University of California in Berkeley, she traveled to Europe and worked as a medical volunteer in Africa. When the author returned to America, another attempt was made on her life and the author committed her mother to a Tucson hospital where she was finally treated with the first anti-psychotic drug, Thorazine. Soon after returning to Berkeley to finish her studies, the author became pregnant with her first child, a daughter. Her life for the next five years mirrored the social upheaval of the 1960's. In 1966 she left Berkeley for Northern Idaho, where she went to finish her thesis. In 1968, she accepted her first professional managerial position in Boulder, Colorado as director of the county-wide Head Start program. In 1971 the Ford Foundation sought her assistance in establishing the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in Boulder. She met and fell in love with Bob Pelcyger, one of the founding NARF attorneys; following their marriage in 1975, he adopted her daughter. Her mother died on the morning of the author's fortieth birthday. The next year she and Bob had a son. The author was still nursing him when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. While facing death with a young child, she continued to work, started a school for her son, and provided hands-on-help to other mothers with breast cancer. Her now twenty-eight-year survival is both remarkable and inspiring, but not without extraordinary costs, both physically and financially. As a finalist for the Bakeless Literary Prize, Joan Carol Lieberman was invited to attend the 1999 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as a Bakeless Scholar. It was there that she began to write her autobiography, an effort that continued on and off for the next eighteen years. After forty-two years of marriage, Joan Carol Lieberman and Bob Pelcyger made a bucket list for what they each wanted from the other before their death. Bob wanted his wife to finish both Part One and Part Two of OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, which she did in his honor on her seventy-fifth birthday.

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