Writer & Lecturer
Melissa Knox, Ph.D.
Divorcing Mom:
A Memoir of Psychoanalysis
by Melissa Knox
Available Now from Cynren Press
About
Melissa Knox, Ph.D.
Melissa Knox, Ph.D. is a writer and educator who lives in Germany. Divorcing Mom is her first memoir. She has authored books on Oscar Wilde, scholarly articles on nineteenth-century writers, and numerous personal essays on disturbed family life. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia University, has studied at several psychoanalytic institutes, and writes a blog, The Critical Mom.
Email Melissa here or complete this contact form.
Personal Essays
“Writing Behind Labels,” Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, March 25, 2024.
“Translation,” The Bookends Review, September 6, 2023.
“Doing the Woke,” Merion West, July 26, 2023.
“The Lamp in the Room,” The Bluebird Word, January 28, 2023.
“Good Looking Teacher,” Riddlebird, Vol. 1.l, January 2023.
“The Art of Our Necessities,” Adelaide Literary Magazine, December 7, 2022.
“Abortion and the Mythic Mother,” Merion West, December 5, 2022.
“Salvation,” Parhelion, Summer 2022.
“The abortion debate is missing something crucial: mercy,” Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, July 25, 2022.
“Racing Heart,” Runner-Up, Essay Contest, Creative Nonfiction, Women on Writing, October, 2021.
“‘Ideal Marriage’: A Look Back,” Another Chicago Magazine, September, 2021.
“Teaching Trouble,” Burningwood Literary Journal, Issue 99, July 2021
“Soul Mate,” Barzakh, Spring 2021.
“Widow’s Walk,” Runner-Up, Essay Contest, Creative Nonfiction, Women on Writing, April, 2021.
“Crossed,” Image Journal, Issue 106, October 2020.
“Remorse,” “Mom Through the Ages” and “On Disbelief and Loss,” Lamplit Underground, Volume 4, September 2020.
“Dispatches from a Pandemic,” Another Chicago Magazine, May 2020
“Bewitched, Bothered and Bewidowed,” Star 82 Review, Issue 8.1, Spring 2020
“The Story of What’s Not Done,” West Texas Literary Review, Issue 9, Spring 2019. Print.
“In the Examination Room,” The Citron Review, Vol. 10, Fall 2019.
“Fear of Prayer: An Atheist’s Lament,” Lunch Ticket, Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019.
“Memento Mori,” Streetlight, May 17, 2019
“Approaches to Dying 101,” Eclectica, Vol. 23 No. 2, April/May 2019.
“The Accidental Monster: Salomé, Mom and Me,” Empty Mirror, March 22, 2019.
“Strong Medicine (But Do You Need It?): On Being a Cancer Patient in Germany,” Volney Road Review, Vol. 1, Issue 2, March 1, 2019. Nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2019.
“A Girl in a Bad Porn Film is Being Beaten,” Drunk Monkeys, December 3, 2018
“A Citizen Gone with the Wind” and Interview with Isaac Myers III, Curlew Quarterly – Issue No. 5 – Autumn 2018
“My Second Adolescence,” The Same, 14.1, October 1, 2018
“When I Believed in Belief,” The Other Journal, September 30, 2018.
“Diagnosis,” The Santa Ana River Review, Spring, 2018.
“Introduction to Literature in Germany: A Beginner’s Course,” The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, August 28, 2018.
“A Whale of a Gift,” Concho River Review, Vol. 32, no. 1, Spring/Summer 2018, 69-86. Print. Pushcart nomination.
“The Marriage Plot,” The Clarion Project, April 8, 2018.
“The Gods,” The Wax Paper, Vol. 2, Issue 1. February, 2017.
“Through the Wardrobe,” Brain, Child, August 15, 2018.
“The Intervention,” Gravel, February, 2014.
“German Women and Botox,” Realize Magazine, June, 2013.
Fiction
“The Visits,” Brief Wilderness, December 17, 2021.
“Getting Even,” Flash Fiction Magazine, August 22, 2018.
“The Oral Exam,” Gnu Journal 2018.
Poems
“Bellevue,” Plainsongs, XXXIX.2 (Spring/Summer 2019). Print.
“Mother’s Day,” The Offbeat, Vol 19, Fall 2018. Print.
“Miscarriage at Ten Weeks,” The Mom Egg Review, Vol. 14, “Change,” 2016. Print.
“Snow Blight,” NonBinary Review, Zoetic Press, Issue #1, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, June 2014.
“Mary Shelley: My Mother’s Monsters,”, The Feminist Wire, October 8, 2014.
“Rape,” “In a Bavarian Cemetery,” “A Christmas Visit,” “Cut the Blue,” “In the Garden of Love and Terror,” “Demon Lover,” Underground Books/The Kitchen Poet, 2/10/2014.
Melissa’s Latest Book
Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis
by Melissa Knox
About the Book
Psychoanalysis was her family’s religion—instead of wafers and wine, there were Seconals, Nembutals, and gin. Baptized into the faith at fourteen, Melissa Knox endured her analyst’s praise of her childlike, victimized mother—who leaned too close, ate off Melissa’s plate, and thought “pedophile” meant “silly person.” Gaslighted with the notions that she’d seduced her father, failed to masturbate, and betrayed her mother, Melissa shouldered the blame. Her story of a family pulled into and torn apart by psychoanalysis exposes the abuse inherent in its authoritarianism as Melissa learns, with a startling sense of humor and admirable chagrin, that divorcing Mom is sometimes the least crazy thing to do.
Published by Cynren Press
Melissa Knox, Ph.D. is a writer and educator who lives in Germany. Divorcing Mom is her first memoir. She has authored books on Oscar Wilde, scholarly articles on nineteenth-century writers, and numerous personal essays on disturbed family life. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia University, has studied at several psychoanalytic institutes, and writes a blog, The Critical Mom.
Reviews
Advance Praise for Divorcing Mom
“Divorcing Mom is a testament to the authoritarianism inherent in psychoanalysis, the routine brainwashing and gaslighting defining a form of treatment that has more in common with religion than therapy . . . [Knox’s book] is a cracking good read.”
– Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s book, The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory, in which the author contends that Sigmund Freud suppressed his early finding that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse, has stirred massive publicity and controversy since its publication in 1984. He is the author of many books on psychoanalysis as well as the bestselling author of nine books on the emotional life of animals.
An emotionally articulate, honest, thoughtful and beautifully written memoir, Divorcing Mom is a testimony of resilience. Melissa’s brave voice shines as a bright reminder that our circumstances do not define who we are or dictate the trajectory of our lives. Her fraught relationship with her mother helps her find what we all need in some way–the courage to discover our own unique path in life. Her ability to illuminate this is a true gift to her readers.
– Ruth Wariner, New York Times bestselling author of The Sound of Gravel
“A beautifully expressed, poignant, and heart-rending look into the heart of what it’s like to be raised by a narcissistic mother. As daughters of narcissistic mothers, we struggle to explain to others the pain and madness of the dynamic. It is all so vague, so subtle, so entrenched. But Melissa Knox eloquently shares this dynamic with us, invites us into the madness, and does this beautifully and eloquently.”
– Danu Morrigan, founder of website Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
“Divorcing Mom is a story of horrifying and at times hilarious family dysfunction . . . Knox writes with the voice and vision that she was taught to discredit and ignore from an early age, and her book is a remarkable achievement, exploring family secrets and addressing disturbing issues of power differentials – between parent and child, doctor and patient, and men and women.”
– Helen Fremont, author of After Long Silence: A Memoir
“There are countless “daughter/mother” stories to be told. I’d be hard pressed to find one as unique and compelling as Melissa Knox’s Divorcing Mom. With imaginative and intelligent prose, Knox probes and examines her life as the daughter of a deeply narcissistic mother and her years with a Freudian therapist gone badly wrong. One asks the question: can anyone survive such damage? Knox does, and her memoir shows us how.”
– Marcia Butler, author of The Skin Above My Knee.
Superb reminder that the authoritarianism in power, any power, is built into its DNA. Divorcing Mom is a cry in the upside down, gaslight, other reality wilderness we somehow survive in that screams, “trust your heart, it will lead the way.”
– Charles Monroe-Kane, author of Lithium Jesus: A Memoir, and Peabody award-winning journalist for national public radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge.
“Divorcing Mom is fast-paced and reads like a detective story about one’s own family and about some rather monstrous psychoanalysts. Childhood sexual abuse and its denial, and the pain that such denial causes, constitutes the beating heart of the story, as does the nature of the wounded mother—motherless daughter relationship. However, not all psychoanalysts are monsters; au contraire. But Knox’s narrator’s authoritarian interrogator certainly is. In my view, Freud was not a fraud—but some think so. Not all therapy lasts for 10, 20, or 30 years but it has been known to happen. Knox is a writer. I look forward to her next work.”
– Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness (1972) and many other works, including An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013).
Get in Touch
Contact Melissa Knox
by email: m.knoxraab (at) gmail.com
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