Mirrored Reflections: A Memoir by Kitty La Perriere

“Mirrored Reflections by Kitty La Perriere is a sweeping and intimate autobiography that lets each reader experience Europe on the edge of the Holocaust, changing language and culture in America, and helping others to survive and thrive.  Her story inspires each of us to live our own story.”
— Gloria Steinem

        Mirrored Reflections: A Memoir, is the the phenomenal chronicle of the life of Kitty La Perriere.  In the course of her long life La Perriere has gone from being child of pre-holocaust Czechoslovakia, to stateless refugee, to nationally and internationally known professional woman. She was one of the developers of the field of family therapy and the first woman to be President of the American Family Therapy Academy
She is also the sole family therapist ever to have provided us with a memoir of her life journey. Her writing is frank and touching in detailing the ups and downs of a rich and difficult life that encompassed living in many languages, in many cultures, and in many contexts. Her life chronicle extends from her childhood in Moravia during the build up to the horrors of World War II, to becoming one of the central, if unappreciated figures of the American Family Therapy movement of the 1960s and 70s.
Her rich narrative conveys intimate thoughts and experiences through the breadth and length of her long life. She tells us about her many love relationships and the phases of her complex relationship with her daughter, as well as the difficult power relationships of her professional life in an era that was harsh and not generous to women. She then shares the fascinating turns of her later life.
This memoir is an extraordinary gift from a brilliant, creative and thoughtful writer, who has striven throughout her many life phases to adapt, to learn from all her experiences, and to prevail.
–Monica McGoldrick

It is an odd combination, the feeling of apartness and an enthusiasm for the wellbeing of the world, yet of this conjoining Kitty La Perriere has made a life and a fascinating book. Extending from the time when the author was a little girl in Hitler’s Europe into her impetuous and social justice-yearning young womanhood, on to her soaring success as psychotherapist, and ending and not ending in the present, when old age has slowed but hardly stopped her, this memoir is the story of passion and reserve, and of an aloneness that contains both polarities. The high intelligence of her self examination modifies but does not overtake the pain of memory, which she knows to be everyone’s pain. Here is a rare look into the mind and heart of someone who has devoted a life to the minds and hearts of others.
–Roger Rosenblatt