Virginia Beane Rutter's moving and provocative study explores why woman-to-woman psychotherapy is so powerfully transforming. At the core of this transformation is the archetype of the mother-daughter relationship. Under the millennia of patriarchy, mothers and daughters have historically been alienated from one another. A woman's alienation from her mother becomes an alienation from herself, from her own empowered femininity. ""Woman-to-woman psychotherapy,"" writes Beane Rutter, ""is the ritual container for the lost feminine in our culture."" In her view, the consulting room is the sacred space for women's symbolic rites of passage, to reclaim the feminine rituals attending the intimate initiatory events of a woman's life. Beane Rutter traces the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey of the ""cultural heroine"" who, through her individual transformation, healing and self-awareness, courageously takes up the task of all women.