Whoopi Goldberg's Mom Had Electroshock Therapy and Didn't Know Who Her Children Were

While talking to PEOPLE about her upcoming memoir My Mother, My Brother, and Me, Goldberg revealed her mother experienced a mental breakdown while she was in elementary school.

"My mother at one point when I got older... said, 'Can I tell you a secret?' I was like, 'Sure,''" Goldberg told the publication. "She said, 'I didn't know who you were when I got out of the hospital.' It's like, 'I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what?' She said, 'Yeah, I had no idea who you were. I just knew I never wanted to go back to that hospital. So I had to do everything I could. If they said the sky was green, and I could see it wasn't green, and it was blue, I'd say, 'Yes, the sky is green.' 'Cause I never wanted it again.'"

The View cohost revealed that her mother, Emma Johnson, was in hospital for two years following her breakdown and even endured electroshock therapy -- to the point where the names of her children, Whoopi and her late brother Clyde, were wiped from her memory.

"I said to her, 'And nobody knew. You didn't tell anybody,'" she continued. "'I said, 'So you carried this for 40 years?' She said, 'Well, what else was I going to do?'"

Goldberg detailed her experience growing up without a mom for those two years, calling her mother her "world" and "center of gravity."

"Suddenly the center of gravity wasn't there," she said.

Goldberg opened up more about her mother on The View Wednesday, saying her grandfather and father "OK'd that [her] mother get the shock treatment for two years" because "there was a time in this country when ... any man involved in your life could make medical decisions for you."

Her fellow cohosts expressed their "shock" that such treatment was used in Goldberg's lifetime.

Johnson died after having a stroke in 2010.

Goldberg also opened up about her relationship with her brother, Clyde, who died in 2015 of a brain aneurysm. She described him as "fun" and that "women loved him."

Goldberg's memoir, My Mother, My Brother, and Me, hits bookstores on May 7, 2024.