Liebe Margrit,
.PP
.fi
.na
Your letter arrived yesterday,
and I thought it might be helpful if I tried to
make a beginning of answering it,
although the issues you raise are very difficult
and I know I cannot do justice to them in a single letter,
if at all.
.PP
You have sometimes criticized me for my attitude,
for what I have done in the past, or what amounts to the
same thing, for the sort of person I have been.
While such criticism doesn't offend me, and while I try
to learn from it, these are matters that I cannot change.
I cannot change the person that I am.
I cannot change the past.
If you are dissatisfied,
tell me what you would like me to do
.ul
now,
this week, this month,
this year. Of course I cannot promise you that I will comply
with every request. What I can promise is:
1) that I will try to understand what you ask,
2) that I will try to do what you request of me, and
3) if what I am able or willing to do is unsatisfactory to you,
I will try to explain myself in however great detail you wish.
The best hope of improving the relationship
is my trying to understand
your requests, and your trying to understand my answers
when they do not fully satisfy you.
.PP
A preliminary problem for me is that you merge your complaints
against Mutti and Papa and against Klemens
with your complaints against me.
I hold myself responsible for everything that I have done,
but I cannot be responsible for Mutti and Papa. 
In my own mind I have often been very critical of them,
to the extent where I became ashamed of my own criticism,
but I can do nothing about them.
I can also not be held accountable for Klemens,
who is now thirty-five years old and
largely responsible for the renal dialysis unit
and the renal clinic at his hospital.
It is true that we regularly share ideas and information
and that our judgments coincide in many respects,
but it is also true that we are different persons,
and I do some things which are not congenial to him,
and he does some things which are not congenial to me.
With respect to his relationship to you, you should know
that last May he specifically requested
that I stay away from Konnarock to give him an opportunity
to confirm his own relationship to you,
and I complied with that request.
.PP
Your letter referred specifically to 
"the issue around Klemens and the children,"
I infer that much of your unhappiness
stems from the fact that you have not had the opportunity
to take charge of Rebekah and Nathaniel.
I think the most constructive 
perspective in which to look at this issue is to consider:
1) They are not my children, and their upbringing
is not under my control. I am not critical of Klemens and Laura
in the least, but there are very important aspects of their
education which I would manage differently,
and to argue whether
I would or would not have you take charge of them if they were
my children is like arguing about whether I would sell you
the Brooklyn Bridge if it belonged to me.
2) They are not only Klemens's children but also Laura's.
Laura has various uncles and aunts (of whom I know four),
and it is totally inconceivable to me that her children would
be left in the charge of any of them except in an emergency the nature
of which again I cannot imagine.  The relationship of Rebekah and
Nathaniel to you, therefore, is completely symmetric with their
relationship to their other great-aunts and uncles,
and objectively there is no reason
why you should feel disproportionately
excluded from their care.
.PP
You have said from time to time that we do not trust you.
I have thought about "trust" a good deal,
since I make my living by persuading my patients to trust me.
The term trust is too general
and too much weighed down with emotion to be very useful.
Let me suggest that the term "trust" has at least three different
objects: loyalty, judgment, and skill. It is slightly embarassing,
but to clarify the issue, let me remind you that I trust Margaret's
loyalty absolutely, but I would never trust her legal judgment,
or her ability to drive a car. So far as you yourself are concerned, 
forgive me for saying that I also trust your loyalty absolutely,
and that so far as your judgment and skills are concerned,
of some I am convinced, to some I am open-minded,
and of others I am open to persuasion.
It is important to remember
that if judgment and skills exist,
trust in them will arise as soon as they are demonstrated,
(this is the case, even where there is no loyalty),
and where they do not exist, they can be learned.
One is constantly entrusting individuals with tasks 
which they have newly learned
and in which they have demonstrated their competence only recently.
This is an issue, which, if you think it useful,
we can talk about at greater length.
.PP
A systematic issue which it is necessary to clarify
at an early stage of our reconciliation,
is the circumstance that while you are critical and angry at me,
I do not reciprocate.
It has been many years since I was critical of you or angry.
This stance of intellectual and emotional forbearance
is conscious and deliberate and extends to
.ul
all
members of my family.
I remember very vividly, even fifty years later,
one day in the medical center when Mutti and Papa fought
either with each other or with you.
I was standing in the second floor hallway,
halfway between your room and mine,
when I made the conscious resolve to train myself
never to become angry at any member of my family,
and to create for my family an environment
free of anger and dissention.
I was very serious about this,
and thought about it a great deal.
I remember
when I was a third year medical student
learning psychiatry at what was then the Boston Psychopathic Hospital,
a class discussion, in which the instructor,
a man, I suppose in his mid forties,
was discussing the emotional dynamics of family relationships
and asserting the inevitability of hostility and anger.
I remember declaring then with youthful self-confidence
that I was never going to fight with any of my children
or for that matter with any members of my family.
and I have often thought of the instructor's embarrassed
and hostile reply: "If you never get angry at them
they will think that you are one first class son of a bitch
because you don't even care enough to get angry with them."
As I get older, I think there may be something to that,
and I suspect that if I were to be critical of you,
wenn ich Dir jetzt Vorwu#rfe machte,
we could have a real quarrel after which,
you might feel much better,
or you might feel much worse.
.PP
It is possible that you will not believe me,
that you will argue that although I speak no criticism
and express no anger,
nonetheless I harbor unspoken criticism
and unexpressed anger.
You might accuse me,
as Mutti would have done, of dissembling,
of being "unaufrichtig", untruthful,
because although my words were uncritical and conciliatory,
my attitude (Einstellung) was hostile.
Such an argument would presuppose
that you knew me better than I know myself.
This, however, would be an accusation
subject neither to proof or disproof,
which is meaningful only in a realm of metapsychology
to which I have never paid much attention.
In the context of our relationship,
the accusation that my profession of tolerance and charity
was dishonest would mean that you really didn't want
anything to do with me.
It would amount to a rejection of my personality,
a rejection which would preclude any discourse between us
until it was rescinded.
.PP
The fundamental question about our relationship
which we must decide,
is how close and strong we wish it to be.
On this question also, I am amenable to your wishes.
For my part I would always prefer an active exchange of
ideas and feelings, but I would not be hurt if, in the end,
you wished to spend your time and energy on other matters.
If we want to understand each other better,
then as a first step, we should spend more time,
much more time, talking with each other,
and the obvious way to do this is 
to spend half an hour or so each week,
discussing on the telephone, the substantive issues
which are of concern to us. I suspect that we could
make a great deal of progress in a very short time.