Dear Alex, Thank you for speaking with me on the phone and for both your letters. Perhaps my confidence that I understand is an index of the depths of my misunderstanding. The threshold issue which reveals many "problems" which would otherwise remain concealed is my shameless willingness to broach describe define and analyse issues such as profound fractures in our relations to each other, issues customarily kept cloaked in the closet unless perforce presented to the psychiatrist. I assert that, if anyone, it is I who am to blame because my need for intimacy with members of my (immediate) family caused me to bind my son to me with bonds of affection which he cannot break, which imprison his spirit and present him from living a (married) life of his own; and that his attempt to find through marriage a life of his own has only been partially successful. The fact that I am not invited to pretend "to be part of his family" is the most persuasive evidence that he remains part of _my_ family to a perhaps undesirable degree. I have no reason to be angry with my daughter-in-law. I respect her and I like her for what she has done for and what she means to my son. It is the nature of language to be subject to contradiction. You need not believe me. You may assert: a) that I am lying, b) that I am deceiving myself, or c) that I misunderstand and hence misrepresent. The psychiatrist classically rebuts his pastient's assertion of good will, by accusing him of being "passive-aggressive". Such conflicts of opinion are insoluble. We are all different. When we offend one another, it is not (necessarily) on account of what we "do" but on account of what we are. The Greeks considered personality as a trap (scandal), and asserted that by being ourselves rather than infantry, we are "scandalized" by one another. The King James Version translates "scandalized" as "offended" St. Matthew 11:6 quotes Jesus as saying “And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.” Luther translated being scandalized as "being angry" (sich ärgern). Love, Jochen