Thanks for your two typescripts Some general remarks: this is a book you want to write, and you seem to know what you want to cover and how. Other than to encourage you, I really have no need to give you advice on how to write this kind of book. What you learned in high school debating classes will suffice. I shall comment, however, if I can help steer you clear from misconceptions about or misinterpretations of Paul.

Some minor points:

Although I'm grateful whenever Paul's ideas are discussed, I'm sure he would want you to know that towards the end of his life he felt that the terms subjective and objective had done more to confuse than to enlighten his students. I find them personally useful in describing actual people, but he felt that any introduction to his basic ideas should simply not cover these terms at all. People new to his ideas find it hard enough to understand what he meant by masculine or feminine, and if I were you I would keep this part very simple. It would be more helpful to your average reader to explain how feminine men fight their identity and become compulsive, aggressive and sadistic, and how masculine men fight their identity and become obsessive, passive and masochistic. This problem all by itself explains why the phenomenon of polarity hasn't yet been recognized by the world in general, least of all by the mental health "professionals."

Be careful in your choice of synonyms for Paul's keywords. They may make sense in some colloquial context familiar to your current lifestyle, but Paul is a scientific writer and may choose your synonym elsewhere to mean something quite different than you do. Integrity is indeed similar to courage, I admit, but Paul never used the word honor, and I can quite authoritatively state that charity is no substitute for love.

The Center did close it's meeting place in 1991, and many of his otherwise loyal students have drifting away from us since then, but I would ask you to state that the Ninth Street Center still exists as much as ever as a publishing house and a sponsor of talk groups and counseling. It's important for people to know that they can still get a hold of Paul's works just by sending us a check and can still talk to real live students of Paul when they're in New York.

I find your memories of the Center both honest and amusing (in hindsight). Would we do it all differently today? Well, for one thing, you dropped out when the Center was still quite stoic and overly serious in some burdensome way. In the years to come Paul would place much more emphasis on people enjoying themselves and their creativity. The entire "fun and pleasure" component of life was now our dominant theme for the next fifteen years, until the AIDS crisis made our focus on these rather subtle psychological refinements seem too self-indulgent and our financial support dried up. But I'll always be proud that we took ourselves very seriously, and tried to change the world. How many people can say that's how they spent their twenties and thirties?

That's it for the minor reactions. Now for one last thought.

As a life-long freethinker and (more pertinent for my polarity) free agent, I have always been saddened when ordinary good folks feel they have to justify their beliefs and behavior by quoting from the U. S. constitution. How do you know this document is more sound on the topic of human nature than any other similar document one could quote? (I personally prefer to quote the U. N. Charter, but my argument against doing that is the same: it's simply a matter of historical good fortune that any of these documents is any good psychologically.) If one is stuck in a life-long civil service job in, say, a Dept. of Education, then it might seem appropriate to fight one's daily battles with reference to the regulations and rules of that Dept. If one wants to tinker with, say, divorce laws, then by all means wrangle with the U. S. Code all the way to the Supreme Court.

Yes, I understand that this is a book about the military. But it's important for free men and women always to bear in mind — as the French existentialists told us — that we are already free. We have only to exercise the freedom we have to find out what our nature is capable of. The sea of law, as Paul said, comes well after such free men have established the right. All of our creative reachings into life take place well beyond those areas that are even comprehensible, let alone judicable, by congressmen and petty bureaucrats. If gay people demonstrate in their daily lives that homosexuality is a boon to the creative process, then reasonable straight people will have no need to object to us. Indeed, many straight people will be inspired to join our ranks, as I myself did in 1968.

Nor would it be wise for homosexuals to think that being gay is the last great frontier of human liberty. In evolutionary terms, homosexuality is probably just one stage in the increasing trend toward new forms of human intimacy that are initially repugnant because they seem to violate biological survival rules. (Remember that when the intimacy called heterosexuality was invented by Paleozoic reptiles it too had to overcome their hitherto natural tendency to kill and eat those of their own kind.) I'm not saying that everything repugnant should automatically be accepted: these new kinds of feelings and behavior need to enhance the mental health of the people involved and not be merely some kind of hedonistic escape from a full participation in civilization.

But it's much more intellectually daunting to write a book about human nature in itself rather than, say, government screw-ups concerning its leading-edge citizenry. And there's nothing wrong with writing yet another entertaining book about bureaucratic stupidity as a way to earn recognition and to butter up the educated public for your really dangerous ideas. So, as much and as sincerely as I wish you success in this venture, Bill, I want you to know that I also look forward to your next book with even greater enthusiasm.