Thank you so much for writing such a detailed and interesting letter. Your writing skills are considerable, and it would surprise me if you didn't earn at least part of your income using them. But, more importantly, you are a serious student of Paul's ideas, and nothing is more important to me than helping people like yourself, if and when they let me.

Your life story is so typical of the kinds of students that flocked to Paul in the 70's, and who gravitate to the Rosenfels Community today. None of us have joined the ranks of those loyal to conventionality because merely it makes our choices simpler. Some of us have indeed innocently tried and failed to be "well behaved" — but we always seem to choose truth and right over convenience. This marks us all as outcasts, doomed to wander the earth with neither a homeland nor an army of zombie robots at our backs. But it is important to know that we are not alone. Psychological historians have known for centuries that it is the deviants who spearhead social progress.

Let me focus for the moment on what it is that you might need from me here and now. And rather than to engage your factual claims about the nature of the world, I'm just going to make some general observations about your state of mind and the growth progress it evidences.

I'm very impressed with how you chose to become involved with homosexuality, and how you let your new found "pariah" status carry you into uncharted but nevertheless fertile territory. Like Paul, you renounced worldly success because personal growth was more important. So few people are like that. Rachel is another one. But, of course, there must be thousands more, who just don't bother wearing lapel pins declaring these priorities. These are the people I believe in. People who believe in success can only find success. People who need more are the only ones who find more. We are like spies in a crowd of inebriated cult members, intending harm to no one and simply enjoying our freedom to eschew what everyone else feels they need to believe.

You have indeed sent me a rant. A magnificent, eloquent and memorable rant. A rant consisting of years of pent-up feelings about how you feel the world has betrayed you. I like rants. Both Rachel and I enjoy ranting, as you can see from the following examples: and . But rants serve the ranter more than the listener. My rants may get something off my chest, but maybe not something you'll want on your chest. Still, the feelings of betrayal you report are completely real. They are not delusions or just "made up in your mind". They are honest reactions to the world you find yourself in. And I simply agree with a lot of what you have obseserved.

You have allowed the phenomenal world to penetrate you deeply, and it's no surprise that this new intimacy overstimulates you, causing you great pain and consternation. Paul would say that you are suffering from "creativity poisoning", and would recommend developing the "fun and pleasure" component of your life. He would also tell you that you have yet to learn the difference between "oppressive stress" and "harmonious stress", and that you have allowed an overload of the former to exhaust your psychological resources, depriving you of the peace of mind you'll need to stay rational in an irrational world. So instead of asking why your intensity causes you so much suffering — a question that would lead nowhere — let me ask a different question, a question that might act like a branch you could catch hold of and so pull yourself out of the quicksand you're struggling in: Have you tried using withdrawal to soothe the damage this new-found intensity is causing? Indeed, have you tried to find a better world to live in, or have you assumed that the world of the normals is the only one there is?

Many of your insights parallel those of phenomenologists like Ernst Cassirer, who remind us that we do in fact, as you insist, live in a world of "beliefs" — beliefs which, while deserving of loyalty, can by their nature only be transitory. You do an awful lot of complaining about unknown but evil men who are "controlling" you, yet you don't ask the simplest question of all: why in the world do you let them do this? Nobody has ever "controlled" me, not even Paul Rosenfels — who in his worst moments sometimes tried. Maybe someday you'll let me give you some tips about how to "live free or die". I'd really like to help you with this all too common problem. Sometimes it's easier than you might think to just say no.

I will say one thing about your factual claim that almost everything we believe in, including science, is a cheap fabrication that serves only the purposes of hidden, evil men. You say that our belief in science is not proven, that it is not based on facts. Yet nowhere do you advance facts or proofs for your own angry denunciations. If you want anybody to take seriously your claims, you'll have to do more than come up with a list of alleged crimes. You'd have to do some real research, research that is more than what Paul called "injustice collecting". You'd have to rub shoulders with some actual scientists, find out what they think about, find out where they themselves think the faults of science lie. Ask yourself what the real psychological problems are that hamper social progress. Pinning it on "evil" is at best just another reification — like blaming everything good that happens on "God". You have at least one community at your disposal, after all, that believes in "social progress through personal growth". If you can't afford to dig wider for the truth about the world, then your claims will be no more credible than those arbitrary positions defended by law students in Oxford debates.

It's true that the average person hasn't the time, inclination or wit to study the history of science, and therefor doesn't actually know if it's any more right than superstition used to be. He just goes to the doctor and, whether due to science or sheer magic, is relieved to experience frequent alleviations of his pains. The average person trusts those he judges to be more competent in these matters, and sometimes he just resorts to trusting the mass media. But don't fail to observe that in each century the mass media becomes more trustworthy, if for no other reason than that we can afford more well-educated and dedicated journalists. Trust, it seems, is something that is simply required of civilized people. Without trust we devolve into a Hobbesian state of war, in which none of the creativity you so obviously value can survive. Shake hands with the man next to you, Harold, and you will quite likely discover that he carries no dagger with which to assassinate you. If you don't believe you can afford to take this risk, then you will condemn yourself to a life of fear.

On the other hand, quite a few of us do in fact look into the history of ideas, and especially the history of science. You're right to think it has a checkered history, full of fraud, cheating and mismanagement. And you'd also be right to admire those who, having uncovered these misdeeds, have worked tirelessly to correct them. And, while it's true that it's practically impossible for the layman to map out where exactly today's flaws in science lie, anecdotal evidence suggests that the situation is not as bad as manipulative alarmists want us to believe. And it's comforting to realize that, sooner or later, some whistle-blower or death-bed confession will set the record straight.

Harold, you don't live in a perfect world. I'm very sorry about that. I've done my best to rectify this situation, but my voice — like that of Paul's and so many others before us — is like a barely perceptible drop in the ocean. But each of us has a job to do, however small. So instead of decrying the obvious and expecting people to feel sorry for you, I would like to suggest, as gently and as warmly as I possibly can, that you join the ranks of those of us who have seen that imperfection and decided to do something about it. Paul developed many of his ideas as a prison psychiatrist. Believe me when I say that he looked imperfection in the eye and learned through hard work not to wince from the pain it caused him. Perhaps your next growth phase will involve similar work.

If you really want to live in a perfect world, there's a simple way to do it. Just sit tight and condemn everything around you as being unworthy of your participation. But I want to believe that you're bigger than that, that you can lay aside your anger and begin accepting a much bigger role than that of mere social critic — i.e. the role of teacher. "Teachers and leaders don't punish their students and followers for being less informed and less capable than they are. They encourage them to believe they can do better, and show them how." And, if you should indeed discover or invent a better model for how science might be conducted, I'm all ears. And I'm not the only one.

Every few hundred years someone comes along to lift us another rung up the ladder of civilization. In one century it might be a Socrates, in another it might be a David Hume. Perhaps the 21st-century will remember with deepest gratitude your name. I honestly believe this is possible. I believe that genius is in everyone and you cannot predict who will ignore it and who will stand on its shoulders. But it will take work. And it will take a genuine love for the people around you who need the insights only you can provide, a love that your anger is currently censoring.

You've made me think about lots of other issues, but that's all I should say for now. If you find this letter too stimulating or upsetting, just lay it aside and do something that you enjoy for as long as you need to. Maybe in a month or so, you'll come back to it and feel less threatened. In either case, please be assured that I look forward to communicating more with you about psychology in general, and Paul's ideas in particular. You deserve to find a world that is big enough to make you happy and contented, even if that world is inside you where you least thought to look for it. "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." — Frank Zappa "The individual cannot begin a psychological growth process with a perfectly established inner identity. No matter how well parameters may have functioned in familiar situations, the movement forward into a broadening or deepening world requires that inner identity be rediscovered and reaffirmed. It is not desirable to over develop self-discipline or self-control in the hope that they will always insure the continuity or integrity of parameters. Such a course invites exhaustion, and leads to a psychic state that can be identified as creativity poisoning. Submission or dominance cannot be guided by dogmatic prohibitions or arbitrary commands without reducing the personality to a state of victimization or provocation. The effort to increase the independence of the individual in this way can only end in the loss of independence. When a man faces forward in a life of self-development, ready and able to recognize and deal with failure, he is in a position to exercise self-discipline and self-control where they become necessary and to the degree that they are necessary. He does not want more and he cannot use less. Self-discipline and self-control provide the means for resisting the invasion of inner identity by the sense of importance coming from adaptive accomplishments. They make it possible to correct the distortions of truth and right which come from intuitive charm and inventive ingratiation. They have an additional function in establishing parameters in the otherwise non-judgmental area of fun and pleasure."