Well, a number of weeks have rolled by since I told you off, and you still seem to be stumbling around in a state of shock. Given your oft-avowed respect for my moral integrity, I had hoped that you would summon some creative response within yourself, rise to my challenge, and learn something from this incident. Since it seems instead to have left you a little unglued, however, let me see if I can help with a few carefully chosen observations.

John, our relationship for years has been based on shared hobbies, mutual admiration, reciprocal favors, and enjoyable little adventures in the world, such as when you did such a great job of thoroughly inspecting the Karmann Ghia Jen wanted to buy. These activities are all fun in themselves, but they only scratch the surface of life. Trying to get you to open up at a psychological level has always threatened to arouse a host of dogma in your personality about, well, your personality, for one thing and the nature of personal growth for another. But a psychological coming to terms with friends is essential when problems emerge, else how can you even begin to discuss your problems in terms you both understand and accept? This is probably why you have no idea now how to deal with what has happened between us.

Occasionally you've claimed great enthusiasm for the benefits of psychotherapy. "I'm now doing the 'real work'," you've proclaimed twice in so many years. Yet you have never been able to say much about what this real work is. This is what I think real work is: It's not trotting off to a professional to whom you can complain for an hour or from whom you can learn a few intriguing buzzwords. Real work is rolling up your sleeves and trying to get to know who your friends are, how you can help them, and what they can do for you. For all your vaunted potential, you're still a fifty-year-old man who doesn't know much about who his friends are. For that same reason, you don't yet know very much about your ability to be a friend or to be important in many large-scale social contexts.

The big secret that many professionals don't want you to know is that there are no meanings and values other than those we forge together from interpersonal experience. There are no external objective standards of virtue, of mental health, of good citizenship, or any of the other psychological milestones we're striving for because human beings (especially leading edge humanists like you, Pam, Jen and me) are constantly reinventing, rediscovering and reinterpreting our interpersonal reality. "Real work" means taking on a fully responsible role in the human community around you, John, not nursing your fears and taking refuge in the bottle, your hobbies, or the marginalized reality that is readily established when a psychotherapeutic context is supportive rather than growth-oriented.

For years people who knew you warned me that you would brag about your noble intentions up until the very moment when, at the first whiff of battle, I'd find you running the other way. I like to believe in people who seem to believe in me, so I discounted their warnings. I felt I could be bigger than any problems and shortcomings you had and, if you were open to working on them, help you to learn about and overcome them. When I tried to kick-start your career as an independent computer consultant, for example, you invited me and your sister to sit down and talk about upcoming opportunities. Yet, instead of talking about how we could make a few bucks, you drew pictures on large pieces of paper of five nonexistent interlocking corporations — including a newspaper — and waxed philosophical about the mutual synergy they would display in twenty years. No wonder we never finished a single job together: I wanted to work and you wanted to dream.

This last year, your tendency to stand up your friends for no good reason has risen its ugly head twice, both times concerning Jennifer. Jen, you must by now realize, is a sore point with me. I won't let anyone hurt her if I can possibly help it, and that includes you. When she spent several days preparing for a party she was giving you and Pam and me, I knew well how very important it was to her: she had never before in her adult life had the confidence to entertain people. On the morning of the party, Pam told me that you had disappeared. I decided then that someone had to stand up to your self-indulgent crying jags. When, a half-hour before the party no one could reach you, I banged and banged on the basement door until you opened up. Fortunately, you got dressed without protest and came to the party. Both Pam and I decided to wink and forget that you'd been playing your game, and Jennifer never had to suffer the humiliation you had planned for her.

Two months ago, when Jennifer was going to be in her first off-Broadway play, I mentioned it offhandedly to you. I emphasized that the play they had picked was no big deal and that, since Jennifer didn't have a big part, you should feel it neither important to go nor indeed important for her that you do so. On the contrary, you insisted, you "wouldn't miss it for the world." You said you would reserve a block of tickets so Pam and me and you could sit together as a group.

When I quoted to Jen the words you used and told her how strongly you felt and how vital it was that you not miss her performance, she was really touched. "I didn't know I was that important to John," she said. It made her feel you were very special, that at least her performance would be watched carefully by one member of the audience. Yet the day of the performance when I called the store to find out what arrangements you'd made, Pam said you had delinquently neglected your accounting duties, were at that minute banging away at the computer in the basement, and were not answering her calls on the intercom. I knocked on your door several times, but you didn't even have the dignity to admit to my face that you had decided to disappoint Jen without so much as a cushioning phone call.

Rather than my describing in this letter my anger and disgust, perhaps you should ask Jennifer how she felt about not seeing you in the audience after the claims you had made. Have you lifted a finger even today to find out what this did to her? Have you ever tried to learn what harm your gratuitous neglect of the needs of others or the habitual flouting of your own promises has caused over the years?

I can only tell you that for years I have heard many sad stories from Jen about people who pretended to care about her only to stand her up at the last minute. She covers it up, of course, but I know how she feels inside. If you think you have some special right to pull this on people because you've had a difficult life, John, you're very mistaken. Wherever you try to hurt somebody I care about, I'm going to stand in your way. And whenever you succeed in hurting one of these people behind my back, I'm going to get in your face about it and yell "Ouch!"

Abuse of others can never be justified on the basis of self-pity. The sick people who rape children are deserving of contempt, John, and should be forcibly kept from harming their victims. Surely you're not humane enough to "see their point of view," or to think that they, like yourself, have earned special privileges? Such people like to imagine that it is they who are the victim, but underneath the wallowing in self-pity, cowardice and helplessness is actually an attitude of arrogance and contempt towards others. In effect they're saying, "I was hurt as a child, so now I have a legitimate need and indeed a right to hurt anybody I choose." In your case the picture is bleaker, John, because as much as you'd like to you don't really treat yourself any better than you treat your victims.

You spend much of your life showing off how many brainy facts you command and how verbally clever you can be — obsessively patting yourself on the back for being such a bright lad while flashing your metaphorical Mensa membership card and extolling the children who visit the store you work at to join up — as if intelligence alone were the highest imaginable human virtue. But your failure to attain a stature in the world that might allow you to make a real contribution to the welfare of others proves how wrong-headed and foolish you are to think you are on the fast track to any place other than recurring self-delusion.

A much higher human virtue, in my opinion, is the intention to lend a hand and make the world a better place for all people. This is why Jen and I run discussion groups where people can really open up and we can talk about what human creativity really looks like. By each one telling their own story in their own words, we can all learn much more about the human condition and the steps we need to take to become the people we want to be. On many occasions Jen and I have tried to talk with you about our work and the peer counselling we offer, and you have always sworn to show up at the next meeting. Yet somehow your "shyness" always won in these battles, too. The only human challenge that doesn't frighten you off is commiserating with the drunks and druggies on Ninth Street as long as they lick your ass in return.

John, just this afternoon I suggested to Jen that we visit you in the store to see we could help you feel better about things. Although we were equally friendly to you, you made a big show of pretending that you didn't see or hear me — as if you were going to triumph once more over an unjust parent by holding your breath to make them feel guilty. I can't deny that Jen and I chortled a little once we were around the corner, but after the picture of silly ineffectuality wore off we also felt pretty glum that you were again choosing the road to sickness rather than the road to mental health.

Don't you realize, John, what a parody of a child you've become? How can people respect you when, if you step on their foot and they say "ouch", you write them off as having become impossible for you to deal with? Adults are impossible to deal with only if you insist on being a child. If you insist on being a child then you're the one who's being impossible.

You act like the little kid who's been scolded and is now going to sulk for the rest of his life until mommy forgives him. But there's two things wrong with this strategy: 1) You're an adult, so if you decide to hide behind your tears for the rest of your life none of us can really stop you, and 2) We're adults too, so we bear no final responsibility for the decisions you make in your life. We won't worry if you don't come down to supper, and if the school bus takes off without you it's not our problem. When people see a person as screwed up as you are foul his own nest, they're more likely to call a social worker or a cop than come up with anything from within themselves to offer.

Jen and I have tried over and over again to draw you into a world of psychological communication, both individually and in a group context, where problems are addressed and not simply hidden under the rug until the rug catches fire, and you have repeatedly stood us up at the altar. Isn't it time you took responsibility for fixing the incredible damage you've done to your life instead of expecting the rest of us to pick up the pieces and pay the bills? There's no one else but you who can really do this, John, unless you want to be institutionalized. That stark possibility may in fact become the final chapter in your story, but I honestly feel that there are still a few tricks you haven't yet tried. Here's one.

In all the hours I've spent thinking about and discussing your personality with your friends, the problem always seems to come down to the heavy burden of guilt you're carrying. You try occasionally to cure yourself by persuading yourself that you're the victim and we "others" are the guilty ones, but this never works for you. For one thing, you are too much of a fun-loving free spirit to wear the mantle of victim convincingly. Where to find the forgiveness that will set you free to be imperfect and make the kind of "quality" mistakes that will allow deep learning to proceed is a secret lying within your own breast.

We all want to be forgiven by our parents, but insofar as we have chosen to live creative lives, we have also chosen to rise above and beyond the conventional beliefs and standards of behavior of those who raised us, and no parent ever forgave his child for that. Creative people always bear in some sense this mark of Cain upon their brow, and they must sooner or later take it upon themselves to grant the very forgiveness they seek from others. John, you have been in effect begging us for forgiveness for many years for the horrors of your childhood and your long abandoned wife and children, and sulking when you didn't get enough of it. But since only you know the extent of your own culpability, only you can forgive yourself for everything you've been punishing yourself for.

If you're ready to smile and go on, we're here to join you in good fellowship. But remember that adult love isn't unconditional. When you bear a child you owe that child a total commitment. But, because some people are crazy and can't handle being loved, we all have to reevaluate from experience whether continuing to give love is a constructive strategy in any particular relationship. So-called unconditional love has proven for many battered wives to have been a prescription for disaster.

I know very well how patterns of punishment can become hardened and carry over into adult life. A child can sometimes feel more important to a parent who is angry with him than to an indifferent one. And feeling victimized is a quick fix when you need to feel important. Nobody feels more important than the persecuted. Jennifer and I both had difficult childhoods and for many years acted like resentful children towards people for whom such an attitude was utterly inappropriate. Insofar as our parents denied their wrongdoing it was important to affirm the injustices we'd suffered and note the lasting effects we see even today. But excessive clinging to the pain of childhood injustices not only got in the way of our finding sources of real interpersonal goodness and value, it also caused us to treat unfairly those who had not the slightest trace of blood on their hands.

Insisting on taking the role of the victim is quite arrogant when you think about it. It says, "I'm setting the tone of this transaction because my needs come before yours. I need to feel more important than you do right now regardless of what the cost to your mental health is or, finally, to my own future welfare." It's a very short-sighted strategy indeed.

If you want to feel persecuted, we can't stop you. But you haven't been persecuted, John. Somebody stood up to your bullying and said, "Hey, stop lying to Jennifer already!" My god, do you really feel we don't have the right to talk to you like that? I feel great about having risen to your challenge and look forward to doing it again and again with you or anyone else. I guess you like to forget that your right to swing your arm extends only up to the tip of the other person's nose, but someday I hope you've grown up enough to be proud of me for the times I've been strong enough to protect Jen from careless and abusive people. Judging from today's performance, I suspect you'll have a lot more growing up to do before that day arrives.

John, your abdication of responsibility not merely to others but towards your own welfare is what has made so many people give up on you in recent years. You've come and complained to me so many times about how badly Pam treats you, yet when I've suggested tactics and strategies to protect yourself and change this course of events you've always retreated to the position of the all-forgiving "understanding" victim, not unlike a wife who "understands" why her husband needs to beat her.

The way you chicken out of making real changes in your life always makes me feel like a damned fool for listening to you. A doctor can't help someone who walks out of a hospital bed, or someone who fills the prescription and reads about the medicine but doesn't actually try it out. Your friends can't help you if you'd rather enjoy your sickness than take a stab at your own limitations as a problem-solving adult.

Stop being as afraid to grow as you are. The trick in rising from a life of failure is, as I said above, to learn how to forgive yourself. The reason you don't ever have the opportunity to forgive yourself is because you're never willing to admit wrongdoing in the first place. It's a Catch-22 purely of your own making.

It's not me, John, but your own vanity that has become your worst enemy. It will hurt a little the first time you admit to yourself that you were wrong about something, but the great thing about growing is that each time you do forgive yourself for screwing up and learn to do the right thing it hurts less and less. Eventually you'll realize that being a bully wasn't something you really needed to be after all. And you already have all the tools at hand to take the first step: You can change your mind right this minute about what you expect of yourself.

Pam and I and Jennifer all love you, John, to one extent or another, yet all of us are always on the verge of feeling utter contempt for you. This is not a perfect world and, like it or not, we three are probably your best chance of growing up and coming to grips with life as an adult, at least if you stay in New York. Neither Jen nor I have much stomach for the wet-nursing that Pam has tolerated, and so I leave it simply as your decision. You can sulk about Dean and Jennifer for the next three years until you've utterly forgotten just what the heck you were sulking about and what the heck they were trying to help you with, or you can gather up your courage, rise to the occasion and say, "I'm a grown up too. I don't have to sulk when people criticize me. I can talk to Dean and Jennifer and anyone else I want to about my problems and, if they're truly my friends, they'll understand and help me with them. And I can challenge them about their problems, too, because this is a relationship of equality."

Until the day comes when you discover that you indeed have had all along the strength you think you lack — the strength to stand up and be an equal member of the human community you see around you, freely accepting the rights and responsibilities of adulthood — you will continue to need to hide your head in the sand, get drunk and cry yourself to sleep, and feel sorry for your miserable dead-end life. If and when that day comes when you are able to dry your eyes, lift up your head, and leave your childhood behind, on that day you will enter a world of inner happiness and interpersonal opportunities far beyond anything you can imagine today.