Biographical research

Biographical research
Tuesday March 17, 2009

Dear Alice,

I am writing to ask you to clarify this sentence from the excerpt of the
Preface that you sent me:

“I received a great deal of praise for my investigations, and yet no one
followed in my footsteps.”

What do you mean by “no one followed in my footsteps?” It seems that
you have many readers who are attempting to rediscover their childhoods
emotionally and therewith their psychological health. Does this sentence mean
that you think nobody else has successfully finished doing so? Or does it mean
that no other practicing psychoanalysts broke away from the misleading theories
and began pursuing the truth about their own childhood?

Thank you, RH

AM: I mean my investigation, my research, including the biographies of dictators, criminals, and other well known personalities, so that the cruel perversion of their deeds could be understood by investigating into the histories of their childhoods. For instance, now, everybody in Germany declares, almost with proud, that they don’t understand “anything” about the “motives” of the recent amok story in a school. Also in Alabama, the same day, where a young man killed his mother, then his grand-parents where he was raised, then an uncle and an aunt, the police is looking for “motives” as if it was still forbidden to have a look into the illuminating chiildhood story of a destructive man instead of staying ignorant. But how can we learn to change and to protect the society from its blindless if we are all afraid to see the dynamic of violence?