Vol. 7 No. 1
Spring/Summer 2002
Reading Matters
publication of the SAN FRANCISCO GREAT BOOKS COUNCIL
Serving Northern California
Presidents’ Corner: After Asilomar, We’re Bushed
By Barbara McConnell and Erma Browning
Following a wonderful Asilomar weekend, we’re looking forward to the next event, the Annual Meeting and Picnic, June 30.
At the Annual Meeting we elect the officers and the Executive Committee who run the Council. We always welcome new people. If you want to join the Committee, wait no longer. Call Roy Harvey, secretary, at (415) 383-1319. The picnic is fun, but you do not need to be at the picnic to be elected.
We still have a vacancy in public relations. This might be a job for a committee rather than one person, but we would still need someone to organize it. Its work might entail writing press releases and public service announcements for local radio and TV stations, and putting together activities that enhance our image, such as a group for pledge night at KQED. One job is already done: Dean Tinney has created a brochure about Great Books for area coordinators. Call Barbara at (707) 829-5643 about doing public relations.
Many thanks to the Asilomar planners: Brent Browning, chair; Jimmie Harvey, registrar; Kyra Hubis, registration and new participant orientation; Rob Calvert, door opening; Roy Harvey, enlisting discussion leaders; Wallis Leslie, prediscussions with leaders, Vince Scardina and Wallis, hosting prediscussions; the poetry committee for selecting the poems; and the discussion leaders (see list below). We were especially happy to have so many well-prepared new participants.
And we loved the entertainment at the Saturday party: we were singing and dancing along with the barbershop quartet of Roy Harvey, Paul Ballora, Earl Mortensen, and Rob Calvert. There was a jazz pianist, Donna Reynolds, who has recorded CD’s, and a puppet show by Flora Larkey.
Discussions were led by Lou Alanko, Alex Appell, Paul Ballora, Brent Browning, Kathleen Conneely, Tom Cox, Louise Di Mattio, Henri Ducharme, Ruth Fortney, Gary Geltmeyer, Roy Harvey, Jimmie Harvey, Joe Herzberg, Hal Hubis, Fiona Humphrey, Lee Hunter, Dorothy Jansizian, Wallis Leslie, Ann Longknife, Brian Mahoney, Barbara McConnell, Madge Nash, Chuck Scarcliff, Vince Scardina, Marjorie Scott, Jim Stabeneau, Dean Tinney, Jan Vargo Tom Vargo, Mary Wood, and Nancy Wortman.
By Theda and Oscar Firschein
If someone says they are in limbic[1] resonance with you, chances are they discussed A General Theory of Love at the Asilomar Great Books weekend[2]. This book, by three psychiatrists, attempts to use results in neuroscience, experimental psychology, and computer science to answer questions such as “What is love, and why are some people unable to attain it?” “What is loneliness, and why does it hurt?” “What are relationships, and how and why do they work the way that they do?”
There was a great temptation in the discussion of such a book “to let it all hang out” in the style of encounter groups of the 1960s.
With James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man we were again enmeshed in psychology -- this time with the thoughts of Stephen Daedalus as he grows from infant to independent thinker striking out on his own. At one point in the book Joyce provides a 15- page, tour-de-force, hellfire and brimstone sermon that has a terrible effect on Stephen, who suffers intensely for his sins. By the end of the book, Stephen, now an intellectual, discourses on theories of art so erudite that few chose to tackle Stephen’s ideas of universal beauty.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is an emotional piece of work that almost forecasts our modern problem of the discarded dot-com businessperson. Willy Loman is the aging, failing salesman “riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. Miller’s powerful portrayal of a family self-destructing led to an animated discussion.
The poems varied from John Donne’s somewhat obscure, “A Lecture Upon the Shadow,” and Allen Ginsberg’s “In back of the Real,” to the Yvor Winters’s more straight-forward “At the San Francisco Airport,” Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Bed,” Wislawa Szymbrska’s “Clothes,” and “Alone,” by Edgar Allen Poe. Donne’s poem was probably the most difficult of the set, using shadow as a metaphor for the stages of love.
As always, Asilomar was magical, with sand and sea and literate discussion companions.
[1] Limbic Resonance: The limbic brain is between the older reptilian stem brain and the newer neocortex, where intelligence and will are centered. A core theory of the book is theory is that mammals have limbic resonance with each other. “… a person can scan a crowd and pick out the intimate elements in a stranger’s heart…intuit who has a bad temper, an alcoholic mother…People target the mates who mesh with their own minds, and they do so with speed and precision that our smartest smart bombs are not sufficiently intelligent to envy.” P. 161
[2] Written by MD’s Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, and published by Vintage Books (2000)
By Mary Wood
The hit of the weekend was Death of a Salesman, as several groups reported especially lively discussions.
“I had a personal experience, an epiphany attending a performance in Chicago,” says Tom Cox. “Thomas Mitchell played the Willy Loman part. What was so moving about it was it was so deadly accurate. My father had just been dismissed by the company he had worked for 36 years, and his pension taken away. I didn’t see Willy Loman on that stage: It was my father there.”
Shortly after Tom’s Dad was fired he fell and broke all the bones in his right wrist. Then he fell broke all the bones in his left wrist.
Tom’s story points out an enduring truth of the play that tends to be obscured by discussions of whether Willy was successful, whether he had grandiose dreams, and whether he would have been happier as a carpenter: As his wife says: “he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.”
The play is a condemnation of the lack of loyalty in the work world; and, if anything, the situation has worsened in the last 40 years. Layoffs now are not considered a personal matter, they are a necessary economic tool: the first thing to do when profits fall is to “downsize,” a euphemism for putting people out of work.
And now this aspect of the play applies to women too. Willy’s wife Linda is the stay-at-home wife and mother. The play was performed in 1949 at the time women were encouraged to go back to the home and let the returning soldiers have their jobs. So the notion of women working at the time the play was performed was unpopular politically. But today, the typical woman is encouraged to work. And to be successful at everything, not just work: motherhood, job, relationships, aerobics, kickboxing, and looking good.
By Kathleen Conneely
Editor’s Note: Kathleen compares the way the poet, the essayist, the playwright, and the novelist express similar ideas.
Loneliness
Loneliness outweighs most pain (A General Theory of Love, p. 161).
WILLY (In a Boston hotel). “Cause I get so lonely—especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. (Death of a Salesman, p. 38)
And all I loved, I loved alone. (“Alone,” poem by Edgar Allen Poe)
[Stephen is talking to his friend Cranly]
--I do not fear to be alone
Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace, and said
---Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.
---I will take the risk, said Stephen. (A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, p. 208)
Separation between Parent and Child
And you are here beside me, small
Contained and fragile, and intent
On things that I but half recall—
Yet going whither you are bent,
I am the past, and that is all.
But you and I in part are:
The frightened brain, the nervous will
…
The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently.
(“At the San Francisco Airport,” poem by Yvor Winters)
BIFF: (at the door to Linda [his mother]) All right, we had it out. I’m going and I’m not writing any more.
LINDA: (going to Willy in the kitchen). I think that’s the best way, dear…
BIFF: Shake hands, Dad
WILLY: Not my hand
BIFF: I was hoping not to go this way.
WILLY: Well this is the way you’re going. Good-by. …May you rot in hell if you leave this house! (Salesman, p.129)
Artistic Inspiration
A Poet’s Demon:
From the thunder and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
(“Alone,” Poe)
A Writer’s Inspiration
The night had been enchanted. In a dream of vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life…The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once…the instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly in its afterglow. (Portrait).
Memory
To understand how attachment sculpts a person, we need to apprehend memory—the process whereby the brain undergoes structural change from experience. Memory does not travel a straight line, and neither does the human heart. (Theory, p. 99)
(Willy and Charley sit down to play cards. Willy’s older brother Ben appears—in Willy’s memory.)
WILLY: I’m getting
awfully tired, Ben.
CHARLEY: Good, keep playing; you’ll sleep better. Did you call me Ben?
WILLY: That’s funny. For a second there you remind me of my brother Ben
BEN: I have only a few minutes.
CHARLEY: You never heard from him again, heh? Since that time.
WILLY: Didn’t Linda tell you. Couple of weeks ago we got a letter from his wife in Africa. He died.
CHARLEY: That so.
BEN: (chuckling) So this is Brooklyn….I must make a train, William. There are several properties I’m looking at in Alaska. [several lines omitted].
BEN: Is Mother living with you?
WILLY: No, she died a long time ago.
CHARLEY: Who?
BEN: That’s too bad….I’d hoped to see the old girl
CHARLEY: Yeah He was a happy man with a batch of cement.
LINDA: He was so wonderful with his hands.
BIFF: He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.
HAPPY: Don’t say that!
BIFF: He never knew who he was. (Salesman, p.138)
Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. (Portrait, p. 213)
June 30 is the new date for The Annual Great Books Triathlon -- Picnic, Annual Meeting, and Discussion. Please check your calendars, as the event was previously announced for June 23. Event chair Kathleen Conneely says that in order to get the same picnic area as last year we had to switch to June 30.
Location: Tilden Regional Park, Padre Picnic Area. Time: 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. A flyer is enclosed with directions.
For the reading, the picnic committee chose a humdinger of a play, The Visit, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, translated by Patrick Bowles. Evergreen Original has a cheap edition; there is also a Grove Press edition. The play is available at used bookstores or online at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
“This play echoes what is going on in the world today in capsule form,” says Kathleen. “It’s a tragi-comedy, with revenge, humiliation of women, and the power to buy morality.” The treatment of women in Afghanistan is a current example of the humiliation of women, she says, and revenge is a recurrent theme in Middle East conflicts.
Picnic etiquette: it’s pot luck. Please bring your beverage and utensils, and a dish for four to share. A lawn chair or two would be handy. The picnic committee will have barbecue grills ready when you arrive.
Picnic Committee members are Vince Scardina, John and Kathy Kazan, Jack Stavert, and Rob Calvert. Kathleen also thanks consultants Tom Cox and Chuck Scarcliff.
The Annual Meeting brings together local great books groups to elect new Council officers. Last year a few individuals had trouble finding South Park and were curios why there were no street signs. Kathleen has solved the mystery: “The park’s office said a lot of the signs disappeared when the South Park TV show was popular.”
Sin, suffering and grace are the themes of Crime and Punishment, the selection for this year’s long novel weekend. Since the weekend occurs in such an idyllic location, we will already be in a state of grace. The August 24-25 event will take place at Walker Creek Ranch (see flyer inside).
Sequestered in the low rolling hills of Marin County, the 1700-acre property is a working ranch owned by the Marin public schools.
Because the event is posted on our website, registrar Mary Stuart has received calls and is faxing flyers all over North America. Flyers also were distributed at Asilomar. There is a limit of 70 participants. The cost of the weekend is $110 if you buy the book yourself or $130 if you buy it through the event coordinators.
It is hard enough to get people on the same page when they have the same edition, so be sure you have the tan and dark brown Vintage Classic paperback translated by Pevear and Voloskonky. “I am asking for a signed pledge this year,” says Louise, “that participants will attend with only this edition.” She adds that Book Passage in Corte Madera (415-927-0960) offers a 10% discount on the $15 book if you mention Great Books and Louise DiMattio.
“Visit the Other-World” at the October 26 mini-retreat. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the elegant Metropolitan Club, 640 Sutter Street, in downtown San Francisco. Participants will lunch at nearby cafes.
Themed for Halloween, the one-day event features literary thrillers: ghost stories by Edith Wharton, and the ever-puzzling Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
This event is limited to 30, so get your application in soon. “Places at the mini-retreat are going fast,” says Claudia O’Callaghan, “thanks to marketing by Vince Scardina at Asilomar.” Within four days of Asilomar she had 10 reservations.
“Thermometrical” is a term Wharton coined to describe the quality of a good ghost story: the ability to “[send] a cold shiver down one’s spine.” Information about Wharton can be found on the Edith Wharton Society website at www.Gonzaga.edu/wharton
Is Turn of the Screw a ghost story? or is it a psychological novella? In 1897 and 1898, when it was published as a serial, ghost stories were popular and the novella was taken as a story of evil spirits. At the time there was a craze for communing with spirits or ghosts. James’s father and brother were members of the Society for Psychical Research.
In the preface to the 1908 novella edition, James states that modern ghosts cannot cause terror like the old time ghosts, so his ghosts are agents of evil, “goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft.” In 1919 critics began to promulgate a theory that the story is about the governess character’s troubled mind rather than about spirits.
A flyer is enclosed. The $20 price includes readings. Further information: Claudia O’Callaghan (415) 584-7504 or www.greatbooks-sf.com
By Wallis Leslie
Look for these following new leaders trained in February: Paul Ballora, Linda Coffin, Jim Cooke, Lana Dilger, Henri DuCharme, Natalie Dunn, Tracy Durden, Oscar and Theda Firschein, Elaine Grainger, Alice Jennings, Patricia and John Hershberger, Ann Longknife, Donna Lyke, Edith Newton, Jane and Rachel Ono-Jafe, Aaron Simon, Jack Stavert, Joe Williamson. These talented folk will be guiding you to previously unscaled heights of intellectual advancement.
Experienced leaders turned out in force to share their expertise with the trainees. The morning session featured participants identifying topics of interest. Next came two demonstration sessions led by Wallis Leslie and Joe Herzberg while Barbara McConnell pointed out the leadership skills at work and trainees discussed, observed, and questioned.
The afternoon began with small group leading-practice sessions, each monitored by an experienced leader. The day ended with a panel discussion and participant questioning session on the topics: Group care-taking functions, Joe Hezberg; nurturing new groups, Lou Alanko; handling difficult situations, Barbara McConnell; spontaneous group dynamics demonstration, Brian Mahoney; visualizing discussion sessions, Brent Browning; listening skills, Fiona Humphrey; devising effective questions, Wallis Leslie.
We ran out of time, but we did not run out of interest. To participate in the next leader training event, contact Wallis Leslie, 27240 Moody Rd, Los Altos Hills, CA 94022. Call (650) 941-6206, or email whleslie@yahoo.com.
By Jim Carbone
Author’s Note: This is a 'tween meetings comment I sent to my local discussion group by e-mail. It refers to two works we had discussed: Freud's "Why War," and Thucydides's "Melian Dialogue" from History of the Peloponnesian War, and two works I had read on my own: David McCollough's, John Adams, and Donald Kagan's On the Origins of War.
Albert Einstein asks Sigmund Freud, “Why War?” Freud evades Einstein’s question by giving him a verbose answer to a different one. He says that wars are natural to man, and peace is the odd time between.
Thucydides, in his commentary on the Peloponnesian war, offers three causes of war: honor, fear, and self-interest. These causes, he says, recur in perpetuity. One or more of them underlies each of the common explanations for armed conflict mentioned by Donald Kagan in his book On The Origins of War: arming or disarming, alliances, class struggle, ruling-class intermarriage, assassination -- successful or failed, imperialism, perverted democracy, irredentism, religion -- liberal or dogmatic, trade, sea lane and trade route control, natural resources, advanced technology, communication -- improved or deteriorated, international loans made or withheld, peace-keeping missions, diplomatic efficacy, and in modern times a laughable reliance on international agreements-–and that’s only a beginning.
The Melian situation and the American war for independence each pitted a small country against a comparative giant. Choreographed as war's deadly dance, was the dialogue on Melos a precursor to the Staten Island dialogue reported by David McCollough in John Adams? The similarities are striking.
Athenian Dialogue
As Thucycides reports the Peloponnesian conflict, the Athenian generals have encamped with their troops on Melos. Before attacking the Melians, the Athenians send envoys to negotiate. The Melians ask the Athenians to state the object of their mission in front of the magistrates and council, who they say represent the people.
Athenians: Let each of us say what we really think and reach a practical agreement. You and we know, as practical men, that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength, and that the strong do what they can, and the weak submit….
[T]he danger is from subjects who of themselves may attack and conquer their rulers….At the moment we shall prove that we have come in the interest of our empire and that in what we shall say we are seeking the safety of your state; for we wish you to become our subject with least trouble to ourselves, and we would like you to survive in our interests as well as your own.
Melians: It may be your interest to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves?
Athenians: By submitting you would avoid a terrible fate, and we should gain by not destroying you…. [Y]our hostility injures us less than your friendship. That, to our subjects, is an illustration of our weakness, while your hatred exhibits our power….[T]his is not a competition in heroism between equals, where your honor is at stake, but a question of self-preservation, to save you from a struggle with a far stronger power.
Melians: Still we trust that Heaven will not allow us to be worsted by Fortune, for in this quarrel we are right and you are wrong. Besides, we expect the support of Lacedaemon to supply the deficiencies in our strength.
Laying it on the Line
Athenians: ….We believe in Heaven, and we know that men, by a natural law, always rule where they are stronger….As to your expectations from Lacedaemon and your belief that she will help you from a sense of honor, we congratulate you on your innocence, but we do not admire your folly….The most successful people are those who stand up to their equals, behave properly to the superiors, and treat their inferiors fairly.
After the negotiation, the Melian resolution not to yield was unaltered. Athens sent reinforcements, and the siege was pressed vigorously. There was some treachery in the town. Melians surrendered at their own discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves. Subsequently Athens sent out five hundred settlers to colonize the island.
Staten Island Dialogue
Compare the Melian dialogue with the dialogue that took place with Britain on Staten Island. McCullough writes that the war was not going well. At Brooklyn Heights, under the command of a weak General Sullivan, Americans were outgeneraled, outnumbered, outflanked, and in a few hours overwhelmed. A thousand Americans, including several generals, were captured, wounded, or killed. British forces under Lord Howe, numbering fifteen thousand English, Scottish, and Hessian troops, lost perhaps four hundred.
Although some nine to ten thousand American soldiers, with baggage and equipment, were saved by General Washington’s adroit August 27, 1976, escape maneuver across the East River, the Battle of Long Island was an American loss corresponding to the WWII escape from Dunkirk, 164 years later.
The captured Sullivan appeared in Philadelphia on September 2nd, paroled by the British to report to Congress that Admiral Lord Howe wished to confer privately about accommodation. Adams saw Sullivan as a decoy sent to seduce Congress into renouncing independence. After four hours of debate behind closed doors, Congress decided that a committee of three be sent to meet with Howe on Staten Island.
Adams, who adamantly opposed a dialogue with Howe, was unanimously chosen to be one of the three: Adams from New England, Ben Franklin from the central area, and Edward Rutledge from the southern area. They were to meet with the imperial representative of the world’s largest military power who would be asking an almost defenseless country to behave itself and return to the colonial status quo ante: an “or-else” request echoing a dialogue with another world power two millennia earlier.
The Meeting
The British envoy, Howe, observed that all would have been better if he had arrived before the Declaration of Independence had been signed. The Declaration changed the ground. Were it given up he might effect the king’s desire to restore peace and grant pardons, leading to a re-union upon terms honorable and advantageous to the colonies as well as to Great Britain.
Howe asked if there were no way of treading back this step of independency (as Howe termed it). He could not confer with Americans as members of Congress, a body not acknowledged by the king. He could meet with them merely as gentlemen of great ability and influence, private persons and British subjects.
Adams responded that Howe was welcome to consider him in what light he pleased and indeed Adams would be willing to consider himself, for a few moments, in any character agreeable to Howe -- except that of a British subject. Adams declined to depart from independence. In the course of three hours, it became obvious that Howe had no authority other than to accept surrender and grant pardons. Unknown to Adams, his own name was not on Howe’s pardon list. Adams was slated to be hanged.
British Compared to Athenians
For Howe, what was good for the empire was good for the empire’s American subjects. He wanted only to protect the colonists from harm. By submitting, the colonies would avoid a terrible fate. If the colonies could not give up independence, negotiation was impossible.
The British embraced the Athenian notion that the strong do what they can, the weak submit, and the most successful are those who stand up to their equals, behave properly to their superiors, and treat their inferiors fairly.
By Adams standing firm, the Declaration had survived its first test. However, the British moved at once. On the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1776, five of their warships sailed into the East River and commenced a thunderous, point-blank bombardment of the American shore defense on Manhattan.
From 1776 until the end of hostilities in 1983, the British imposed on Americans the very usurpations the Declaration had accused them of, making a particular example of the fifty-five Declaration signers and their families, viciously depriving them of life, liberty, and property.
Adams spent several of the war years in Europe, first seeking help from France, then from the Netherlands. Europe admired America’s assertion of independence, but abetted it only reluctantly. France’s plan was to defeat and replace Britain as America’s sovereign. The Dutch wanted trading markets, but feared angering Britain. It appeared in 1776 that no Lacedaemon was likely to come to America’s aid as none had come to that of Melos.
British reinforcements flowed in and the siege was pressed vigorously. However, on October 19, 1781, with the help of the French fleet in Chesapeake Bay and French and American ground troops under French General Rochambeau and General Washington, General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia. Suddenly, the Dutch became American allies. The war ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris.
The Melians never enjoyed such a turning point.
By Mary Wood
A General Theory of Love by psychotherapists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon is a self-consciously literary book that makes a scientific claim without sufficient evidence. All the same, I loved it. It is packed with lyrical flights of prose and snippets of poetry—all of them charming. However, because of my unfamiliarity with the subject, and because of the ornate style, I found it a slow read, as did others.
The core theory is that mammals have limbic resonance with each other. “[A] person can scan a crowd and pick out the intimate elements in a stranger’s heart…intuit who has a bad temper, an alcoholic mother….People target the mates who mesh with their own minds, and they do so with speed and precision that our smartest smart bombs are not sufficiently intelligent to envy.”
To demonstrate this, the authors begin with an explanation of brain structure and the formation of memories. The brain, they tell us, has three main parts, which interact and sometimes compete with one another. The stem is emotionless; reptiles have only this part of the brain. Reptiles exhibit autonomic, or “pre-wired” aggressive, territorial defensive, and courting behaviors. These are responses, unwilled reactions. The outer portion of the brain, the neocortex, is the seat of intelligence, reason, and will. Between these two is the limbic brain, which we share with other mammals. The core of the book’s hypothesis is that the will, a function of reasoning, cannot control how we feel, although it can control how we act. Our feelings are primarily stored in the limbic brain.
Feelings are Nothing More than Neurons
Feelings are stored responses; emotional memory is stored in the neurons. The brain is a network of neurons—nerve cells—that communicate with each other. A series of messages between cells is stored as a pattern. Similar experiences trigger this pattern, and strengthen it. Things which do not fit the pattern are stored in the neurons, but they are not as strong as the original reaction. Memory is unreliable because similar experiences become conflated.
Therefore we are condemned to repetitive behaviors. Because they are comfortable, they awaken stored patterns. So if one has been a caretaker of an alcoholic mother, one will want to repeat this behavior in the choice of a mate. The limbic system resonates to the familiar.
Can behavior be changed? Yes, according to the authors, but not through the neocortex. Not through an act of will, talk therapy, or self-help books. It is through relationship that we change.
Our responses are laid down primarily in the relationship with our mother. To prove this, the authors cite studies of mother-child interactions. Every child must have a mother, or a mother figure, and most of the child’s emotional behavior later in life reflects the relationship. Time spent with the child is important—the relationship develops with time. Thus fathers end up as nonentities and stay-at-home moms are validated.
Attachment
One criticism of the book in my discussion group was that it is about attachment, or bonding, not about love at all. Attachment theory contends there is an instinctive bond in mammals between the mother and the child. The authors have taken the mother-child attachment and inferred from it effects whose connection they have insufficiently demonstrated.
The authors contend that psychotherapy succeeds because of the limbic connection or resonance between the patient and therapist. This connection creates trust, thus allowing the therapist to intervene with corrections to behavior. But if the client has the pattern of seeking out someone like his alcoholic mother, won’t he choose his therapist this way?
The authors also maintain that the patient tries to pull the therapist into his limbic world.
As a non-scientist, I appreciate the lucid explanation the book provides of the brain’s functioning. But a few examples constitute a thin framework on which to hang a general theory. The book popularizes what I am sure were some well-designed experiments. I am led to wonder how the experimenters own conclusions compare with those the authors have drawn from their work.
Knowledgeable and intrepid are the words Wallis Leslie uses to describe Jan Vargo, replacing Wallis as Database Manager for our Great Books council. “It’s a Herculean task,” says Wallis, “but Jan just smiled when I told her that, and said she appreciated well-structured data.” Jan is redesigning the database into Microsoft Access. It is currently in Filemaker Pro.
As part of the redesign, Jan would like to hear from people who will use the database. Group leaders and event planners, for example, should let her know what they want it to do. Call Jan at (510) 849-1824 or write her at vargopack@cs.com.
Send address changes and new member information to Jan either by e- or snail-mail. Her snailing address is the return address on this newsletter.
Call Roy Harvey.
415-383-1319 email: milarca01@msn.com
June 30 (Sunday)
Annual Meeting, Novel & Picnic
Tilden Park, Oakland
Contact: Kathleen Conneely (415) 584-7504
August 24-25 (Sat.-Sun.)
Long Novel Weekend
Walker Creek Ranch, Marin
Contact: Mary Stuart (707) 575-1984
October 26 (Saturday)
Mini-Retreat
Metropolitan Club, San Francisco
Contact: Claudia O’Callaghan (415) 584-7504
November 9-10 (Sat.-Sun.)
Poetry Weekend
Westminster Retreat Center, Alamo
Contact: Mary Wood (510) 865-3481
IN MEMORIAM:
Stan Dennison