Listen to Me: A Book for Women and Men about Fathers and Sons

This exchange of letters between father Gerald, a psychiatrist and author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear, and son Lee, a psychologist and author of Healing the Addictive Mind, provides insights into obstacles that impede affectionate, accepting father-son relations. The three major topics treated are the search for the real, as opposed to the idealized, father; the wound, inflicted on the fearful child inside all of us and exacerbated by the conventional view that the primary responsibility of men is to do rather than to be; and healing the wound, which is accomplished by ridding the self of anger, fears and shame. This is done, according to the authors, by forgiveness, i.e., reopening the past and finding a new way of looking at it with the unwavering realization that hope for a better past must be abandoned. A decision to keep those hopes alive, they maintain, is a decision to suffer. Their letters, almost painfully candid, have helped them to a better relationship and may help not only other fathers and sons, but also the women they love and who love them to a new understanding. (Sept.)