In this soap-opera portrayal of human beings, if your heart is not on your sleeve, you must not have one. These arguments, conspicuously, have nothing to do with the most fundamental philosophical and religious questions about death, dying, and suffering. Neither have they anything to do with the question of how morally free beings should conduct themselves, and thereby instruct their children, when faced with death. Advocates of this therapeutic conception of the human person purport to be concerned with the relation of mental life to external reality, but the practice and the language of psychotherapy frequently belie such assurances. The idea that it is our own grief with which we must cope elevates individual psychological states to the highest reality.
Sentimentalism thus spawns solipsism.
In 1969, Alice and I had our first child, a daughter, named for my mother, Donna Marie. In 1971, our second daughter was born. We named her for Alice's grandmother and sister, Winifred Lee. In 1980, I became president of the two campuses of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The four of us lived in Santa Fe during the 1982-83 academic year.