Angst

Sir:

I must send high praise for your exceptional cover story, "The Anatomy of Angst." It sends a strong beam of clarity and vision through the gloomy confusion of our contemporary psychological landscape.

Being, myself, one of the "walking wounded" described in your story, I have a thought to add to those you so ably express. The very summation of our era as "The Age of Anxiety" and our endless preoccupation with anxiety indicates that we have deified the thing which besets us.

There is great danger that we fall in love with our own suffering.

SONDRA FARGO

Evanston, III.

Sir:

Your story instantly reminded me of a beautiful sentence penned more than 88 years ago--"Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life."*

Thus presently out of fashion Walter Pater pre-summarized your rambling potpourri.

J. FREDERICK DOUTY Towson, Md.

Sir:

In your article, "The Anatomy of Angst," you reflect a basic confusion concerning anxiety. You admit the difference between existential and pathological anxiety and then suggest that pragmatism may be the "ultimate cause of anxiety in the U.S."

Do you mean existential anxiety? If so, I suggest that you are in error.

Existential anxiety implies ontology; it cannot be "caused." Possibly pragmatism and logical positivism could help to increase our awareness of existential anxiety.

Could pragmatism and logical positivism be the "ultimate cause"? Both point to a deeper relationship between the rise of scientific method and the various types of anxiety. The misapplication of this method, coupled with a strange mixture of rationalism and naturalism, may be costing man his spiritual soul. Paul Tillich suggests that man has been "divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality." Perhaps our spiritual anxiety indicates that we are not completely lost.

ROLAND E. ENGLISH Baltimore

Sir:

We find a very obvious oversight in your list of the phobias:

Probably to most of us the most common phobia is triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13.

ROY A. PORTER JR. Atlanta

Sir:

Relatively free of phobias until I read in your magazine that everybody's doing it, I am now somewhat anxious about my lack of anxiety.

I'm aFreud I've lost my identity!

TOM WATSON JR.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Sir!

Sir:

Your statement that the Duke of Kent is "a captain in the Royal Scots Guards" is incorrect. He is in fact a captain in the Royal Scots Greys.

V. null Detmold, W. Germany

Sir:

Guards ? Gad sir! Greys. MRS. J. BELDING

Mufulira, N. Rhodesia

P:For Duke in uniform of Royal Scots Greys, see cut.--ED.

Tallyho

Sir:

The tone of your article concerning the Kennedy estate Glen Ora was inexcusable. You sound as if it is an outrageous imposition for the President and his wife to have a private retreat and friends removed from the Washington social rat race and cares of the Executive office.

I sympathize with Mrs. Kennedy's feigning a cold in order to be able to ride to hounds, being a lover of fox hunting myself. Furthermore, I am sure I am not alone in my sentiments.

The Eisenhowers had their Maine Chance and Gettysburg; leave the Kennedys their Glen Ora and Middleburg.

MARY ROBERTS Alexandria, Va.

Sir:

Your snide gibes at Jacqueline Kennedy can not pass without rejoinder. Hasn't it occurred to you that except for a few stubborn Francophobes, disgruntled Republicans and unattractive women, Mrs. Kennedy is the sweetheart of your readers as well as that of most other Americans?

JEAN-BAPTISTE FRANCIS Massapequa, N.Y.

Sir:

By what authority did your staff ascertain that "having a fox-hunting First Lady is definitely . . . stimulating to the housewife ..."?! am a housewife and am definitely not stimulated, nor am I thrilled to know that our lovely young First Lady wears the approved uniform for the ritualistic killing of foxes.

MRS. FRANK G. MANZ Brooklyn

Sir:

The article on Mrs. J.F.K.'s equestrian adventures at lush Glen Ora was, indeed, very entertaining. It's exhilarating and refreshing to see that our First Lady's blood has not been milked down with too much Boston tea. I say, let her ride to the hounds; more power to her.

MRS. E. CUNNINGHAM

Greenville, Wis.

Sir:

I wish to call your attention to a remark attributed to me. In all my lifetime, I have only said "My God" in my prayers. My statement that I am very proud to have our President Kennedy as a neighbor still stands.

ADELE ASTAIRE DOUGLASS (MRS. KINGMAN DOUGLASS) Middleburg, Va.

Occupant in the White House

Sir:

In regard to your article, "How the U.S. Got Its First Jewish President," you are certainly doing your share in deepening already strong and irrational prejudice. People were concerned about the last election be cause a Catholic ran and was elected. Shall we be constantly plagued by religious issues in a situation where it is not of too great importance?

We thought we had elected a man or a party rather than a religion.

BARBARA AXELROD

MYRA LIEBMAN

PHYLLIS YOUNG

ANDREA MARRON

FA YE MATUSOW

University Park, Pa.

Sir:

After reading Albert Vorspan's article, "A Jew in the White House," I found myself both entertained and amused. But this article had perhaps a deeper meaning to me than to most, for oddly enough, in 1984, at which time I will be 39 years of age, I plan to be the man nominated to run for the office of President; the first man of the Jewish faith ever to do so.

MARC FAIRMAN Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir:

So now it is quite fashionable to include in the American dream the Catholic, the Jew and the Negro--provided that none is a woman. This last crust of prejudice and discrimination must also crumble.

MIMI KAPROLAT Berkeley, Calif.

Sir:

You Americans really are a queer people, and I'm blessed if I can see any family resemblance between us.

Why should a Jewish President be worth discussing? We had a Jewish Prime Minister here in the last century-and, barring Winston Churchill, he was the very best ever.

NIGEL MORLAND London

Slices of Nice

Sir:

It's nice to be noticed, nicer still to be understood, nicest of all to be loved.

If your reviewer gave me a lot of the first, a part slice of the second, only a little of the third, then the excellent photography of Joern Gerdts evened the score.

So thanks, anyway, for all that attention to The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self.

ROBERT E. FITCH Berkeley, Calif.

Onions & Bunnies

Sir:

While fully affirming your responsibility to report on all significant social and commercial phenomena on the American scene, I find distressing your glorification of base sensuality as personified by Hugh Marston Hefner, editor and publisher of Playboy Magazine.

GREGORY T. ARMSTRONG

Heidelberg, West Germany

Sir:

As a 27-year-old housewife with five kids and a wonderful husband, I'd like to comment on Hugh Hefner's Playboy clubs and the beautiful bunnies.

Ogling beautiful women seems to be one of the few ways left for American men to be wicked. And let's face it: the average American woman has allowed herself to be come an overweight, uncombed mess.

If my husband wants to race down Rabbit Run and ogle a little hare instead of the dog that bit him, it's O.K. by me!

ESTHER BRYSON State College, Pa.

Sir:

I very much appreciate the story on Playboy's prospering enterprises in TIME, but I'm not really the superficial, sex-oriented guy your story suggests. I like girls as well as the next fellow, but I spend considerably more time editing and publishing Playboy than I do chasing chicks.

HUGH M. HEFNER

Chicago

The Fluoridation Issue

Sir:

TIME is to be commended for its forthright reporting on fluoridation.

It is unfortunate that the unfounded charges made by a "vocally organized minority" should penalize and deprive children, who have no voice in the decision, of the benefits of today's most effective means of reducing tooth decay.

After twelve years of fluoridation, 12-to-14-year-old children in Evanston, III., show an average reduction in caries of 51% as compared to children of comparable ages in the base period prior to fluoridation. The greatest benefit has been obtained by twelve-year-olds who have now had a "lifetime" of exposure to fluoride--nearly 13 times as many children were free of caries as their base-line controls were in 1946.

JOSEPH B. WEEDEN, D.D.S. President

California Dental Association San Francisco

Sir:

TIME outdid itself in distorting the Wellesley fluoridation story and dragging in the familiar and oft-refuted falsehoods. The value of water fluoridation is not "beyond scientific dispute," and the Washington, D.C., data have even more holes than the children's teeth. And the disfigured teeth, pictured in your article, were caused by Denver city water with just under the recommended i.e part per million of fluoride.

F. B. EXNER, M.D. Seattle

Sir:

Thirty-one-hundred Massachusetts dentists are grateful for your call to sanity on fluoridation.

"Mr. Tooth Decay's" gain was our children's loss. One day they too will vote--we trust more wisely and less sadly than their elders.

PHILIP H. WHITE, D.M.D. President

Massachusetts Dental Society Boston

The Teaching Machine

Sir:

Your article "Programed Learning" is most unjust in its blanket criticism of textbooks. How did your education editor and Psychologist Skinner get so smart using the allegedly dull, inflexible, incomprehensible textbooks? And without the benefit of a programed learning machine?

What could be more rote drill than Skinner's "one-step-at-a-time teaching, immediately 'reinforcing' each correct response with a grain of corn." What could be more inflexible than this or the sample of a programed high school physics lesson as shown?

Are we going back to the drill approach to learning ?

JOHN LAIDLAW JR. President

Laidlaw Bros. Educational Publishers River Forest, III.

Sir:

Your programed-learning piece replaces the Columbia Graduate Faculty Newsletter as the finest single article in the field. It is perfectly superb: balanced, insightful, constructive, yet detached. Felicitations.

THEODORE WALLER President

Teaching Materials Corp. New York City

Sir:

As a teacher of physics in a secondary school, I wish to express the interest and pleasure I took in reading your report on teaching machines. I fully agree with Komo-ski's opinion on the displacement of teachers. Every teacher feels frustrated and ineffective when faced with the problem of "getting across" a minimum body of factual information upon which subjective analysis must be based. On the one hand, he has the psychologically sound three Rs of learning: repetition, reward and reinforcement. On the other: one voice, one text and 43 minutes. The teaching machine probably is a way out.

JOHN E. EULLER Rochester

Sir:

1) A PROGRAMMER is one who writes programs for machines. "PROGRAMMERS manufacture programs." Copy the word: 2) Part of the word is like part of the word PROSPECT. Both parts may have come from an old word meaning "onward."

/=/=/=GRAMMER

3) Part of the word is like part of the word GRAMMAR. Both come from an old word. 4) The same letter goes in both spaces: PROGRA/-/=ER

If you got the last four right, you may skip the next three letters to the editor.

R. F. DEAN

Endwell, N.Y.

*From "Winckelmann," an essay on the German art historian and archaeologist. -Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) in 1868 and 1874-1880.

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