When one of us tells the truth, he makes it easier for all of us to open our hearts to our pain and that of others.

If there's a therapist who wants a writing project, I think there's a need for a book about how the culture affects the mental health of boys.

Adolescents' immature thinking makes it difficult for them to process the divorce. They tend to see things in black-and-white terms and have trouble putting events into perspective. They are absolute in their judgments and expect perfection in parents. They are likely to be self-conscious about their parent's failures and critical of their every move. They have the expectations that parents will keep them safe and happy and are shocked by the broken covenant. Adolescents are unforgiving.

Girls developed eating disorders when our culture developed a standard of beauty that they couldn't obtain by being healthy. When unnatural thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural things to be thin.

When one of us tells the truth, he makes it easier for all of us to open our hearts to our pain and that of others.

I think anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman's statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. Anorexia signifies that a young woman is so delicate that, like the women of China with their tiny broken feet, she needs a man to shelter and protect her from a world she cannot handle. Anorexic women signal with their bodies "I will take up only a small amount of space. I won't get in the way." They signal "I won't be intimidating or threatening." (Who is afraid of a seventy-pound adult?)

All geniuses born women are lost to the public good.