Dear Daniel, I came across your website about 2 months ago. Since then, I have familiarized myself with your ideas and in doing so acquired the strong impression that we are, on more than one topic, on the same page. I agree with what, in your book, Breaking from Your Parents, you state about the connection – I would say, the symbiotic interrelation - of psychiatry and the family: “[T]he way that psychiatry treats parents is an extension of the way parents-in-denial treat their children (…) [I]f parents didn’t abuse their children there would be no psychiatry at all. The two function very similarly...” I agree with you that the family is a cult, and indeed the prototypical one. I see the family as a social system defined by an extreme power imbalance between parents and children, mystified by the cynical fiction of so-called unconditional parental love -- the family myth -- whereby the structural conflict of interest between the two parties is denied. As a consequence, childhood trauma is as ubiquitous as it is invisible; accordingly, the family is, contrary to popular belief, the primary institution of oppression. Antithetical to any grouping organized along the lines of the family is a community of peers, possessed of equal power. Allied in solidarity against institutions of oppression - from the family to psychiatry to gender - such a community is, in itself, politically radical, at once transformative and liberatory, and a vehicle for political education, both of its members themselves and the public at large. Looking for allies, a like-minded English friend of mine, James, whose educational background is in philosophy, and I, German, an early retired social worker (neither of us has children), would greatly appreciate an exchange of thoughts with you, in particular about your book, mentioned above. Our views are informed primarily by the works of R. D. Laing, Aaron Esterson, and David Cooper, and to a greater or lesser extent by Thomas Szasz, Judith Herman, Alice Miller, Colin A. Ross, and John Briere. Best regards, Karin