Record of a Friendship

Forest Hills, New York
February 3, 1947
My dear Neill:
I just received your letter of January 25th. In regard to
Barakan, I think I already wrote you once that during the past 10 years
I had to learn to distinguish between rational and irrational criticism.
The difference between the two ways of human reaction consists in that
rational criticism intends to help the task in the proper way and nothing
but that; whereas in the case of irrational criticism the motive to criticize
has nothing to do with the task in question, and the criticism is brought
forth solely to satisfy some neurotic tendency in the one who criticizes.
Finally, it not only does not help the work, but on the contrary, it is
intended to disrupt and to besmirch human relations. I have also learned
that if I wish to do my job well, my student has first to learn how to
learn well and to listen, as we say in German unvoreingenommen [with­
out bias], that means just listen and take in. Only after having grown him­
self practically and skillfully into the task at hand, his opinion, which
may differ from mine, is valuable. When a man like Barakan comes over
from England, enters my cabin at Orgonon, demonstrates clearly a def­
inite uneasy feeling about his own person and on account of that begins
instantly to tell me that Neill's school is no good, that Hamilton under­
stands nothing of education, and that I made a mistake in book so-and-so
on page so-and-so, without first having acquainted himself with the bulk
of the task and the matter at hand, then, of course, I admit I get furious.
On the other hand, I like a student when he does not believe me immedi­
ately, when I see that he tries out for himself whether I am right or not. I
hate the student and the co-worker who is a believer and nothing but
that, because he cannot do his job well. I love clever and good objections
which lead further or which make me tum my attention to things I have
overlooked. I am even greatly thankful for such "criticism." It is just
that I do not permit people with such nuisance reactions any more to
dance around on my shoulders and to hamper the serious work as I did
many years ago. But I believe that this is an advance.
I would like to extend the scope of what I just said: I think that it
would be one of the most crucial tasks of education and of leadership of
human relations on the whole, to show the people in general to what
extent loose talk, malicious motives in just criticizing and doing nothing,
etc., is destroying their own lives. To show them further, how i!nportant
it would be to train themselves in rationally putting their shoulders
practically to the task at hand. As long as neurotic motives and neurotic