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17 May 1968

Dear Mrs Ullman:

I was glad to receive your letter. Because I haven't understood very well all that has been happening to our children, I have kept quiet but this is the picture as I see it:

When I was returning from Jamaica on Feb. 9 I wrote to them that as I had 4 hours wait at the N.Y. airport I would call them at 6.30 for a little chat. So I did, and Doris answered saying "Oh you woke me up" with a groan. And Jack took over, saying she had come home from work exhausted and fallen asleep and chatted with me for a bit. That was Thursday. The beginning of the next week I got a letter from Doris saying they both wanted a divorce as soon as they could get it, she said that weekend had been "horrible". I reviewed to myself the state of irritable exhaustion in which she had been when I called and concluded that she had exploded at the slightest occasion. Then I kept getting letters that showed an increasingly hysterical state, mostly about her job and her difficulties with her immediate boss -- her [illegible] boss wanted her to continue in her own way, not as the N.Y. man urged. But the strain was such that she had to stop work and hired another to finish up typing her results. Jack told me that it was a brilliant piece of work, too. During March she was incapable of working at all. Then she was to begin this next job Apr. 1st. By the middle of April I began to realize she was indifficulties again. Jack came down to attend his meetings the last of April. He had been reluctant to come to me fearing I would blame him, but soon he was pouring out all his sorrow and anxiety. He has had little experience with any mental trouble such as she was having and hadn't recognized it as such earlier, I think. He said he felt guilty about that. Then he left he said that he felt much better after being with me. You see as a grad. student I lived and worked at the Psycho. Hospital there in Boston, working both of the wards and in the O.P.D. with patients, examining them with mental tests, and I have from those years a pretty good notion of the psychoneurotic state in which Doris is. Last week she slipped away from her apt. to live somewhere by herself where noone would know, but last night Jack called me to tell me she was back again in her apt. and seemed a bit better, in fact she agreed to go to a psychiatrist for help. The fact that she has any insight into her state seemed encouraging to him. Her physical health is excellent, I know, and I think as soon as she can get over the strains of these last months (and leaving Jack is no doubt a good part of it) that she will come out of it. I would gladly go to her but she doesn't want anyone and most of all, not me, around her. So all we can do is watch carefully on the side. I know Jack is doing just that, as anxious as I am. He plans to come down the last of the month over Memorial Day, and it will be a comfort to have him.

In addition to Doris's condition, I have been saddened by the illness of Doris Cochran, the one with whom I have been associated. She is dying of cancer. This spring has been a very hard one for me. 

With love,