Hal to Avery on mania and depression

I'm about to get in the car and drive to Louisville but before I do:

Avery, I see in your focus on opposing mania and depression and
understanding each in its own right a problem similar to that of
criminologists who seek to understand the peculiarities of prisoners.
As I see mania and depression, they are a microcosm--a fractal
manifestation--of the societal rhythms of change and retrenchment I've
discussed in the geometry book. I find myself asking what it is that
someone is trying so hard not to let her- or himself even dream about.
I'm suggesting that when that secret can be told and the manic
depressive validated for having dreamed and obsessed about that
reality (e.g., fear of an abuser, fear of revealing one's
homosexuality), as my friends put it to me, they can get a good
night's sleep for the first time in a long while and the cycle abates
(but of course does not disappear). One household word for this view
of psychopathology would be "holistic," another enshrined as an APA
division would be called "humanist." l&p hal