She is critical of a 17-year-old reader who, she writes, "won't allow herself to work through her confusion and have her full range of feelings. What kind of world do we have that this girl should have to be afraid to tell a friend or an older sister that she has had a very exciting sexual encounter with someone of whom she's very fond? Was she mostly turned on because no one had ever touched her so nicely, so sensitively, with so much concern for HER feelings? Could be. It could be also that the warm relationship between them paved the way for sex...Who cares?

"...We cannot choose who makes our hearts beat faster, and I wish we could all stop worrying about it."

This counselor's advice is typical of the "follow your feelings" credo which originated in the 1960's and now, in the '90's, still won't seem to go away--erasing the role of conscience and values, and supplanting it with the philosophy, "If you didn't choose to feel this way, what you're feeling must be natural and good--so go on...live out your desires."

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