David Kaczynski is the past Executive Director of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery located in Woodstock, New York. An anti–death penalty activist, Kaczynski served as the Executive Director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty from 2001 to 2012 and has given hundreds of public talks throughout the United States about mental illness, the death penalty, and healing in the aftermath of tragic violence. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook
James L. Knoll IV, MD is the Director of Forensic Psychiatry and Professor of Psychiatry at State University of New York Upstate Medical University and has served as a consulting forensic expert for the ACLU, as well as for many law enforcement agencies including the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.
This chapter is a portrait of Theodore R. Kaczynski, father of Theodore and David Kaczynski, from David’s early memories of his father while growing up in suburban Chicago until his father’s suicide in 1990. The chapter focuses on differing father-son relationships—one with an elder son that is strained by increasing estrangement contrasted with a close and affectionate relationship with his younger son. In this chapter, David the younger son explores his memories of his father and how they shaped his sense of identity in adulthood.
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