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29 February, 1960
DEAR SIR,
Thank you for mailing me a copy of the letter of 23 February, 1960 from Drs Ruth W. and Theodore Lidz.
The question, as I see it, is whether my article succeeds in capturing, in a necessarily very brief space, the essence of that portion of their paper which I found relevant to my own. The only passage in which I mention their paper is this one:
(p. 569) Ruth W. Lidz and Theodore Lidz, in a paper published in 1952 (12), describe the child as being basically motivated by a (selfish) concern for his own security in the face of a mother who battens parasitically upon him and is striving primarily to express her malevolence towards him.
I based this précis upon such passages, from their paper, as the following. For the present purpose, I take the liberty of italicizing certain phrases, to show how similar was my terminology to their own:
(p. 169) … The recurring theme … is the pattern that Reichard and Tillman (4) have described as most frequent in schizophrenic development. They say, "This pattern is found in mothers who batten parasitically on their children. … The patient is not fooled … and never fails to indicate he was not loved as a child." This statement … is in precise accord with our observations.…
(p. 170) … the mother … is basically malevolent toward the patient as a separate individual … [last two words italicized in the Lidz paper].
To be sure, their paper does not use the term 'selfish' to describe the child's concern for his own security. That word, like, obviously, the other words in my reference to their paper, is one which I chose. But nowhere in their paper do they convey the impression that the child has any genuinely altruistic regard for the mother—any concern beyond, basically, the urgent demands of his own security.
And, while it would perhaps be more accurate to say that they depict the mother as being primarily concerned with completing her own life, rather than—as I describe the spirit of their remarks—striving prima