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Dr. Forrest is certainly to be commended for his wish to urge donations to the Columbia Department of Psychiatry. He has taken the time and trouble to send a very long and rather detailed letter to all his patients, asking them to donate to the department. Unfortunately this fait accompli has irreversible ramifications that would not occur if he were a practitioner of general psychiatry, such as the young psychiatrist in a white coat with a stethoscope hung around her neck as portrayed on the front page of a recent edition of the official APA news publication. But as a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, I have to assume that the members practice psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. To send a letter like that of Dr. Forrest to one's patients seems to me a total violation of the principles of those procedures, which is to allow transference to develop unimpeded. It also signals a very impersonal approach to one's patients, as well as expressing “warm regard” for each of them in its ending, which I do not believe any psychiatrist has for all of his or her patients, an act of mauvais foi. We all get dozens of letters like this asking for donations and if they are at all long or complicated we toss them out without reading them.