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Dear Friends,
Everything goes on quietly here and there is little news. Edward Glover is giving his first course of lectures, on »Technique«, and they prove to be most excellent. Melanie Klein is welcome in our Society and likes London so well that she is contemplating staying here permanently.2
The Society appointed a sub-committee of three to draw up a programme as a basis for the lay analysis discussion. This has been formulated as a series of defined questions and I hope there will be little discussion. I think it a pity that this was not done centrally so that all groups could discuss questions defined in the same terminology; this would have made it easier for Eitingon to correlate the replies.
Eitingon's official circular letter of the 12th arrived today and I will submit it to the Society at its meeting tonight and send off our answer tomorrow. I am very much in accord with the views he expressed in a private letter which reached me yesterday about the desirability of making suitable preparation in good time before the Congress, so as to avoid the fruitless and emotional discussion that would otherwise take place. My own view is that such discussion would be reduced to a minimum and that the Congress business on that matter should take mainly the form of voting. For this, however, it is essential that the questions on which they vote are accurately and unambiguously defined.
This task could be quite well carried out by correspondence and I see serious drawbacks to the suggestion of holding a delegates' meeting in May. I do not believe that general discussion at a meeting of that size could lead to as good results as the calm preparation of a programme by correspondence. No Americans could be present, and to attempt to secure harmony in their absence would be like playing »Hamlet« without the Prince of Denmark. It would further be difficult for representatives from London to attend such a meeting at Vienna in May, for this would mean forgoing the therapeutic work