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15th October, 1946.
Dear Lord Beveridge,
Can you help me out of a difficulty. I am very impressed with the views you hold on our treatment of Germany and for this reason wish to support you strongly. However, as a thinking kind of practising doctor (paediatrician-psychiatrist) I feel that the nationalisation of doctors is destructive of the best in our profession, and one of the chief things that has brought about this is the clause in your famous Report. So from my point of view you are the main cause of a bad thing.
I think your suggestion that the medical profession should be nationalised was made in good faith, and that you were truly ignorant of the harm your suggestion must do. It was true ignorance that allowed you to make medical practice subservient to politics instead of to science, but ignorance cannot absolve you of my hatred.1
How can I reconcile my admiration of your new work on behalf of our democratic value, and my hatred of you because of your irresponsible suggestions in respect of doctors?
If you can find time to answer this letter please do not assume that I talk lightly and without true knowledge of medical practice. As a psycho-analyst I have been able to deepen and widen my own considerable experience by intimate knowledge of the feelings of others.
The public cannot of course be expected to understand these things, and very few understand what they stand to lose by the turning of doctors into civil servants; but in your position you cannot be absolved, and I must at any rate be honest with myself and express to you yourself the hate that rises naturally in me, alongside my other feelings for you and your work.
Yours truly,
D. W. Winnicott, F.R.C.P.