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13th August 1954.
Dear Dr. Guntrip,
I am grateful to you for letting me see your paper: “Analysis Blocked. … etc.” There is much in this paper that I like. I am sure that something had to be done in the analysis of this patient of yours in addition to the giving of correct interpretations at the right moments. There are probably borderline cases, perhaps commonly so, in which it is possible to avoid action by appropriate interpretation, but even so there are, I am sure, many cases in which some action such as you describe is necessary. In the more severe cases this probably becomes the main thing over a phase. Some people think that analysis has been abandoned when the analyst acts so, but I am sure that these people fail with analyses that could have succeeded. I would very much like to have a talk with you some time or other about this business of the introjection of the bad object. I find that your outlook is very much influenced by Fairbairn, and understandably so, but I do invite you to have a look into this matter of your relation to psychoanalysis in general, so that you can have your own relationship and not Fairbairn's. Just as Fairbairn presents his work, as I said in my last letter, in a way which makes it look as if he is all the time supplanting Freud, so he also I suggest talks as if he were supplanting Melanie Klein. For instance, this matter of the introjection of the bad object is quite clear in Melanie Klein's work. The bad situation or object or relationship is taken in for purposes of being controlled. This is an example of a magical introjection and