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7th October 1955.
Dear Bion,
I find I want to write to you about your Wednesday paper.1 First I would like to say that I think of you as the big man of the future in the British Psycho-Analytical Society. You have a strong personality and there could be a danger that you would get into the forefront by this means instead of by the natural development of circumstances. I am sure you would not like this to happen. The
strength of your personality makes it difficult for people to get up and tell you that you are in a muddle or that you have said something wrong, and at the meeting on Wednesday your relation to the Society was completely spoiled by the fact that the first three or four speakers were Mrs. Klein and the pro-Kleinians. The impression was given that you were being protected from the Society and I really believe you must hate this sort of thing, as you are quite capable of defending yourself and of enjoying a contact with people who feel they want to challenge something you have said. After you had been insulated from the Society by the first four speakers there was no hope whatever that someone would get up and challenge you. This is a matter of procedure which wants seriously looking into, and I have tried very hard to get into contact with the Klein group in order to point out to them the harm that they are doing to the Klein cause by this sort of behaviour.
In 10 years' time I believe that you will find yourself in contact with the whole Society but you have not yet started, being as you are cluttered round by the organisation of the Kleinian group. I find myself able to vituperate against the Klein group without in the least altering my view of Mrs. Klein as a loveable person to whom I owe as much as I do to Freud and who has contributed so very fully on the scientific side. Mrs. Klein seems to be unable to see, however, that her followers are disrupting the Society since they stand together in a block and there is no entry into this block except by the p