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26th October 1964.
Dear J.O.W.,
Thank you for your papers, the result of much work. I wanted to speak at the Bion meeting but a very exacting patient (really very ill) made me unable to do all the necessary homework. That's the worst of these evenings with its being taken for granted that we all know beforehand what the speaker is up to.
At present I am convalescent from two days' 'flu, which gives me some freedom to write to people and to read.
About Bion and all that. I like the way he goes ahead in his own grooves, and I'm one of those who hope for a lot from him. In writing a paper about him you have helped me to make a new effort to grip the Bion line, and for this I am grateful.
When you write about Bion I do not easily allow your failure to relate Bion's work to that of his colleagues, though I consider he himself has full right to go ahead without even knowing what others of us are writing, let alone putting in references.
You relate Bion's work to Freud and Klein which is the important thing. But in your role of commentator you do need to relate his work to contemporaries, including me. (As a matter of fact I never feel you have read anything of mine, but no matter, except to me.)
What Marion [Milner] said was just a little bit of what she felt. She is the one who has reverie in her presentation of her ideas in our Society, and remember, although she is modest she is one of the ones we have who has brains.