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4th September 1967.
Dear Dr. P:
I am grateful to you for sending me [your paper]. It is very rewarding for me to find that an idea of mine comes into your carefully constructed argument. I think I need not take up the points in your paper because you will know that I am in agreement with your general idea, and I feel that you have expressed yourself clearly.
Yesterday I had a patient who might have been reading your paper; a woman who has come a long way in psycho-analytic treatment and who is near to the point where she exists in such a way that she does not have to be all the time searching for herself. Referring yesterday to the illness aspect of her personality, she was describing how in an art gallery (and she is intensely interested in art) she finds herself using her body and her eyes in a search for herself. When finger-painting she is using her hands always hoping that in the result on the paper she will see herself. Everything about her in these circumstances is an instrument like a microscope being used. She is only just reaching to the position where instead of looking for herself she is able to recognise that she herself exists at the place where the search became initiated. I need not go into the reasons why she has been in this difficulty and why through the treatment she seems to be near recovering from the illness. I only mention this because it illustrates the theme of your paper and because it is fresh in my mind as a piece of clinical material.
I do hope the reception of the paper is good. Probably I shall not be able to be there as there are so many groups of meetings that many of them clash with each other. Perhaps you would be good enough to let me know how the evening goes.
Yours sincerely,
D. W. Winnicott, F.R.C.P.