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4th September 1967.
Dear Margaret Torrie:
Thank you for your letter and for the literature. I am extremely glad that you are trying to do something about the very considerable distress that goes with mastectomy. It is not at all surprising to me that you have met some fairly terrible things in response to your carefully worded questions. The paperback that you are writing should meet a real need.
I have read your preface and I have no special comment to make. No doubt in the course of the book you will be dealing with a little bit of the common pathological aspects of the problem as well as with the normal; that is to say you will be referring to the fact that a fair proportion of girls go through a period of feeling inadequate because they are not boys, and then get especially high charge of meaning in the idea of breast development so that for these a word like castration becomes appropriate when the surgeon says that the breast must come off.
The comment that I feel like making is that all women having a mastectomy must be disturbed; somewhere in every one of them is a tremendous reaction. No doubt a great deal could be done by way of preparation and sympathetic introduction to the idea. Nevertheless in my opinion nothing can really do away with their anger, hate, and sense of insult which is inherent in any mutilation even if it saves life. I think that in your writing you might somehow or other allow for the fact that the woman's anger with the callous surgeon may present some kind of an outlet for anger which otherwise eats away inside because the woman does not like to be angry with God or fate. What I am trying to say is that while I am very much in favour of an enlightened attitude towards this sort of problem and while I believe that a very great deal can be done which is not being done, nevertheless I do not expect that the problem can be solved and I do not expect you think so either. In every case the woman has to deal with resentment and there are some wom