me the only question is: Can this blocked kid ever catch up with life?
And that is what has resulted from your work-that I can't read books
that define in sections under specific headings. You really say: "All
diseases are the same disease fundamentally, and cure depends on how
and when the anti-life blockage took place." In other words, this para
graph simply means: To hell with disease; let's think only of health.
That's what your books are doing as opposed to a new book by
Melanie Klein* full of castration and anal characteristics and mother's
penis and what not. To read her is like being in a graveyard with open
putrefying bodies; to turn to your Function is like going out into a
meadow in spring. Question ... Is there after all a Death Instinct which
is confined to psychoanalysts?
My Cambridge meeting was good. Full hall. Came out all the way on
sex. Now Oxford wants me to lecture there. On the other side, the law
that makes the govt. inspect private schools has come into force and
S'hill can be inspected any day now. I am not worrying too much. I
know I shall refuse to compromise with their standards of education,
but I can't fight them if they say I haven't enough bathrooms or W.C.'s
or that too many kids sleep in a room. I haven't the money to make
the place perfect from a medical officer point of view. However, they
may be kind to me because of my long experience and grey hairs. The
socialist govt. has put the little man in the saddle, the official, and
remember that in England the private school has always been for the
upper and middle classes only, and all the politicians who were once
manual workers must hate the private school's guts. The typical Com
munist criticism of S'hill is that it is a class school not for the workers.
I wish that my visit were not so far away... 1950.
- • •
Forest Hills, New York
February 1 I, 1949
My dear N eil/:
You met Bill Steig, the famous cartoonist. He met the editors
Breit and Schwarz of the New York Times Magazine, after he had sent
in an article about me. Here is what Steig wrote to me:
"I've just had lunch with Breit and Schwarz. They say: The subject is
- Contributions to Psychoanalysis, 1921-1945 (London: Hogarth Press,^19 48).