16th February 1927  
Dear Friends,  
 
Everything goes on quietly here and there is little news. Edward  
Glover is giving his first course of lectures, on „Technique“, and they prove  
to be most excellent. Melanie Klein is welcome in our Society and likes  
London so well that she is contemplating staying here permanently.  
 
The Society appointed a sub-committee of three to draw up a programme  
as a basis for the lay analysis discussion. This has been formulated as a  
series of defined questions and I hope there will be little discussion.  
I think it a pity that this was not done centrally so that all groups could  
discuss questions defined in the same terminology; this would have made it  
easier for Eitingon to correlate the replies.  
 
Eitingon’s official circular letter of the 12th arrived today and  
I will submit it to the Society at its meeting tonight and send off our answer  
tomorrow. I am very much in accord with the views he expressed in a private  
letter which reached me yesterday about the desirability of making suit-  
able preparation in good time before the Congress, so as to avoid the fruitless  
and emotional discussions that would otherwise take place. My own view is  
that such discussion would be reduced to a minimum and that the Congress business  
on that matter should take mainly the form of voting. For this, however, it  
is essential that the questions on which they vote are accurately and  
 

unambiguously defined.  
This task could be quite well carried out by correspondence and I  
see serious drawbacks to the suggestion of holding a delegates’ meeting  
in May. I do not believe that general discussion at a meeting of that  
size could lead to as good results as the calm preparation of a programme  
by correspondence. No Americans could be present, and to attempt to secure  
harmony in their absence would be like playing “Hamlet” without the Prince  
of Denmark. It would further be difficult for representatives from London  
to attend such a meeting at Vienna in May, for this would mean forgoing the  
therapeutic work for a full week in the middle of the season. For myself  
I am dividing my holidays this year into two – three weeks in April and  
three weeks in August, so that it would be very disturbing (and also expensive)  
to break again in May.  
 
With kindest regards  
Ernest Jones