The Other Father Dear Editors, I was incredibly heartened to read (and fact-check) Lily Scherlis’s Issue 51 essay “Experiences in Groups.” I credit Scherlis for my newfound interest in group relations and my belief that it could be useful to left-wing organizing. I also found the care she put into portraying the idiosyncratic world of group relations to be especially admirable: A lesser author might have mocked these people (and their practices) for an easy laugh, but Scherlis’s examination was sensitive, giving the reader ample time to explore this rich and emotionally fraught world. I simply loved the piece. Much like a dogmatic socialist or a doctrinaire psychoanalyst, however, I had two small quibbles. First, I was surprised that Scherlis did not mention John Rickman, W. R. Bion’s training analyst (and an analysand of Freud, Ferenczi, and Klein), who was an integral contributor to the early psychoanalytic study of groups.…