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355+ OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

June 29, 1978

Memo to the file

Subject: Conversation with Dr. Robert Michaels L .
at Cornell Payne Whitney Psychiatry

Date: Wednesday, June 28th.

This meeting was at my initiative but Bob told me
that it could not have been more timely as he was just
at the point where he felt able to come to focus on his
research program. He has spent the last four years
building up what he believes to be an excellent clinical
establishment. It is certainly much sought after for
residency training. He told me that he was hoping that
the President of Rockefeller would walk into his office
one day and provide for the complementary opportunity
that in fact exists.

He first gave me the historical development of the
situation. The Payne Whitney Clinic is a relatively in-
dependent unit of the New York Hospital-Cornell complex.

In fact, the clinical operations both of the Payne Whitney
and of the Westchester division now report directly to

him. Only in 1965 was Westchester officially linked to
Cornell. The previous role of Payne Whitney and psychiatry
in that area had been to provide psychiatric service to a
rather affluent clientele. There was some development of
social psychiatry under latent and baer ey,
The outstanding work in psychosomatic medicine by Harold
Wolf was in fact based in neurology. At the present time
Payne Whitney is unusual in that it is the only psychiatric
department in New York City which is not connected with a
government psychiatric institute. In many places there are
state more than federal institutions which have provided
for local support of research and which have tended to de-
lay or defer the role of psychiatry in support, for example,
by NIMH. Payne Whitney did not even have that. So Cornell
was never in that kind of market. Lacking an academic base
at home there have been relatively few links with the Rocke-
feller University. Bill Leyman did take his sabbatical
Memo to file continued
June 29, 1978

-2-

with Carl Pfaffmann some years ago.

Now that the clinical operations which number 108
beds at Payne Whitney and 322 at Westchester are under
firm control Michaels feels that it is time to build
up the biological arm of the department for both research
and residency training purposes. However, he believes
that psychiatric research has a low priority for research
investment at Cornell and he would be somewhat stymied
about such developments at the present site. He had
therefore emphasized the possibility of laboratories at
Westchester: for example,.in a flirtation with Saul
Snyder which apparently has fallen through. Michaels
himself expressed some concern about the balance of
entrepreneurial and scientific eminence expressed there.

He was delighted at the idea of a joint appointment
which would allow for a clinical and teaching base in
psychiatry at Payne Whitney and a research base at the
Hospital. He had previously been looking to the group in
behavioral sciences rather than the hospital as a link.

I told him that it would be imperative in any case to
pull those two together at RU.

He expressed his personal base that our research
opportunities were not particularly apt for short run
large scale clinical experiments, like testing drug ef-
ficacy; and of course I could not agtee more!

I expressed a few of the areas that I thought might
be fairly obvious targets: namely, aonorexia and depression.
His own interests..at ‘the present time have to do with the
perinatal complex I assume along lines similar to those
that Herb Leiderman is interested in. Daniel Stern seems
to be the principal actor in his group and I assume that
Stern has been in contact with Cole and Miller.

There is a little about this in Michaels annual report
to the Dean last year where he refers to the acquisition
of language by Stern and Shapiro as an important research
effort. This is not the line that would most readily
command the interest of the biochemical wing of the Rocke-
feller University but It don't think that there is anything
like closure on this question at the present time.
Memo to the file continued
June 29, 1978

-3-

Michaels expressed an interest in the organization
of the University and I promised to send him an Annual ~~
Report. He also asked for a statement about my own views
on the development of these strategies and on that I may
have to disappointment him for awhile. We agreed to
stay in touch on opportunities as they might arise and
that I would communicate his very positive sentiments to
the group at the Hospital. Conversely, he has a good
account of the clinical and training programs and will
send me the material that they send to prospective resi-

dents. p
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