DR. JOHN CLAUSEN January 9, 1978 EAR You actually played two unique roles, one extramural and one intramural, so start where you like, it seemed to me it might be easiest if you began from how you first got started with NIMH and went on from there, but anyway you want to do it. JC Well, I got started largely as a result of knowing John Eberhart. I had been in the VA running a or helping to run a survey research operation right after the war shifting over from the Pentagon and John Eberhart came in and had heard of what we were doing and was interested and came in and applied for a job in our shop and it was just about at the time, soon after John came I guess, I realized that the VA was not going to be a place that one would want to stay. It was at its lowest ebb then, this was in 46 and I had an offer to go to Cornell as an Assistant Professor, went up there at half the pay that I was getting in Government, but I didn't have the Ph.D. yet and knew the only way I could get a Ph.D. was to do some teaching, so I could get back, I had never even taken my qualifying exams, and by then I several kids. Anyway, John Eberhart came to the same conclus­ ion that I had soon after he replaced me and he went to NIMH as the training specialist in psychology as you may recall, and' they needed, it was decided that one of the things that was needed was a national survey attitudes toward mental illness and toward psychiatry and so I was first brought in as a co-nsul­ tant while I was still teaching at Cornell and then after I had been down a couple of times, I was asked if I would like to come in as a member of the Office of Program Planning with Joe Bobbitt and Dan O'Keefe. I guess at that time the Office 2. JC(continued) of Program P'ianning was somewhat amorphous. Dale Cameron was Associate Director, if I recall correctly, but at that time, Dale had no particular relationship to Program Plannings, subsequently, he became the Chief of that Office that had more structure to it. We were still meeting, the name was still officially the Division of Mental Hygiene, I guess, and we were still downtown and I guess, one of my earliest recollections is of our car;..pooling down, there was a car-pool of Felix, Cameron, Bobbitt, Eberhart and myself. The conversation was almost entirely enthusiastic conver­ sation about the Program, what was going on in it. But, you mention decision making. A certain number of decisions got made in the car pool or as a result of car pool discussions and Paulcauikwas the Chief Administrative Officer at that time or Executive Officer and Paul was very capable - have you talked with Paul, I don't know if he is still EAR No JC He subsequently became overall Administrative Officer for the whole public health service EAR Okay, you.were saying about the decisions having been made in the car pool. JC Well, I recall that an awful lot was still rather amorphous in terms of how the program would develop. I am not really sure what kinds of facts you are interested in. My perception of the first year or so is of a rather chaotic year, a year in which there were a lot of tensions and yet a great deal of warmth among people. My own feeling in going to NIMH initially, when I went as a consultant, I had no thought of leaving Cornell, where I 3. JC(continued) was very happy, but Bob Felix was obviously a very charismatic guy. The psychiatristSthat I met there were so different from the six psychiatrists that I had previously met. The only psychiatrist that I had any contact with were like I had once gone to consult one at the University of Chicago when I was a student there and when I talked with him for a little bit he started in by saying "you think you have problems" and then he told me some about his. I mean he was just a very sick person and the only psychiatrists I had met really seemed to me terribly sick people and here were a group of people who seemed reasonably healthy and interested in aspects of mental health that were fascinating to me. So, there was that enthusiasm at the same time Bob Felix, I guess my earliest invovlement was with the Phoenix Mental Health Center. EAR Yes, I wish:you would talk about that, because that's an interesting anecdote. JC It was to be the second of the demonstration of projects. It had been called for in the original legislation and I guess it had partly been developed through the Regional Consultant in San Francisco, who had gone and sold one thing to the Health Officer of Arizona, they had Public Health in ARizona, but then various members of the staff at NIMH were involved in recruiting members of their own dis.cipline. Jerry Carter was involved in recruiting the pschologists and Pearl Chalit was involved in recruiting the social worker, and so on, and eventually I was involved EAR Danny O'Keefe in the social work._ No, I am sorry. 4. JC I don't think so. Well, he may have been involved some but the important thing is that each member was oriented according to a somewhat different conception of what the Phoenix Mental Health Center would be and it was under Community Services, Jim Lowery's branch, at the same time, when I arrived on the scene there was not a Chief Psychiatrist for it. Bob Felix said to me, "why don't you go _.down with the staff that we have recruited so far" all of them had been recruited before I was and "why don't you get them to do some assessment of the needs of the community. Well, none of them turned out to be or had any research background or particular interest in research, but we did have them do a certain amount of interviewing and we collected information from .various agencies and we began to realize that different agencies had totally different conceptions of what the clinic was going to mean. The juvenile court saw the clinic as the place they could dump all their problem cases, the schools wanted to be able to make the ----- , and I guess the main thing that we learned was that there was a great deal of anxiety, irritation 1 with NIMH at being so slow in offering services that they sent down people who were asking questions, instead of doing things for the community, but finally, Bob Hewitt was recruited and there was a younger psychiatrist who had earlier been recruited but clearly wasn't the first in the takeover. The effort there was to divide the program into three parts and to direct services into consultations with the agencies, consultation and education, and then to have a research facet. I think Bob saw the research facet as being a means of holding on to the demonstration clinic if at the time of the shift out to NIH there was objection to keeping the Community Services Branch. There were people who felt or pointed out that Community Services 5. JC{continued) in other parts of the Public Health Program were downtown in Public Health and just the research was at NIH and so some how or other I was given responsibility for that Phoenix Mental Health Center, it was a divided responsibility between Jim Lowery arid myself and ultimately it was put under my jurisdiction. EAR And, by this time, the Prince George's Center had already begun? JC Prince George's was, I think, really underway a little earlier, but the idea of Phoenix was here at the Community that's not only in the desert but as a psychiatric desert, what can you do. Therefore, working with social agencies and community organizations was seen as a major objective and then already Bob was talking about the clinic as a first outpatient services as a prevention of serious mental disorder and he saw - he had great enthusiasm, I think, for the objectives of the clinic. We decided to try to gather some data on the kinds of people who came to use the outpatient services which was established in space given by the Phoenix Community College and we also looked at the intake coming into the State Hospital, and found they were sort of with distributions but in terms of social status, the middle class, in particularly, the upper middle class was using the outpatient service and that the lower class was going to the State hospital~ There never was really much of a systematic research.program and I am afraid that the person I recru±ted to do research there was not terribly strong. He did not have the kind of autonomous research skills that were needed with research, theoretical and ____were needed and the operation of the Phoenix program was, I don't think it ever had the kind of pay-off that we hoped that it would have. 6. EAR Was that primarily because the disparity of expectations on the part of the community itself and what the NIMH intended it for in the first place! JC Well in part and in part because the staff themselves did anticipate, did have different goals, and while Bob Hewitt I think was a superb Administrator, I think the whole staff suffered from psychosomatic problems for a couple of years, the morale was very low because they were trying to please people in Washington, who had quite different notions and somehow, I think my ~ole was particularly anomalous and it wasn't at.all clear why I should have the responsibility I had. They weren't personal tensions, but there were puzzlements there and the Well, our psychologist, whom we had originally looked to as being the research person.Bob Felix had originally said he will be our research man and it turned out that he just barely got his Ph.D. He said he hated research, hated doing a dissertation, but finally they let him get through with a very weak dissertation. But, he wanted to do clinical work, so he wasn't exactly the man that we needed for the slot and neither was the sociologist that I subsequently recruited. Although he did gather some good factual data. That part of the operation of the Phoenix Clinic took a good deal of my time and then we did get the national survey contracted for. We also got a survey contracted for in Phoenix to see after several years how much people knew about the existence of the clinic,. where they would take problems, and .the.people who were involved in that from the survey research centers subsequently built on it to do the study for the Joint Commission on Americans view the·ir mental health. 7. EAR You mentioned earlier the.business of tensions, is it primarily around the issue in Phoenix? JC No, the tensions within the Institute itself I would say derived from the fact that decisions would be made, let's say sort of informally, through discussions in the car pool sometimes and Paul Caulk felt completely left out and I almost have to get personal, the thing is that I assume that this is in confidence. Dale Camer6n left no doubt that he wanted Bob Felix's job·and I remember his just saying to Bob "that's the slot I am after when you are out of it and his assumption was that Bob would be out of it a lot sooner than Bob was. People got told again in Washington, in the Central Office, people got told different things as to what was going to happen and someone pointed out Bob Felix's reputation or his nickname from Lexington they had been promising Bob. Bob's promises were exciting enough so that there would be great eagerness and I remember. John Eberhart when he went to Cummingwealth saying he just didn't have the same feeling about the people at Cummingwealth that he had about Bob Felix in terms of the charisma, but the charisma wasn't enough to resolve some of these problems and you have heard of those in the survey that we did, John and I, Bob did ask John and me _to do a survey of the staff. EAR Bob presented that to me somewhat differently, I mentioned here earlier. He said that he asked you as the house sociologist, so to speak,to keep track of of the inner dynamics of the INstitute per se and I gather that never really took place. JC No, what happened was that the disaffection was so great I think that the tension of expressions of dissatisfaction by people lower down.Despite the enthusiasm for the mission I have never 8. JC(continued) been in a place, maybe that is too strong statement, that I have.never been in a place with lower morale but the overall morale in the Institute the first year was really quite low EAR You are talking about 47 and 48? JC I·am. sorry I shouldn't say the first year. I joined in 48 - it would be 48-49, my first year there, the morale was quite low and there were a number of people talking about transferring out. EAR You had not yet moved out to T-6? JC This is what I can't really be sure of, I don't remember when that - do you remember when that move took place? EAR 48, I am not sure, I haven't pinpointed the date, but some time then JC We had moved out to T~6 in that case, because it was certainly well along in the first year there. I don't .remember when Dale Cameron then shifted to I guess it was Occupational Health that he went to and Paul Caulk moved out and both were such strong people when we did our survey we found that most of the dissatisfaction, if I recall correctly, came from feeling that they were being constantly given different messages and that the mission wasn't at all clear and yet there was respect for all of the indiviudals involved, respect and aspiration, and exasperation. Now after when we had only one strong person remaining and a much junior executive officer came in. I guess Dale was there for some time but Dale was given the role of being th~ Chief of Program Planning. It seems to me when roles got defined more sharply then suddenly the picture changed quite drastically. EAR And, by this time the Extramural Program was beginning to pi_ck up steam. 9. JC The Extramural Program was going along quite ~ell. When I arrived the first set of research grants had just been made. EAR Vesty had come by that time JC Vesty was there, yes. I remember Vesty as sort of father figure. I guess Felix, Cameron, BobbLtt, Vestermar.k, O'Keefe, Eberhart· Whitman and we very frequently had sandwiches together at lunch. It was small enough so that practically the whole staff could get together for parties and do a round of dinners at people's houses. There was a great deal of cameraderie. I would say that the tensions were at the next level, the tensions that led to relatively high turnover were a level below, but there were also, I remember that Bobbitt and O'Keefe and I wondering what we were doing. There was a good deal of tension over our role as the Office of Program Planning because Bob used us as sort of his to do budget review and this was bitterly resented particularly by Jim Lowery, but I think all of the Branch Chiefs felt that our Division Units, here we were in a sense on equal terms but in another sense we were given power over them, so that there were some insecurities that got .resolved to some extent when we were made a coordinant unit and no longer had, we could raise questions, Bob might review the budget with us but we weren•·t ,seryirig'•in 2 the ··same capacity as we had earlier. We were much more in a real planning capacity. EAR How did you see Joe Bobbitt's role with Bob Felix ahd let me just preface that by saying that one of the unfortunate aspects of this book is that I was not able to get to Joe Bobbitt in time. In fact, I had an appointment to see him, he decided at the last minute he· didn't want to do it for reasons that you may know, and then he died. 10. JC Well, my reasons for having some ambivalence where I had talked with Joe or Joe had talked with me about his feelings and I had some of the same ambivalence, very frankly. Joe was, I think, had a tremendous influence on Bob intellectually. He was the I think, how shall I say that, the greatest intellect in the original group and Bob leaned on him very heavily, he tended being rather an excessive compulsive to formulate things to want to have things understood very clearly. He could be preoccupied, of course, with Menusha, but at the same time he also was a very provocative and very good critic and with Bob's grandiose ideas I think that Joe was often very influential. EAR But creat'a spark. Well, do you think that Bob appreciated Joe for what he was really doing? JC Well, I think in one way he did, but Bob tended to exploit people and Joe allowed himself to be exploited much more than most. I have had a cordial relationship with Bob Felix over the years but Bob once asked me to write a paper for him for the public opinion meetings and I was glad to do it and assumed it would be delivered as a paper that he and one of the staff members had done and suggested a few things he would like to cover. I did all of the work and it was basically my ideas. He was asked to publish it in the PUblic Opinion Quarterly and a couple of suggestions were made by a discussant and which were good suggestions and I said I would be glad to and I assumed it would be a co-authored article and he said "well, John I am in Who's Who, I am the one who is asked to do this" and I said, "well, this is my product basically, and not yours and if you want r~visions and if you want to have your name on it alone, then I would expect you would do the revisions you:i:::self." I guess maybe I said,. "Bob, how the hell do you think you got into Who's Who" and I don't know whether 11. JC(continued) he got into Who's Who on the basis of what he did or what he got other people to do, but the upshot was that he - it went in as a co-authored paper, but Bob said to me, "I am sorry th.at from this date forth you and I can never have a close personal relationship again. I will never invite you to my home again and we have been cordial, we have been on the, for years, The Scottish Right Committee and then finally, there was not enough social science on it for me to feeL.that it was worth going to Boston twice a year, so I dropped out a year or so ago. EAR How long ago was this, John? JC Well, I would think that article probably was published around 51 or 52. EAR So, you had not yet gone to the Clinical Center? JC I could be wrong on the date. Let me just look and check. When it gets back that far, I find it rather difficult. EAR I have joined that club, too. JC It was published actually in 53, so it probably was presented at the 52 meetings and it was just about the time that I was moving over. It was about that time that I had an offer from Harvard too,in the School of Public Health to head up Social Science and I told Bob that if I stayed I would like to then be in the Intramural Program and be a Lab .Chief and as soon as Seymour Ketty was appointed, He said, obviously, you will have to wait until we have an overall head it. Intramural Research you can make an evaluation as to· whether you have the qualifications for the job and at that point I shifted over, but Bob.felt. Bob had his personal family and he felt that loyality to him should come before loyality to one's discipline. He made that very clear that disciplinary 12. JC{continued) loyality or loyality to science or to knowledge that was not what he wanted. He wanted loyality to Bob Felix. He said to the Program, but he basically mean't to Bob Felix. EAR And, yet at the same time, people have been telling me that one of his strengths was his ability, of course, everyone mentions his charisma, his warmth, but that also, he had the capacity for giving people responsibilities and a sense of allowing them reasonably free reign to follow through on those programs. JC That's very true. EAR So that you didn't have a real close contact with Stan Yolles, but they are too really significantly different personalities in operation in many, many ways, and Stan could never have done what Bob did and vice versa and certainly on that personal level. So, you have illuminated, I think, an interesting other aspect of Bob's operation. JC We started with Joe Bobbitt because Joe wrote a number of things that were published under the name of Robert Felix, without co­ authorship and I felt that was outrageous, but Joe allowed it to happen and I-guess, maybe when I say allowed it to happen, maybe he knew was just more circumspect than I, but the first paper that I wrote was stolen by someone else, my boss, again in this instance just asked, knowing I was going to publish it, if he could use it he needed a speech and again, people liked it and then he offered me co-authorship of the paper that I was ready to publish and I told him -- I guess he offered me co-authorship of something that he had written, that was it, -So, I had this experience once and .ff I was not - Faculty members at the University of Chicago or 13. JC(continued) at Berkeley don't do that or if they do, they have no respect from their colleagues. I realize that the Federal Government is quite a different thing, but I had a little bit more innoculation with the academic culture than. EAR Of course, waea Joe went back into his relationship with Bob to the Coast Guards. They had much more extensive collegial, or not collegial, at least,.. this relationship. Well, what else about Joe that you think we ought to put •into the record. I know him very well, too, and I certainly intend to make sure that his role there is appropriately delineated, but perhaps in terms of some of the. things that you saw, I think there important for us to make sure we get in there. I think he was - I knew him later, but I think he certainly was an intellectual stimulant in more ways than one. ·•. "JC He would throw ideas, out ideas, what if we were to go about some­ thing this way and there was just some splendid discussions of what possibilities were. Beyond that EAR Let me approach the more general issue in a somewhat different way they because you pointed out that the atmosphere there was so sig­ nificantly different than the VA and I don't know whether you know ·'it, and ·there is no reason for you to know it, but I am a product of the VA Clinical Psychology Training Program and I worked for the VA as a Research Psychologist before I came to NIMH. JC The VA, of course, by the time Halley had reorganized things and it had gone a little further, the VA was a totally different organization than the one that Bradley initially took over from Hines in 46, and I went while it was still the old VA EAR But, even under the new aegis, it never was able to fulfill its potential in the way that the NIMH did, for example, program wise. There were people like Jim Miller at the VA who really had, there 14. EAR(continued) was no doubt about his being intellectual and he was a very competent guy. What I was really going to ask you, but you won't answer it in a sense,you were there at the part of the old traditional VA, so that, that really was a Federal Bureacracy in the old fashioned way. JC Just incredible EAR Whereas the NIMH as a new organization with Bob and with the mission which was still so amorphous, large and in its very inception, there was the opportunity for a great deal more flexibility and you pointed out and other people again have been saying,you almost had a kind of free academic atmosphere early on in the kinds of inter­ changes that took place among people within the NIMH that these sort of things, these sort of circumstances in the interacts of the people allow the kind of growth and development that took place, granted the tensions, etc. Is there anything else about the Extramural Program that, in general, that's worth bringing into the pi6ture as you were involved in it. JC Well, I was thinking of Vesty's role. Vesty was no great intellect but he was one of the warmest human beings that I have ever met. I don't know how much you knew him. EAR He hired me, I knew him very well. JC He was the southern gentleman of the old school. I used to be,at times shutter and at times just feel warm at the things that Vesty did, but he also had the ability, I think, to mobilize the skills of the best people. I guess one of the things that impressed me about, in general, Bob, was a pretty shrewd judge of staff members that were brought in and they were the people who were extra­ ordinarily capable, or who had the kinds of skills and personality 15. JC(continued) that made them ideal for their jobs and he was so I damn persuasive. When I came down as a consultant the second or third time, I had a feeling from something that had been said that I might be getting a job offer. We were just looking at a house in Ithaca, 150 year old house and I told my wife that I am not going to - don't worry I am not going to take an offer if they do make one,and the next night coming back on the train, at least two nights later coming back on the train, I kept saying "my God, what if she made a deposit" because I could not say no he made the possibilities of involvement of social science in this program so real to me so that my professors at Chicago, one who had gone to Harvard said to me "you w~uld be an idiot to back to the Federal Government, when you are at Cornell and you will never get back in the academic world if you do" but Bob made it clear that there were real possibilities here and there were and I think he did that for so many people. In the Extramural Program I think the role of the Community Services Program was perhaps the most difficult for some of us to understand and yet that was obviously where Bob's heart was, that he wanted to get to. Without being terribly realistic about it, but that was the way he wanted to go and I think it was the right way to go. EAR You had a cutting edge responibility without really knowing where the cutting edge was. JC Right. First we did get foreign visitors from time to time and we found out.Really in many respects, they were way ahead of us in providing services in the community in several European countries EAR What were some of the other things going on there that you feel 16. EAR(continued) were facilitating, some of it was very serendipitous like going in a car pool, the brown bag lunches with the size of the organization being such that you could all communicate fairly well. The quality of the people, that you have just pointed out, probably one attribute involved that was very important. Was there anything else in those days that served anything else that was of particular importance that allowed things to jell the way they dia JC Well, I think that the - I remember meetings of the National Mental Health Council. I think the Council in the early years was a tremendously impressive group of people and the various committees I think, if you contrast them with what I've seen of Committees and Councils more recently, perhaps because it was small, the very top people were involved EAR Any that you particularly remember? JC Well, I remember Bill Menninger, John Romano on the Council, for example. EAR I have already talked to John Romano. JC I got b.o know John quite well subsequently on the Career Award Committee. Those people were involved in, much more fully, it was not that kind of nominal relationship that so many peole now have and they did a lot of thinking about where the Program might go and I remember the Council members used to read research grants EAR I just happen to have the very first Council meeting minutes here Ed Strecker, Frank Tollman, David Levy was absent, Bill Malmud, Allan Challman, John Romano, George Stephenson, Bill Menninger and they are fantastic names. JC At the Council meetings, B6b involved a good many of the staff members, so there was a great - I haven't been to a Council meeting 17. JC(continued) for a long time but there was a great deal of give and take between Council and Staff. There was real involvement, mutual involvement. EAR Did you have the feeling that there was a tangible perception on the part of people that they were in on the beginning of an important new organizational development or JC Yes, very much so EAR A sense of history or is that too JC I think we felt that even when we felt frustrated that this was a tremendously important development. Somehow the idea that Mental Health could have a Public Health, could become a major part of Public Health. EAR Okay, how about the sorts of things that were involved with the various individual disciplines. Now, in your case, how much of what you were doing at that time was a function of your continuing interaction with sociology per se? JC Not a tremendous amount, although each of us in Program Planning had a panel of consultants. I had a little group of I think~ five L.K. Frank, Margaret Meade, Robin Williams, Warren Dunham, did I mention Ron Leppett, and we involved them before there was an Intramural Program and discussing some of the things that ought to go into a social science intramural program. Larry Cobb, who was in charge of the Extramural research, I remember, involved me in writing job descriptions, well, writing the job description for the job that I ultimately occupied. Although at the time there was no particular thought of that. I remember being encouraged to go to meetings of a wide variety of associations. I used to go to 18. JC(continued) the psychiatric and orthopsychiatric meetings, so I would say I continued to participate in the American Sociological Association meetings, but my contacts in my day to day work were not with sociologists and it wasn't until we had an Intra­ mural Lab that we brought some other sociologists in. I guess one of the things that I. did relatively early or one of the things that struck me as strange was that the Training Program was training only people for clinical operations, psychiatrists,nurses, psychologists clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers and I remember talking with Vesty about the desirability of training some people in research and having social science included and I think initially Vesty was not entirely enthusiastic, but maybe when his son began to get interested in sociology, Vesty became more interested, and so the social scientists got included. I remember when the first social science training grants were set up, being a little bit involved since there was no Committee involved in that. I think now that I think back, one of the things that I had been totally unaware of before going there, was how little support for research into the causes and consequences of mental disorder, how little support there had been and what a tremendous explosion even the small initial grants represented and then the impressive thing being that there was a recognition that basic research was needed as well as the applied sorts of research. EAR The relationship with the individual disciplines was, as you well know, someone more active along the so-called four core disciplines and I was talking with Esther Garrison on Saturday and one of very important aspects of the Training Program was the whole series of conferences that we held, professional conferences, beginning 19. EAR(continued) with the American Psychological Boulder Conference, in 1949, which literally set the tone for graduate training in clinical psychology thereafter and that was David Shakow having played a major role there and each of the other professions the same sort of early on conference which laid the ground work for graduate training, as it related to mental health and simultaneously, pro­ vided this extension that you are talking about beyond .any narrow confines of mental health per se, which I think was a tremendously important aspect of the Program growth. JC One of the dilemmas in the early assessment of research grants had to do with the feeling on the part of some psychiatrists that any research grant in mental health ought to have at least one half­ time psychiatrist on it. The whole question of inter-disciplinary research, we were all supposed to be inter-disciplinary but EAR Psychiatrists, more so than anybody else. JC The question was just what is entailed, under what circumstances. I got put on a Study Section early in the 1950's. I guess I was the only staff member who was a Study Section member, the reason for my being put on was that I guess I was a representative from NIMH to the Human Resources,Panel of the Pentagon and so I had to have a fullfield clearance for that, having had a full field clearance they knew that I was one~ sociologist who had been cleared. Under the McCarthy era, almost any sociologist who was worth his salt had subscribed to something or belong to some organization that by McCarthy's definition ruled the person out and so afterwards they were turned down on a number of appointments, knowing that I was cleared, I was put on and I remember very clearly, Margaret Meade was on the Study Section at that time, it ranged from Margaret 20. JC(continued) Meade to Arthur Mursky. There was one Study Section for the whole Institute and we set up a series of conferences on inter­ disciplinary te.am research and which tried to deal with what the realities were and a lot of it came, there was one ortho-psychiatry one at the American Psychiatric, the American Psychological, Anthropological, sociological, and I think a little more realistic conception of what was feasible, if it is necessary for the problem to be inter-disciplinary, whether it is the two disciplines or in one skull or in several skulls and by all means be inter--disciplinary but if you can deal with the problem in a sensible way without, you didn't have to be inter-disciplinary for the sake of being inter­ disciplinary. When it was clear that there was something really problematic or there was something that was of faddish proportions usually there were mechanisms whereby a thing could be called into question, it didn't just keep sweeping ahead. I was remembering there was certainly a strong resistance to the tranquilizers in the early days. I guess most of the staff had just enough psycho­ analytic background, a psychiatric staff to, and enough knowledge of the past magical cures that turned out not to be cures when they had been used for awhile, so that there was that same pessimism about the drugs and I guess you probably know about Bob Felix being called to New York and being told that you will allocate so much for psychopharmacology or else, but I was just thinking the Surgeon General was much more involved in .those days and I suspect anyone from Sheeley - I guess Parren had just maybe Parren was still there when I first came in, but Sheeley 21. EAR He was the one that Bob talked to for setting everything up. JC But, Sheeley used to come to Council meetings quite frequently and was involved to some extent. EAR Anything else about the Extramural Program, and let me just preface this by saying, I don't really want to talk about the Intramural Program per se, that's is almost a whole story in itself and in fact, when I talked to John Eberhart and Bob Cohen, John said that Bob Cohen was working on a history 0£ the Intramural Program. I am not sure how far he is going to get with it, but I think that deserves a whole story ~n itself. On the other hand, the Intramural Program as one important component of the totality of NIMH needs to be referenced and addressed in that larger context. In other words, NIMH, one thing I would like to be able to say unless someone proves to me that it is wrong, is that wherever there was an opportunity for constructive kind of growth and·development, the NIMH went that way and Community Services were the sort of things that Lenny Duell did and the extension in training programs beyond the four disciplines and research training, research project per se, I think any where you look at NIMH you find that within the time frame I am talking about, you find that advantage was taken of the opportunity for constructive program development and I think it was not only because the NIH model but I think it was a terribly important part of the total NIH program that the Intramural Program was begun and developed the way it did and that's what I want to talk about somewhat so unless there is something else about the Extramural Program, I don't want to shut off things. 22. JC I hadn't really thought about those early years, I suppose I should have been doing some thinking about them, but I have been so busy getting a curriculum for next year and havi~g staff members get pneumonia and having to replace them at the last moment for the winter quarter, that I really haven't done any thinking. EAR I understand that and I apprec~ate your taking time in the middle of all this very busy present day activity, but what, I must confess to you I don't have a clear picture as clear as I would like to,· of the manner in which the Intramural Program really began to take root. I know the general background, but what is your perception how the Intramural Program first really got started as a total part of NIMH? JC Well, I had a feeling that Bob had some ambivalence about the development of.the Intramural Research Program, that it never fitted - the people in that Program, he was never involved with that Program in the way that he was involved with others. In fact, many of our staff members, when I had been at the Lab for several years, had never seen Bob Felix and I remember once he came around and they were amazed. EAR He was uncomfortable with pe9ple~n·the Intramural Program. JC And Wade Marshall had been there as a Post Doctoral Fellow. I guess Wade and I were the first two Lab Chiefs and we were really waiting for a person to be appointed. My recollection was that several people w~re considered, I guess, Gregory Pincus was down and maybe Hudson Hoagwin. I remember that an offer was actually made to Harry Harlow, but then Wisconsin 23. JC(continued) bettered it and then Bob mentioned Seymour Kettey as a brilliant young scientist, he was interested in who might be interested in this, and Seymour came down and decided to take the job. I suppose that must have been 50 or 51 because I guess I shifted over the end of 51 or 52. By then, I think, Bob had come to realize that the Phoenix Mental Health Center wasn't going to be all that we had hoped that it would be and I remember when my Lab was established, he told me "well, your starting budget can be the budget, you can either maintain that as your Laboratory or if you want to close it out you can use the funds for hiring staff here, we would shift people around, which is what we did. I recall the first young psychiatrist being hired. I don't know who would have hired them actually, but I do remember they went in my Lab we were starting to think about research that we might do, that we had several young people who wanted to talk about possible projects. Until we got in the clinical center I am trying to think of how space was arranged. I remember at one time we had a little corner of a room in Building 1, with screens for our laboratory group, but my recollections are quite vague., but, maybe Seymour didn't actually come on the scene yet when we were getting underway with trying to decide what our programs were, at least in neurophysiology and socioenvironmental studies and where the young psychiatrist came in, they were probably recruited in the Commission Corp may have been as a result of the Korean War and it.was just thought that it would be nice to get some people around who would be involved in research. EAR Where did you get the title Laboratory of Socioenvironmental Studies? 24. JC Made it up because there were still enough people in both the Government and Congress for whom sociology sounded like socialism and we thought, within the context of Public Health, socioenvironmental would be appropriate. EAR That's a new term, not used elsewhere in any physical way. JC I don't recall - I am sure that it had been used as a sort of just a natural construction just as we might say sociocultural but socioenvironmental, I think we may have discussed what the Lab should be called and there was, the Psychology Lab hadn't yet been established. Dave Shakow was being propositioned and he had his heart attack and there was some questions as to whether he was coming. I think partly as a result of my having been involved iri the Program, I was much more oriented, I mean in Program Planning, toward doing research that would have Program implications. One of the disappointments, I think, in general, with the way that things worked out, was that, in general, I don't think research findings got implemented to the maximum degree possible. Well, it's true pretty much across the board in child development, the social sciences, but the lack of any real contact. Once I went to the Laboratory, Bob Felix said you will no longer come to meetings of the Executive Staff. Well, I got a promotion of one step in going, it may have been related to the other thing that I mentioned before. After awhile however, when an Executive in the Executive Staff, there were special grants considered and often being acted on by people who didn't have much research competence. Then there was, I guess a greater involvement, there was a point where Lab Chiefs, I 25. JC(continued) think, did get invited, or at least, certain Lab Chiefs got invited back to the Executive Staff, but the consequence was that you had representation in Bob's Central Staff, less representation with research perspective than I think might have been.desirable. EAR Senior people, especially people like yourself, who had really been at NIMH prior to the development of the Intramural Program. Am I correct in assuming then that there was some feeling of separation from Felix's office and that aspect of the total NIMH operation. JC Very much so. My personal relationship with Joe Bobbitt and Dan O'Keefe and John Eberhart and others remained very close, but my relationship with Bob Felix became really quite distant. It's partly that once we.were in the Clinical Center, I am trying to think now, where was Bob at that time, the Extramural Program in the 50's, after you get moving out of EAR Out of T-6 JC Yes, T-6. EAR Over in Building 20 or 21 for a while, and then back, when did they go back to Building 3, I guess that is after you left. JC I guess maybe T-6 lasted longer. EAR T-6 was there until about 61-62, because when I came in 58. JC Was Bob still in T-6. EAR Yes, I& JC I thought that was the case and yet I thought I must be mis- remembering EAR We were still in T-6, at least another two years. 26. JC Well, that was it. We were so far removed and most of our staff that we recruited, who were interested in research had been thinking of University jobs rather than jobs in Government. Mel Cohen, who succeeded me. Mel had been one of my students at Cornell and came to me the day after he got his Ph.D. with an expectation of staying for two years. He is really a top­ flight sociologist, who' saw himself going. Well, he has had offers fro~ this department and Stanford. Almost all the major departments. This is true of a good many of the people that were able, but we weren't able to recruit people with reputations initially, but when we recruited a few good people, who then demonstrated what they could do. When I had Irving Gathman come as a post-doc. Irving had a tremendous lead to the verve of our laboratory. We had a certain advantage in some of the work that we did was geared to problems that we become aware of by virtue of what my former participation. For example, in addition to the National Survey that we did to find out what people thought about mental illness~ we decided that we would study families and see how they defined mental illness when they are actually faced with it. And, so perhaps, more than some of the other Labs ours were influenced by that. EAR An interesting aspect of the Intramural Program so far as the total NIMH is concerned, aside from the very important substantive work that was going on in all the Labs, that some of us knew more about the quality of NIMH as a function of the realization that there was a very important INtramural Program, than as a function of the so-called Extramural Program and I think that when you think of the totality of NIMH in the SO's, especially, for that 27. EAR(continued) whole decade of the SO's once the Intramural program really got started, I think the Intramural Program provided the high reputation appreciation of NIMH more so than the Extramural Program. Now, of course, I have a very prejudiced point of view because my first contact with NIMH was when Joe Bobbitt wrote a chapter in a book I was editing about the NIMH Program and that was just it was in the early 1950's but it was published before and he began to talk about the whole Intramural Program and I got to know Joe very well in those days. So, that is an interesting part of the whole picture. I wonder, unless there is something else about the Intramural Program, I don't want to use your voice out altogether for you. I am most interested because you also had another terribly important role and responsibility, John, and that is on the variety of Study Sections. You mention the one in which you served even while you were in the Intramural Program which was very unusual aspect, but you have continued to serve in a vari~ty of consulting capacities. Could you talk a little bit about that side of the NIMH operation and indeed, other agencies that you have been affiliated with. What have been the similarities and strengths and weaknesses of NIMH Committees vis a vis the others? JC Well, in general, I would say that I always felt that the NIMH review process was about as fair a review process as I knew much superior to what foundations were doing, much superior to what I understand to be the NSF review EAR Which is now JC Yes, right, In the early days I must say I was intrigued by some­ thing that would would sometimes happen in Study Section meetings that when people, repuatation had a certain amount to do, perhaps 28. JC(continued) was not the most important thing but still had a, it carried a good deal of weight in how a project got reviewed and this is sort of a trivial thing, I used to tally whether people went along reluctantly in approving a project or disapprove several which they really felt had some good things about them, the way this constrained action on the next and I used to feel that there were some interesting ~ffects and feeling of guilt or frustration. EAR You are absolutely right. JC At the same time, my feeling was that in general, an effort was made to get expert consultation. I remember one situation and it was a very touchy one, when Arnold Gizzelle retired from Yale and Milton Sen replaced him, there was an application by Gizzelle and Ilgewhich had came into the Study Section and Margaret Meade made a speech on what a tremendously intuitive person Frances Ilge':s was. The Study Section voted by something like 13 to 2 to support the research, the thing went to the Council. The Council was taking a look at things in those days and somebody said but did Gizzelle and Ilge have, is this there data or these the data of the Child Study Center at Yale and what is Milton Sen's position There wasn't any member of that Study Section who was really competent in child development. A number of us knew a smattering but none of us was a specialist, so the Council said put on the Study Section, a real expert in child development, so Bob Sears was put on, so Bob Sears simply gave a and they also explained to us what the situation was at Yale and to please get some of the facts, that who owned what, but then Bob did an incisive analysis of what was known, what were the problems of methodology 29. JC(continued) and the next time the Study Section voted, it was something like a 14 to l in the opposite direction. What impressed me was that if a person really knew his or her field and there was an opportunity. Remember how long we sometimes would go four days working almost until midnight, but we didn't rush through things. I must say I have been on groups more recently where I felt that there wasn't the same kind of care. I served one year on the Epidemiology Committee and just felt that too much money, one of the problems was that too much money was earmarked for an area where the quality of applications was relatively not so high. Of course, the problem was more acute in other Institutes' or has been on occasion, but in general, I felt that particularly, through the 60's when I served on a number of Committee's. I was on the Psychopharmacology Committe for a while and on the Social Science Review Committee and on the Career Award Committee. Contrast that with the International Centers Committee of NIH which I was asked to serve on and that I found the important people of the field was scratching each others backs and the quality of the, I suppose the bigger the program grant the more liklihood that that will occure, and these were enormous grants, millions of dollars and I resigned from that, feeling that it simply was not the kind of review that I felt. EAR Can I go back to the Psychopharmacology Committee. Were you on at the same time that Gardiner Lindsay was on? or were you after? JC I think, again, I filled in just, it was early on, maybe it was EAR 59 - 60? JC It was somewhere around there, I guess. I don't think I put it 30. JC(continued) in my Vita, as a matter of fact, but I think I must have served for a couple of years. EAR Let me ask you a_general question. Could you put your finger on what it was that apprimated the Study Sections to do so effective a job, was it just the quality of people, obv~ously, there were some very, very talented people on the Committees Did the Executive Secretary have anything to do with it? JC I think the Executive Secretary had a tremendous amount of EAR So, by and large, we had pretty good Exec. Secs. because you are saying most of those that you were affiliated with at NIMH, especially, the early days, were fairly good. JC Yes, now in the early days, of course, when Larry Cobb was in charge of the overall research program,Intramural and Extramural I guess, I am not sure who was the Executive Secretary. EAR I don't think we had formal Exec. Secs. JC Well, that was what I was thinking. EAR I am really talking about after you got to the Intramural Program. JC John Eberhart was, served as Executive Secretary, I am trying to think when he shifted. I think it was when Larry left and Bob wanted a psychiatrist to replace him and I guess, I knew that John would be interested in the job. I remember going to Bob and ask~ng Bob to if he would consider John for the job and although Vesty, of course, had fantastic regard for John. I think he felt that it was appropriate that John should have that opportunity and then I guess Phil became John's Executive Secretary, but John used to go to Study Section meetings and did - I remember in setting up, it was John who was responsible for putting me on the Study Section in setting up the interdisciplinary, we had a Committee for the interdisciplinary group research, another for follow-up, 31. JC(continued) studies and I remember John being the person who got these, raising questions, it might be that a question was thrown out by someone on the Study Section, but it was a matter of reacting to it and seeing, let's do something about this and so with John and Phil it was obvious they very different and when you have 20 Executive Secretary's and you hire them from people who have had the kind of involvement that they had. EAR Just as an aside, what was your perception of why John went to Commonwealth, just the opportunity? JC McCarthyism EAR Really? Because I didn't ask him that question particularly JC I think that is the only reason. I had several friends who were hounded out of government as I am sure he did. I am sure there is nothing in his past. The things that he might have been hounded out for would have been things that I think any of us would be proud of, but in those days, I remember Jack Hilgard was knocked off the Council as you may know and he wasn't - no one was allowed to tell him why he was dropped from the Council EAR That was a continuing problem even beyond that, we had people who never got on Committees and then some people wouldn't serve because they didn't want to b~ involved in something of that kind. JC Right. I think John's feeling was that perhaps he could be more effective there and undoubtedly they were attractive, a lot of positive attraction, too, but I don't think he would have gone if it hadn't been for this .. I think his coming back - the atmosphere here had changed totally - he never felt really at home at Commonwealth. EAR ·r visited him there once or twice. JC What other things about study sections should be said that are important about his operation. Let me just tell you one, that I 32. EAR(continued) want to make sure that I get into the picture and that is that I think in some respects~ one of the beneficial side effects of the whole Study Section System was the incredible communication network it set up among people who served on those·committees. The flow of information, appropriate flow of information, by virtue of that kind of perspective that one obtained by being on the Study Section, I think it did much to facilitate the interchange of ideas as almost anything else. What other things from your long experience on that activity do you think are important to make mention of over above just passing good grants and holding back bad ones. JC I think you are quite right. Perhaps particularly as there got to be, in the early days when there was one Study Section there was the advantage that one began to see some of the, to hear experts in the field discuss problems in other disciplines that one was quite unaware of and began to be aware of the need for where there was a need for a kind of interdisciplinary research that still hasn't been tackled as ingenenvironment interaction in schizophrenia for example, but then as there became more specialization, I suppose going to a Study Section meeting was more like - you learned a great deal more than going to a professional meeting of your own organization, certainly. Always stimulating ideas being thrown out. EAR Is there something comparable within the academic setting itself, someone said to me on this very point that this is what an academic community ought to be all about and yet the opportunity to take a couple of days off and be intensively involved with peers on sub­ stantive issues of great importance to your profession rarely happens in the academic settings. JC That's right, I think it happens only when we get involved in things like Study Sections or Panels - I was thinking that 33. JC(continued) Panel and the cluster groups in that. EAR It is terribly ironic. JC Right, because professional meetings people give papers and giving papers is not really the best way to get an interchange of ideas. A good seminar, if we got whole faculties, I remember when I was at Cornell, we had one seminar that involved the whole Faculty of the Department. We don't do anything like that here, but in that seminar people could disagree and begin to explore the level of depth we don't generally get to and the Study Section certainly permitted that. A project that might take a couple of hours of discussion went into methodological issues and theoretical issues some people would feel this tremendous payoff possible here and others that this is going to come to naught. Perspectives got altered at times by virtue of that kind of discussion. EAR Can you recall a personal instance in which a discussion on one or another project helped illuminate a problem that you were working on in such a way that you came away from a Study Section meeting feeling that perhaps would help solve one of your research problems in some small measure. JC Well, let's say I frequently came away with a feeling that I see that I am doing something terribly, I could be doing something in a much better way than I am in terms of conceptualization or measurement in a project or that here is a facet of this problem that I have been. completely ignoring and in the future I've got to get data on this side too. EAR So you are documenting a correlary aspect of what I am saying, it's just not communication per se but, indeed, a better perspective on your own on-going research in such a way that it provided positive 34. EAR(continued) feedback for you. JC Sure, and at times you see something wrong with somebody else's project and you suddenly realize, my God, I am doing the same thing myself. EAR Right. I don't think that this has been said in a way that I have heard it, I mean the Peer Review System has been defended so much recently because it has been threatened and its been defended primarily on the point that you made earlier that it is a fair equitable way of dealing with a complicated problem, but I think that which is basically important, of course, and the foundation of the argument, can be greatly enhanced by these other aspects, if they ar~ brought into the picture and I think it is important to bring it in and I just want to make sure you feel that that is indeed an issueo JC One reason for serving and I was terribly over~committed when I came here. I took over an Institute with 130 staff members, almost all outside my own discipline, I was the first sociologist and it really belonged, seen as belonging to the Psych Department and appropriately so, I think. I was editing a Journal, I had just taken over the editorship of Sociometry? the year before and I hadn't taught for 15 years, so that, the first couple of years here were really wild and yet I found that serving on the Study Section was a worthwile or I guess it was the Career Award Committee that I went on first, that it was something that I found really rewarding and I think, one learns both from one's colleagues in collaborative research and I feel that I learned a great deal from Marion Yarrow and other members of my staff at NIMH and in the same way one learns from the Study Section kind of experience, things that you just can't get in any seminar. 35. EAR Right. I want to ask you about people, that anyone that we haven't missed, you mentioned the Career Award Program, Bert Booth is someone I think that deserves some significant role in this whole picture. Of course, there's a book that he was working on that was finished for him, so to that extent it's documented, but I think, Bert,in some ways, epitomizes - tell me when youhave to quit. JC There is a meeting - I am on the Joint Governing Council of the San Francisco, Berkeley Medical School and there was a Curriculum Committee from 4 on. I said I would try to get there by 5, we can take another five minutes, but I should probably get over since they are dealing with a matter that I am involved in. EAR Well, I appreciate that. Is there anything about Bert or anyone else that we haven't talked about that you at least want to get on the record? JC I didn't know Bert, except through that Program, I hadn't known Bert before. He was a person of such depth and profound feeling, such a quiet person. I had a feeling he was totally dedicated to the task of helping to make it possible for promising people to become even more competent researchers to facilitate their development. He's a person of such integrity that one couldn't help but be impressed by him, but I don't feel that I knew him intimately, I guess Betty Pickett was serving as sort of the Exec Secretary, Bert.would always be there, but Betty was doing for dealing the work with him. EAR Do you want to say anthing about Betty? We ought to put her in the picture. I know her.very well, but I would be very happy to have your comments. JC Other than that, again, she was always an enormously effective person. Lorraine Torres who was Executive Secretary of the ~ocial 36. JC(continued) Science Research Review Committee when I was on it. Another dedicated,effective person. EAR Okay, this is what you had in the back of your mind, though when you were saying the Exectutive Secretarys' played an important role in these meetings. I think, these are the sorts of people you were talking about. JC I don't they were all of this calibre but EAR The range of human competence does not occur so much. JC But, on the whole, I think, it was a very impressive group of people. EAR Anything else, John. Perhaps we ought to close on and give you a chance to add anything else, regardless of where it fits. JC No, just that, like all of us who were involved in those early years, for me, there has been no other experience that was so satisfying or exilarating and I think the stability of the Program, until fairly recently, has been a pretty good indication of that. It was a wrench for me·to come out here. I needed to do it because I had four sons who were going to be going to college and I didn't want them to go to the University of Maryland, didn't see how we could swing it on salary in Washington, but I think if salary had gone up just a little bit faster, why I would have stayed even with the chance to come out here. I did feel that my year at the Center in 57-58 made me recognize that there were some advantages to the University life and I guess one of the problems,.it is more acute in the Intramural Program, I think, than the Extramural Program, but one of the problems that I think, the Extramural Program pretty well avoided with getting people who were really second-rate and then who had a claim on jobs. 37. JC(continued) I think there was a tendency in some of the Labs to let civil service be the determinant of whether people stayed or not. We made it clear in our Lab that when we recr~ited any one that there would be a vote of Section Chiefs and that no one would be kept, whether they had gone through their, we would not take a person unless they would agree that they would stay permanently only if the Section Chiefs agreed that they had research talent and people were reluctant to be moved out, but we helped a number of people find jobs, we made a couple of mistakes and we let a couple of good people go, but we didn't pick up any dead wood, I think, in the Laboratory in the early years and I think some Laboratories did and I think, that in general, at NIMH, this was one of the extraordinary things, the overall quality or average quality of people who were in the Program EAR Incidentally, I think that was true even at the non-professional level, they had some incredible secretaries. JC Well, talking with Marion Yarrow yesterday flying up f~om to Los Angeles_,. we were site-visiting the Child Development Program down in Yucatan and my old secretary, who was originally hired as Marion's and then shifted over to work for me when my secretary left. She came in 52-53, and she retired this year and Marion and I were both saying, we don't expect ever to see the likes. EAR They don't make people like that anymore. JC She was offered the job of being Jim Shannon's secretary and you know she was enough .dedicated to the Lab, so that even though it would have meant a considerable increase, we .were able to make her an Administrative Assistant, but she stayed on, but just in terms of, in her case, she had a personal reason for wanting to feel a part of this thing and I think an awful lot of peple who 38. JC(continued) were there, were there because they felt that there was a basic satisfaction in being a part of this. My grant for my follow-up study of the patients and families that I had earlier studied there was an announcement of it, I would get letters from all around the country from families of patients asking if they could participate in the study, saying we have been through this horrible experience and we want something good to come out of it. Even without being through that horrible experience, this feeling of the possibilit~es here, the possibilities at NIMH were so strong. EAR Well, that's a good note on which to end. It was a happy time,it really was and my problem is I have to avoid letting my own prejudice to enter into this too much. I talked to Quigg Newton