DR. HERBERT KELMAN 11/7/77 EAR Ok, that's a very sensitive microphone so you don't need to worry too much. What I would like to do is to ask you a couple of very general questions in terms of your own involvement with NIMH and then anything that you think of that comes to mind which you believe from your own personal experience or knowledge is relevant to this general concern with important decision making processes, think of that in a very 'broad brush, you don't need to pinpoint something which turned NIMH around or anything like that but in terms of your owm involvement with some of the people there"' You have had in your initial involvement in the intermural program with Maury, I think because of your own ability I am sure that you have a kind of perspective on the intermural program from that involvement and that would be very helpful for you to kind of comment on and then susbsequent to that the va.rious interactions you have had with NIMH and other than your full-time involirement with them. Is that enough of a stimulus to you? HK Well, I can start and you can sort of steer me because actually my contact with NIMH, I had contact before I was on the Intermural Program and that is I had a post-doctoral fellowship for two years and then the Intermural Program. Now'.'Ljust sort of briefly in terms of how I got into it ..- it was thtough Maury originally - he was there before Dave Shakow got on the scene. I mean he was one of the first people to come in and I was first offered a job by John Classon in the Socio-environm.ental Lab. I don't remember how far we had gotten EAR 1952-53 HK No, this would have been starting in 54 but before the appointment got consummated I got this invitation to go to the Center for Advance Study during its opening year and partly because I had some ambivalencet:about - 2 ..... HK(continaed) coming to NIMH but I was really hoping for an academic job but I didn't find anything that was as attractive as the NIMH opporttunity.·so it was partly for that but largely it wasn't that but it was simply the attraction of going to the,?Center that led me to kind of terminate or postpone that thing and I went to the Center and while r was there - I was there 54 to 55 - that's when Dave Shakow came on the scene and I guess there was some negotiations back and forth between him and Classon and the offer was renewed but this time for me to come to the Laboratory of Psychology. Basically - actually I spent two years at the Laboratory of Psychology and in many respects it was really a bad experience for me, although let me make sure that you get the right perspective, in my kind of recollections and feelings about and so on it turned out to be more of a good experience than a bad experience in the sense that I formed very close friendships during that period and I felt that many of the people, a number of the people thereII became very close to and it all kind of basically had a happy .ending but it was very difficult period that I spent there.- There are really too many things - one is the political and I don't know if you remember - do you know about iny whole problem with my job at NIMH. EAR Very, very briefly HK Well, I don't want to go into too much detail on it but, in fact, if you like I wrote up that story EAR Do you have an extra copy? HK I have it in my office but I can get it to you. I wrote it up for the Newsletter of Spissy, who had supported me but basically, I was fired. I came there and due to really administrative foul-ups I was classified, my regular appointment was not processed when I arrived on the scene because I think I had been turned over to a Board or something like that, that was evaluating me as an experimental 3 HK(continued) psychologist and they should have turned me over to a Board that was evaluating me as a social psychologist and that Board correctly said that I was not a GS-11 Experimental or whatever, I can't remember, Experi­ mE!ntal psychologist. Well, anyway due to tnis foul-up, I_ came on the scene with a temporary appointment, rather than with a regular sort of appointment that I should have had and that led to the fact that I didn ''t" have the usual kind of protections of a regular appointment and then I got terminated and the termination was based on political considerations, actually it started with Rose. Rose also had a job at NIMH and she had been a member for a brief period of the Progressive Party and so on so that was one count against me, the other was my own record which was a pacifist and a racial agents activist and so on and I had been very active and I had been arrested twice, once on a core project and once on an anti-nuclear march, you know minor things for marching without a permit and on core project when I was arrested, the case was dismissed by the Court but I had - the record was not, in fact I was an activist but an anti-communist, certainly non-communist and associated with the activities around the communists but that didn't matter. So this led to a 6 months struggle, which I finally won, but it really kind of took 6 month's of my time there starting, I think, December or so of the first year until the summer was spent on this fight and waich I kept being terminated and then one time I remember getting a call 5 minutes before 5 on a Friday when I was terminated, the important thing was to not let it terminate because then it would become a matter of being reinstated, which is a whole other story but 5 minutes before 5 I got the call saying you got an extension. The reason it turned out to be in retrospect a good experience is that I got tremendous support, very strong support from my immediate colleagues, from Maury, from - 4 - HK(continued) Mike Boomer and the people in the Lab and a.lso ;from Dave Shakow, so from there on up, for my own perspecttve, you.know being in an embattled position the support kind of got increasingly weaker •. Bob Cohen was supportive but I think not with the same enthusiasm as Dave Shakow and Bob Felix with even 0 less enthusiasm. EAR It got more and more tenuous as it went up the echelon. HK Yes, but I think Dave Shakow was lobbying very hard for me and the important thing was that my immediate associates and my immediate superiors were unwavering behind me and if you remember the atmosphere of those days, that was really the big issue for most people who got into this kind of a problem. Well, I got a lawyer, and we finally took it up the hierarchy;. I really don't know the details but I guess Bob Felix did follow through.- I am· only saying that, you know, the things that sort of stick in my min.dis one conversation. that I had with Bob Felix, in which, he really didnlt know me, in which he was sort of asking me to recant, to sort of treat this with discretion. Well, I wasn't about to do that and that didn"t sit very well with me. You know it is those little tliings that kind of stick in one's mind, but I think he did what had to be done, I assume, so I don't want to do him an injustice in that respect. If he was trying tobe helpful in what he saw as a way, but he wasn~t really tailor making his helpfulness to who I am, because he really didntt know me as the other people. did, but it got finally into the hands of somebody in HEW, I foi:get if he was the head of personnel, high level HEW official who was really excellent, who really kind of followed through and I won the case with a letter of applogy from the Secretary of HEW and all of that. In all, as I think about it, the things that stand out in my memory is the support that I got and really - 5 - HK(continued) the part of the basis of a friendship,. friendships that i mentioned. I will send you a copy of that just forever what it is worth. That was a problem and even though it got resolved, it underlined my feeling of being out of place in a government agency, ~ven though it was a very spec-ial government agency, but I got hit by that aspect of it. The other thing was that I was kind of out of place in term.s of my intellectual interest - I felt that my interests were sort of way under margin of what was the mandate, really, and I felt the core interest was those things who had something to do with tb.e clinical operations and then there were all sorts of marginal things and I was kind of way under margin. Even at that time, this was always true,. my core interest was in social psychology and I had had from the beginning s001e kind of clinical interest as a social psychologist, I got int to · f-his through an interest in group 0 therapy as an influence process and this sort of thing, and I took post--<itoct,era_te fellowship with Jerry Frank and all that, but my other interest sort of tended in a political direction, you know, with international relation kinds of things and so on, and so those were clearly outside of the domain,really of NIMH, I felt from the beginning that I really belong at a University, rather than. at Center that has a mandate, and even though there was tremendous freedom, and no one told me within limits, what to do and all of that, I couldntt really develop my interests in the directions in which they were going within that setting - it was just not the right place for me from that point of view .. There was - when I said no one told me what to do - I should am.end that slightly, in that there was a very definite expectation conveyed to me by Dave Shakow that I would try to spend at least some of my time doing smnething relevant to the the clinical operation., try to establish some kind of collaborative project with some of the people in adult psychiatry,not·all Qf my time but it was clear some of my time I could just sort of pursue my interests whatever they - 6 - BK{continued) are. in general theoretical social psyc.hological work was definitely support for that nor was I told specifically what to do or with whom but there was a very definite expec.tation that I sitould try to something and unfortunately a couple of the things ~hat I tried to do in kind of meeting that expectation really didn '·t work out - one didn't go far at all and that was with - a _young psychiatrist - Jordan - darkhaired he then went to Chicago EAR In adult psychiatry? HK Yes, he·r:was a young man EAR Darrell Girod? HK No, Think it was Jordan, well anyway I can't remember, he has made something of a name for himself since then, he was a man with ideas and so on, but he was very arrogant and I was clearly,- we were- probably close in age, I don '·t remember exactly about that but I was clearly his senior in terms of research experience and knowledge of research and so on, but basically he sort of approached me with kind of an expectation of my being his research assistant, I mean it was that kind of a thing, _it just didn't have the matings of .a collaborative relationship so we had some discussions and stuff like that and that fizzled out, then the next thing that went farther was with, this one we will remember, he was a psychiatrist who had the idea of bringing the family, with a B EAR Oh yes - I know who you mean, go ahead, he is no longer there. HK N&, I know but he· too has published something, his !\basic theory had to do with schizophrenogenic families and all that kind of thing. Anyway, I started working. together with Charlotte Schwartz who was at the Social Environmental - 7 - HK(continued) Laboratory we tried to develop at one point Dave Rosenthal was involved in this, too and we met quite regularly and between us we were very compatible. Anyway we tried to d-evelop something within that program which involved observations of that program and maybe interviews with the staff and so on, but I can't remember all of the details that thing we went lll'Uch much further on that thant1I did with the other - the other sort of got aborted very t~t1Jt":4>efor starting - this one didn't but I think there were sort of two problems - one was that I, and I know Charlotte shared this, was absolutely appalled by the clinical aspects of what was going on there - it wasn't my job ·nor did I have particular incompetence but there are certain things one observes and I just thought that some terrible things were happening. Maybe I am wrong, I don't know, but I fe1t that there were a lot of phony things going on there. The main thing was - the key instrument presumably of the therapeutic environment there was the group -ome~ting, which everybody from orderly, including orderlies, patients and nurses and the psychiatrists - there were very few psychiatrist involved with this, mostly this one man Dr. B.· were all equal members but it became very clear very quickly that some were more equal than others and he was so totally oblivious to the power he was holding and the power ·tha.t he was· exerc-ising - for example, everybo-dy was supposed to decide jointly but when the 4-ecision didn't go his way then he would turn psychiatrist:.1all of a sudden and start interpreting and on those grounds postponing the decision until it went his way~ Also~ I there was what I felt quite a bit of scapegoating going on there directed at one of the mothers that was there and I felt that the, groups was being used to gang up on this one person, although in group therapy I think this is a fine thing to happen but it is the job of the therapist in my view to pr,oteet the indidvidual patient whereas here the therapist and the staff kind of used - 8 - HK(continued) the group to gang up on this person and so that was the clinical aspect of it that really distunbed me and altogether I also felt again, maybe, I had no right to feel that but :r did feel that the evidence for the usefulness of this bring the parents in was very very slight and here there was one case in particular, where he put a lot of pressure on the parents of the one young schizophrenic woman who had tried all sorts of things that failed and all that - they were kind of desperate and so he put a lot of pressure to come and live in which they had to do at great expense - this man had to turI!l over his business to somebody else and so on and I felt the basis for getting him to do this was you want your daughter to be cured - how does one reject that kind of argument and my feeling was that the basis for claiming that this would .help the daughter was so slim -- I am not saying it was not worth doing research but I had great question.saboutsCasking somebody to make a very concrete sacrifice alike this on the claim that this was going to cure your daughter where that ea~ claim was so tenuous, so I had real discomfort for all of these reasons with the whole operation. The second thing, of course,. related to that was that he didn't really understand what we felt we could do and how~ He wanted us to prove - to find someway of proving that this is the right theory or something like that and we pointed out that the design is such that there is no way of proving it - I mean, I am not saying that this was a piece of clinical research if it wasn't that I disapproved of it, it was legitimate research, but not to prove what he was trying to prove, there was no way that this research could possibly establish the validity of his theory and he kind of - hhat's what he really expected from us - we had then these two real discrepancies~ one in terms of being discomfortable, uncomfortable about the operation and two, in ... 9 - HK(contined) terms of hti really not accepting an understanding of our role and the limits of what we could do as researchers in this and so after a lot of efforts that k4ad also fizzled out. Now, I must confess that perhaps if I hadn't had other bows in my string or if I had less freedom in a sense, if I had really been obligated to do this rather than obligatd only to tTT to do it that something more ~ight have happened but the a.tmosphere. was such that, and I know Dave Shakow's feelings .. were such that I told him that T really-tried and I really don't think that I can doing anything -fruitful in this thing - he wasn 1 t going to put pressure on me to do it, so that fizzled out, so I found myself really kind of discouraged. about the possibility of doing things in conjunction with the adult psychiatry, a lot of it having to do with the particular people who were there and of course,- the picture changed, I mean different people came and perhaps if I: had stayed on there, things might have changed, there were certain things that I wasc.---irit:erested in -1; tol,e honest with you as I already implied, they>w~re sort of not my primary interests, they were kind of - there are things under ideal circumstances that I could have i•\ done in that setting that would have- related to my primary inter;ests which :fad to do with social influence - studying social influence,- there was an interest - there was a potentially strong interest in the concept of a therapeutic environ­ ment - that was potentially there and if I had be.en in a good setting to do some kinds of things in that it could have evolved and perhaps it might have become a much more dominant intere~t, but the setting was not conducive so in a way I ended up being disappointedt as I said, l spent a happy year kind of fighting for my rights and then spend some time trying to work out research projects in this setting that sort of seemed to be dead end, so it was disappointing in these respects.- What I did was the summer - my first summer there;. the summer of 56, I guess, after I had spent alV:this time, it wasntt that I was spending - 10 - HK(continued) 100% of my time fighting my case, but a tremendous amount and of course, a tremendous amount of psychic energy as you can imagine - I was so frustrated about the fact that in effect I had not gotten anything done research wise during that period that I guess I spoke to Dave and to Maury, I don''t remember the details cf what it was and I asked that I would like to concentrate during the summer on producing a manuscript to be submitted to the AAAS - they had, they still have as a matter of fact, this annual sociopsychological award and I have this book I had done before coming toNIMH,. which was really kind of the development of a theoretical model for social influence and with one experiment, one major experiment.to begin to test that model and so I wanted to write that up and submit it for the essay contest and I guess Dave agreed for me to do that and so that I spent the sumnter really concentrating on that, doing I guess practically nothing else and then I won the award for it so that it was a summer well spent from that point of view and in a way, again it is another factor that in some senses I was doing it out of frustration, sort of feeling I . have got to do, I couldn't stand the notion that I had spent a whole year without my doing anything work wise that was re:t'-!arding but ,fit ended it up with really a very major reward and that of course, again makes the exp.erience as it was happening was frustrating, makes it in retrospect, much less frustrating and it was really that manuscript in a way to a large extent led to my invitation to come to Harvard the following year. I had s.poken to Dav-id McClelland, before there-was this period when my job was on the line and I was kind of exploring other optio~s::, and I spoke to McClelland at that time, he had just come to Harvard and he was interested hut nothing came of it, but then after I won this award at some point he called me back and we started really to open up negotiations - .11 - HK(continued) again and then- I. was offered the pos-ition here and when that came it was Harvard, it was not ~-,t.cnre track position, but that didn '"t mean anything to me at the time, it was Harvard, it was a position which I could in do, I was coming kind of at a level as a person already recognized for his area ·of specialization, I was not expected to teach introductory courses and things of that sort - I had pretty much an open ticket to teach the kinds of things I wanted to· teach and stuff like that, it was obvious to m-e, well, as I said for all the reasons I mentioned before,. that given the particular mix of my in.terests in academic environment was really much better for me and I felt, as I said both because of the Government agency and of my political activities which made me a- little uncomfortable.about that and because of the fact that nt-y interests were really at the margin. of the mandate of the @rganiza­ tion that I did·not think that it was a place for me to make a long'!"'term career and so when a good academic offer caine I accepted and I .think everybody expected that I w@uld, so l f'o~get what question I was answering. EAR Your· first involvement with NIMH ·'.': full{ time with NIMH, which I think it does add.an interesting kind of pi~tur~ to the whole thing - here's a person who really I suspect was dedicated to an academic position from the very beginning and this NIMH position came i.llon:~-;:..and you took it and you had these difficulties that you have already described and yet even within that some things;,;happenedi some things were: permitted, som,e things that- evi>:lviedii~ which for met- now I a.li1. being very prejudiced, mark the unusual nature of NIM.El,., I mean the supp·ort you go~ for the people for one, the willingness ·for them to let you do t~at summer what you wanted to do and even in a sense the freedom to make or not make various connections with people in terms of research projects so you weren't ·forced into a mold~ you couldn't have been forced into a mold but they didn'°t try to force -- 12 - EAR(continued) you into a mold. HK You are absolutely right. I fully agree with your analysis of this and I should stress if it wasn ,.t clear before that the message that I got very clearly from Dave and from Maury was that they - what they were interested in was me as a scholar because they thought: I' was good and because they hoped that by giving me the freedom t;o do what I want there that something of -value would come up and that was the primary, I mean it was very clear that I was not there on assigned jobs,. the other thing is that of course, Dave did have - he was working inan institutional frame-work and he had to defend basically that the Laboratory of Psychology h:kd some relevance to the institutional set-up and of c0ttrse, I understood that, so in that sense this was an expectation but it was ne1=- that the pressures were internal much more than external and I think:' that probably if I had come and said, look,. I will stay but don't make me work with these people in adult psychiatry. Let me just do my social psychology and stuff like that, I am sure that they would have said okay, go ahead and do what you want, but it was mostly a question of my f eeling·:,uncomfortable about being in a setting which had certain missions and certain expectations and not ccmtributing to that so it was more of an internal· thing, plus of course~ the fact that those of my interests that branched over into personality and clinical psychology and to some extent sort of the sociological aspects of mental health,. there I had it from co'lleagu.es but my-more tnactro interest that turned more in the direction of inter group relations and international relations and political attitudes and things like that, all of which was really evolving in me from the beginning - there I really had no one to tum to because I was there at the margin already,. so that in that respect, intellectually it was for part of it, it was an excellent environment, but for the other part of: it, it was not and mi \'.kind 1 of formulation at the time was that really it was not:·,a good place for the - 13 HK(conttined)- kinds of things I wanted to do if I 'I'eGllyneeded access to a clinical population it was a potentially very good place,. barring the problems of access and all that but potentially, it was a good place for people who needed laboratory ~nds of things particularly, bra-in research, animal populations and stuff like that I thought it was an excellent place because.there are very few places that provided the kinds of facilities, maybe now there are in. places, but at that time I think there were not that many places that provided those kinds of facilities. It is true that for some, I think Mel Cohen certainly has used NI}fil as a good base for doing sociological research and so for him·:.it turned out well~ it is con-ceivable that had I stayed on there, I might have.worked out some.way of taking advantage of the spe·cial things, but· the things at least within psychology that were the obvious. advantages, namely, the clinical facilities and the laboratory facilities, those really were not relevant to my particular needs and the clinical could have been under ideal circumstances, and these didn't happen to exist at that time, so that is why it was not a good bit •. I left certainly_ftO_t==f&~nger cin anything like that, not at all, and as I said I think almost certainly could have written. my own ticket if. I had wanted to, but that I just for the various reasons- I mentioned wouldn "t have felt comfortable about doing that., EAR You are absolutely r:i.ght because I have talked to Dave not about you in particular but just in terms of the general philosophy and I think it is very clear in a conscious as well as less open fashion his intention and the intention of everybody, Bob Cohen, john Ebe-rhard, in fact all of NIMH if you really want to put it that way, the intention was to find good peopl~ and give them -·as much support as they could possibly. do and . hope that good people and good surroundings with freedom to work as they saw fit would do - 14 - EAR(continued) goo.d work and I think in large measure that:}is come true I think in some instances,. in your own case, the fit wasn"t perhaps quite as comfortable as it might have been for all the reasons you just described so in that sense I think it was interesting. HK I have just two things - I remember the. names, now - Murray Bowen is the second person .. I spoke about and the other is Jordan Scherer - he went to Northwestern afterwards. EAR Let's put aside that part for the moment and what I wcmld like for you to comment on because the other thing I am pursuing is to see NIMH, not only in its own right, about which a great deal could be said, but also a co~ple of th things that we touched on already, its1 · relatively unique quality among government agencies, in fact, even I suspect among research ac-t-4-rlt:ie~ within government agencies, because from my own perspective;, because I think there was some very unusual people there - Dave Shakow for one in the Intermural Program and Bob Felix, which some of you didn'"t have that much interaction in the extramural program. Since you left in a variety of ways you had subsequent interactions with NIMH and with other federal agencies and I wonder if you would be willing to connnent how you see the NIMH now that you are no longer part of it and how that point of view is compared: in cont.rast wj.th other federal agencies whether it is NSF or any that you have·been involved with in consulting capacities that is. HK Well, let me sort of free associate and if I don ''t get to the point it will be up to you to steer me. Until recently my personal experiences with NI:ml in ter-m:s of getting support and so on have been very favorable. I don't know - I am not now talking as a consultant but now as a grant recipient - and I will come back to the consulting things in a minute, but as a grant recipient, the thing that I appreciate and has been extremely helpful to me was that: NIMH had been willing starting in 1958, sort of the year aftrer I HK(continued) left, I was there 55 to 57, until really a couple of years ago I had repeated ----grants which were very open-ended - they were essentially program grants·, the amounts of maney were small, relatively small and decreasing all the time as the budgets got tighter and so on, so it wasn't large things compared to some of the big prolects that NIMH supported but what was really right from my point of view, was that they wei:e very open and I had a broad area within which I was working, for the first few years it was called social influence in behavior change or something like that, then later social influence and commitments to social systems, I was moving more in a sociological direction· but these were all in both cases it was defined as research programs centering around a kind of theoretical core but potentially going off in different directions and I would write these applications in which I would mention 10 different things that I might do, but making it very clear that I couldnt·t possibly do all of them and I might not do any of them, but these are samples of the kinds of things that I would do and what specifically I would do would depend on who my students are and so on and they went along with this and my particular way of operating which admittedly not been typical in the sense that I have been kind of done all sorts of things and not really carry out a systematic research program in the sensee:of one experiment leading to the other and all that sort of thing, you know, which sometim~s I am sorry about but I ·think in some respects it: reflected my orri:entation, I think in some respects also used my particular talents, I am sorry that I didn't do the systematic research program but I would have also been sorry if I had done it at the expense of doing various kinds of pioneerin~ things that from the point of view of the research program appeared to be digressions, but the NIMH grant made it possible for me and in a sense it showed the same kind of attitude that I think I found in the Intermural Program,. namely~ the - 16 - HK(continued) acceptance in this case of me as a person, you sort of say well, okay, this person needs a long leash and we trust that if we give him some support, he will come up with some worthwhile things and I think I have even though as I said, they were not always in a traditional mold and it reflected from my point of view the right kind of philosophy for supporting a kind of intellectual enterprise. Now, this is not necessarily the way in which all grants should be treated and it is not the way that all grants were treated, but I think there differences and I think in some respects I was getting a better treatment, perhaps, sort of a more flexible kind of grant than most were but in that case it indicated a certaih kind of flexibility and so from my perspective, this was really very helpful and I think, of course I have to say that, but I really believe that it was a good use.of the amount of money that was involved, I think it was justified by the products and I think I would not have been able to do the many things that I have done without NIMH and many of these things included the.kinds of things that you can't really write into a r~search proposal, I mean like my whole _ involvement in the ethics of research and all that sorttof thing. Now, NSF has a whole program in that area, but when I started working on this, this . wasn't anythiE.g that anybody considered to be a topic for research - it was a by-product that happened to become a major component of the product. I don't think I could have gotten any money for that per se EAR I think that is.an excellent example HK My NIMH grant permitted me to spend time - to spend the resource - as I said they were not fantastically large resources, but they were enough to make it J l l)f ~. possible for me to go in those directions. I think from the beginning, although I have had much much less to do with NSF,. but from the beginni,ng I think NSF - 17 - HK(continued) was not as open to this kind of broad definition., Of course, the other thirlg is - n<::M this is I have been talking about breadth in tenns of the type of activity~ The other tlrlng is also in terms of areas., Now,. again, there was, as you know of course because you were involved in that process, a conscious decision to define contributions to basic knowledge as being by definition relevant to the mission and that again made a lot of things possibel and it made it possible to work on problems were.not relevant to mental health in the narrrow sense, although I agree, I think it was a wise decision in a sense that anything that builds the dicipline is of necessity,. going; to be relevant, but it required kind :of a policy decision and willingness to take certain chances in rraking that stick~.. Moving an from my own experiences, in kind of consultant. capacity, I have been involved in '.""' my major involvements with NIMH have been of two kinds - one was in . various ad hoc acitivites that npst!y had to·do. with. N?MH noving into .new.•areas, particularly areas of so.cial· significance .kinds of things, and there have been, a number of these things, some specific onest some kind 6f general re-examinations and so on, and I think on the whole, I was impressed with the forward thinking of·people on the staff - you know a lot of this was going on at the times when there was periods of, I think, major changes - when is your next appointment? EAR Well, I .don't want to take too much of your time. HK I was starting to say periods of great change- the paverty prograll\ and the changes in race relations, issues of participation and issues of development of new rights, the turmoil on the campuses, all of these things, and I felt that there was a tremendous openness on the part of the peole on the staff who were organizing these meetings and a continuing, now in a different way, a continuing, broad definition of mental health-:- it was very definately, practically none of the things l. participated - 18 - HK(continued) ilil. was when talking about classical psychiatry - this was going on too, but these were not the things I was called in on. Incidentally, I would also add to the kinds of things I was called in onj things also having to do with ethiea.L:;issues, a couple of ad ho.e things that required evaluation for instance one was - I forget whether you were there - the Cook Committee when they were applying. for a grant and there was a similar thing from the Behavior Modification Association or whlltever it is called - so I got called in on things like that - again~ these were all things that had to do with tt mu.ch broader look at basic social issues and there was a readiness to first of all to see that as part of the mission of the .organization and to try to deal with it and I felt - I don't know how to put it without it being misunderstood, but it will be up to you to put it in the right words - r,··felt ideologically very comfortable at all of these things. EAR Let me ask you a nasty question - did you have any feeling at all that some of this willingness to extend the boundaries of mental health to encompass these additional areas was more than just substitute interest but also perhaps a kind of political bureaucratic interest in extending its own domain - ·did that ever seem to be part of the picture? HK I donH: know - I guess since I liked it I guess I tended to not to put it in these terms, although. I would see this as part of· the normal process - I did see it certainly as a concern with remaining relevant and remaining up to date and responding to new developments and responding to new·constituencies and things like that - it was certainly that and I think that is in a sense you are right that that is political, that is trying to proteC't your t:urf, as it were, or expand your tunf alild so on, but I guess I saw that as being just the right-thing; I mean - 19 - HK.(continued) it was not a-defensive, but in a sense forward looking, it was sort of being open to the new developments and saying, how do we fit in. It perhaps had an element of kind of organizational concen a.bouttlteeping your organizational interests alive, but I guess I saw that as being very favorable. Of eourse, some of the 1:hings that you were doing in terms of social change were again within that same domain, but that is kind of a very general thing about what I am loosely defining as a whole category of things where basically I felt that the staff at NIMH were responding in the same way I was to all of these developments as opportunities, as challenges, as things to be taken seriously, to be acted on and to try to play a role in and of course, a lot happened - I mean the development of new centers within NIMH and all of these things - the metropolitan centez•, the minorities centers, the strengthening of the applied research things and all of these things I think, although I haven't been following them closely, but I have the impression that these are new things ..,., they may not be the mos.t powerful units within NI'MH but at least they are there and they are carrying out new kinds of functions~ EAR Now, in that very connection, ~havi-n.g·given-·tnat overall kind of description of these new developments - what is your evaluation of the NIMH posture and activity as compared or contrasted with other agencies like NSF? HK There is one other thing I wanted to mention, I said there were two major it contacts, the other major contacts, you know I want to be on the record because that was a heavy four years investment and that was on the psychology training - I don't want not to have mentiomed that because that was a very heavy activity and I thought and there again I was extremeiy-~ positive .,;..~-.:c==~ my tenure on the committee was all during a period when Stan Schneider was the person in charge and there again now looking at a different side of the things I was very favorably impressed and of course, a lot of this - I guess the fact that I was being brought in this is true for the other thing too, ... 20 - HK(continued) the fact that I was being brought in on this as well as in the other thing represented a recognition of the importance of certain kinds of orientations because I do stand for something, but that in itself is not enough because I could have been brought in to many of these things in a token fashion and I never felt like a token - I mean I felt thatJ:-irst :of all, that I was never kind o·f a lone representative of a de~iant point of view, maybe on some issues I may have been out the extreme of some dimnensions but not that I recall it being particularly that..,.. thatts why I sa.fd, I always felt ideologically comfortable in these things. Now in the training thing I really felt very congenial with the basic philosophy.which-I felt was really two kinds of things - one, was the emphasis on application, on connnunity outrage on sort of social issues and all that sort of thing and trying to encourage. for instance withintsocial psychology as well as within clinical ps)Y:chology kinds of programs and indeed within experimental psychology programs, those that had an applied flavor, had a community flavor that were experimental - i mean innovative in a sense of trying new things and so on. At the same time another part of an underlying philosophy which I also share is the old fashioned, by now, scientist practitioner model which I still think is a good model and which also was kind of part of the dominent philosophy of that c.onunitte~ .. The Training Branch did have a definate philosophy and the staff I think in many ways was very active, one of the ways was, I guess whom they got to serve on the Committees' and I suppose people who disagree with the philosophy might be critical of that,since I share the pbilosop-hy I am very positive about that, and again I felt that it was a kind of - it was a posture of being willing to innovate, to try new things, to move in new directions, to keep up with t:he times kind of thing, but not, to me not in a negative sense of, but in a real positive sense and I felt that goo4 thinking was going on, I felt that there was a well-thought through philosophy of training that, although it is true .... 21 HK(continued) that the bulk of the time had to be spent on the Committee time had to spent on nitty gritty cases, yet always an effort was made to spend at least some time thinking about the directions in which we were going and all that. So, anyway I wanted you to get that. The general question of how to compare - it is hard for instance because the obvious best comparison is NSF and- it':'is hard because I have had much less to do with NSF, infinately less, in fact, in terms of, both as a recipient of funds nothing com.pared to this and also in terms of - I am trying to remember being brought in .... I don't remember anythitlg other than. periodically I'd get things to evaluate, to review. EAR Gary Bradlof HK Yes, from him and also from others like from this relatively new di.vision on values and science and technology. They have a new EAR Brand new? HK No, it is three years by now. EAR Is that part of Rand? HK It's not part of Rand - it is part of a larger unit - actually with NIMH I am also confused these days, but have been for a long time becaus.e it keeps chang±ng, but NSF, the structure completely eludes me, so I can't - it is very hard for me to compare - I felt that as far as the social psychology; the kind of basic research group is concerned; I think they have tended to be ior -a long time very traditional and quite narrow in their conception - they hav~ given good support to a lot of important kinds of research programs in experimental social psychology sort of the main stream programs, some of which are very good, and I am not complaining about their - 22 - HK(continued) positive action b~t I think they have tended to stay away from the non-main stream things, Now unfortunately, I think NI:MH in the basic research is moving in the same direction, at least that is my feeling, a lot of this may have to do with the fact that I have not been supported recently, but I think NSF has been that way longer and. EAR Who are the people there that you dealt with? Radloff and Murray Horn? HK No, it has nothing to do with the people, I mean I don ''t think, it's more kind of EAR What I am searching for is that fact there haventt been outstanding people there at the operational level in the same numbers as there had been HK Certainly not in the same numbers and somehow- they also haven't - I didnt:t have the impression that in any way they were interacting with each other and sort of were able to form a group. Howard Bc;1chman was one of th~ people r also dealt with earlier and I. think very well of him and I always found him open and sympathetic and so on, but for instance just to give y,ou another example ::'. I guess my own efforts at fund raising leaves me with having the greatest impression on my biases but it was teTh-years ago or so - 66-67, I ran this international conference on social psychological research in developing countries which we held _______and I had a very hard time raising funds for that even though everybody thought-:-- this came shortly after the Camelot busines - and everybody thought that the conception of it was tremendous and all of that sort of thing, but I guess part of it was that the initiative for that whole thing came from Charles Hutchinson, the Air Force Office, it was before Camelot, but then after Camelot that became very suspect and all of that~. Well, anyway in the final analysis within the government circles, not counting Hutchinson who gave some seed money for this, but then couldn't, in fact would have been not helpful to have too much of an investment from him in this international enterprise - 2.3 - HK(continued) but really, NIMH came through with a grant, a general grant - I forget what it was, maybe $25,000 - I think ·it was the largest single grant. You know I had to piece this together from private sources and so on - we never did get enough - I mean we had to cut corners in: a sense we would have touunder-represent.Asia - it was held in Africa, so Africans were cheaper, so we had quite a good African represen_tation, but Asia was very poorly represented, simply because we. did not have enough money to pay for travel. Well, NIMH came thhough - I think it was at that time there was international division or so~ething - I dealt mostly with Laurent Torrez was in that at the time EAR That was after J".eaiv Brandt had left. HK I think she was still there, but I was dealing matnly with Laurent Torrez, so. they came through whereas NSF - I put in an application, I got a detailed sort of response advising how to - they tuned it down and gave their criticisms and of course,. without making any promises, I checked with them would it be worthwhile my trying to take these criticisms into account and re-su.bmit - I ·am not saying that they mislead me, but they said go ahead,.. we will reconsider it and so I did revise it and they turned it dawn again and r think it was a short-sighted kind of a thing. What they ended up, they did pay for three Americans, sort of these individual travel grants, that's what they offered, so they did make that contribution which came to a few thousand dollars, but again I think in that contrast - the probl:em is that maybe today would be different because I might be able to take it to some other unit within NSF and they have - the units have sort of mushroomed. The problem is that in NSF this was being evaluated by the social psychology group in competition with all other projects. I can even sympathize with their vi~w given their definition of their function if that a certain amount of money if they have to choose between spending it on a research program which is right down the line what they regard as their mission versus spending it on a conference, that HK)continued) they chose the former, but I would think that they shouldn't be confronted with that kind of choice - in<O~ther words that's not fair and there has to be a conception that there are other functions and maybe that is an organizational and structural problem. As I saj_d if I were on that Committee I might act the same way, I am told here is what you are suppose to do and whatever you pick for this purpose will be subtracted from that purpose but it suggests a kind of a narrow definition of how research evolves and alse of what the functions are within the larger society. Now, as I am saying I think there has been a responsiveness to that within NSF·and it has largely been in the form of creating new divisions or new sections and so forth and maybe that changes the picture, I don't know. EAR Let me ask you one1 las:t question because I see our time is up"- just about•· Is there anything else in eve_rytning· you said that comes to mind that you think would be useful putting down as a last word or you want to leave it at that, you don't have to end 9n a grand note, so don"t worry about ·diat.. I am perfectly comfortable at leaving at that if that's okay. HK The only thing I would say is sort of express a hope for the future, I mean obviously in all of this and I am not fooling myself I have vested interests and you know I have ideological preferences and I have needs in terms of my own activities and I have my own priorities and things like that. The two things, broadly speaking, that have been important to me have been central to the way in which NIMH 1ias operated for many years - those two things·· beingi=:one, kind of basic research broadly defined so that tlfe mission is defined in such a way as to allow all sort.s of things that might appear peripheral to somebody asking how many schiiophrenics is this going to cure, that-obviously is consistent with my needs and also my philosophy and the other being this kind of social outrage concerned with social changes, with.social issues, with connnunity action and all of these kinds of things and for many years NIMH has been very - 25 - HK(continued) good on both of these things and clearly I am speaking in terms of my own value preferences. I am a little worried about current developments whether there is ·too much of a narrow focusing on the sort of specific targeted areas. EAR I think the-squeeze· frankly begins at the financial level and from there unfortunately the i.deological follows. I think there is still people there who would like to do a good job, but I think without the wherewithal in the days that-you are talking about even up to the late 1960's there was always some hope and in fact some follow through in terms of additiolilal funding and now it's just terrible and I think that's in a real sense if one wanted to be very cynical I thim.k you could almost find a basis in fact for suggesting that much of NIMH's innova.tion.,broad approach to things and all the rest of it had to begin with availability of' additional monies and that in fact, that may have been the one most important dimension - I dont,t happen to believe that I think the most important dimension was the quality of the people who were there~ but without that funding, without the ability each year to say, '-'what else can we do, what else should we do because we have the money to do itu I think it would have been in many respects almost an empty gesture on occasion to say what else wou!Bl have been done and then not be able really to have the money to do it. Well, listen Herb, I appreciate this very much and I know having talked to everyone else the feeling is well, this is just kind of one little part of the total jigsaw, how are you going ta put it ~.ogether, I think it is very helpful, that's why I wanted to talk to as many "dif,ferent people as I possibly could. HK Well,, I shall look forward to the product