Dr. Eliot Rodnick 1 EAR •••• Let you do some of the talking because what I really would like :for you to do is to tell me a little bit about your involvement and perhaps, however you want to do it, but you might :find it easiest perhaps to begin with your earliest involvment with NIMH ••• ER Why don't I just quickly summarize the points involved at the time and then I'd be very happy to do a certain amount of :free associa­ tion, and :flag me if it gets down to irrelevant detail. My :first contact with NIMH was when I took over at Worcester when Dave Shakow went to Chicago and it was just about that point, it was 46 or so, when the Council of Training first came in, and I can remember Sid Newman, who was then ••• he came over and he was the one who was with the Research Psychiatric ••••• I can't remember at this time ••• nor read something about it, and I had a kind of complex role because I was full time, taking over in Dave's position and at the same time I was teaching at Clark, graduate courses, on a very limited basis and then at the same time was acting director o:f Worcester Child Guidance Clinic which Dave had done, because Kirk­ patrick had left and then Durphy had left and it was without a director, so I had to take that over on him, part time, kind o:f run,: it :for about an hour a day, to keep the sta:f:f going and start recruiting. That was on Clark's time. Now that was about in those days when there was all this change in perception o:f psycho~ogy, the things that were so critical in the 30s about trying to get psychology to deal with human problems and so on, what suddenly came so quickly to the :forefront after the war, and so I was spend 1 _::•­ ing some time at that point trying to get a training program orga­ nized at Clark. Roger Parker wasn't Chairman, Jones was, but he was interested in presenting a vecy limited plan tieing in Worcester as a :field setting and a guidance center. And in one sense, it :fitted-~in kind of' history :from the very beginning thatClark, since I was located at Worcester with the whole tradition, that the way to do it was to really have a functional training setting and so that was a new kind of' a concept f'or Clark. So we set this up, I had a pretty good contact with the president, he wanted me to take over as chairman, I didnt want to because I was tak~ng over Dave's spot, so on a very limited basis I had a plan that they use Worcester and fill that in. They had Les Phillips given an 2 ER cont. appointment, I had an appointment, had a little more o:f an appointment, and then we used the Youth Guidance Center which is now the Child Guidance Clinic, as a king o:f a laboratory and so we got Louise Parker to come over and help out and several other people, and so we had tried to get some small beginnings, but had limited :funds. I can remember, somewhere at that point, perhaps 46 or 47, Sid Newman came around and told me about this program in Training Grant that put something in, because in those days State hospitals were poor and we had no kind of money, stipends or anything elsei,mY position kind of jack=kni:fed a couple o:f others. Les was the only other one in psychometry positions level, and so we tried to put some :funds in so we got a stipend that :first time around, and it had an enormous impact. it's hard to realize the catalytic effect, very small but lifeless, what it did was to suddenly give our program status, in a hospital, :first real training program they had at that point and also at Clark it gave it legitimatization so that the President Jefferson came over a couple of times to discuss things. He got ego-involved in it. Rodger then went on to Kansas and wanted me to :follow and I didn't. So the thing got o:f:f the ground and we brought- Hans Lehman in, and with that whole set of interest pattern and so I left in 49. At that time the Clark program was going and what was critical with that was I could get the training grant plus the VA and what we did was to take the VA program out at Framingham and the concept, I don't know if this is relevant, the concept that the University bought was to make a number o:f part time @~:intm.ents_•., Je:f:ferson bought it and Jones bought it, that what we needed were people who were e:f:fective clinicians out in the :field setting. We had set up the training grants that way so we gave an appointment to Edith Meyer who was at Children's Hospital, and she came in and gave a course. We recruited Joe Weingreb, got him out o:f Framingham and so Joe came in to be Professor o:f Psychology, and so we gave him Therapy and he was very pleased and so we had a seminar and he commuted back and :forth :from Boston. We got his identification, Psychology, and he had a Master's earlier at Columbia, so he was :fully identified in Psychology. Then we brought Thelma Alper over, she was brought over :full time and we got Fred Wyatt, who at that time, I think he was with the VA, probably at Framingham, so he was made Professor, and the thing got o:f:f the ground. So it was 3 ER cont. this early concept, aided by the fact that field settings were being supported and by the fact that we had this little grant at Worcester and I can remember some issue, how it suddenly got into national kind of ••• state department •• and we had a little bit of federal money and I don't remember the amount of the stipend, it was very little, but there was a little bi·t of overhead money and the hardest money to get in a state hospital is for a light fixture, a desk for a trainee, and so the hospital didn't have to do with overhead of three percent. So I remember Bart........ Okey you can use that for equipment and went ahead and fixed up the room a little bit, the office and the trainee room. This must have been 47 or 48. The state auditors came in and I went through about two d~ys of intensive groan. You see with this federal money coming in and I was •••• who gave me aut~orization to buy anything like that and then with stipends, well who, how can you appoint people. And the auditor accused me in fact of racial, ethnic cult, religious bias, because he got interested in who the interns had been going way back to the JOa. We had no graduate students from Holy Cross and here we have these students coming from Brooklyn College, we had them coming from Yale and a whole pattern, a tradition that Dave had built up over the years, and we even had some with Catholic names, there was a student from Clark, and there was someone who headed up the Child Guidance Clinic at Des Moines, he was one of the Clark students who had an interne­ ship there. Basically, it was the fact that with little federal money, you come into a state and start to look kind of important with practically nothing. But it meant from the point of view of the hospital a whole status, that psychology had some kind of a budget, whereas the problems Dave built up from practically nothing but a few salaries and scrounging out supplies. So it was in that setting in those early days that kind of got me off into University kind of training and this experience was useful. It would be inter­ esting to know how maJlY hospitals got a training grant, way back then. I wonder wh~y the NIMH training grant program -- Forest Tyler seemd not to support, it was apolicy -- I tried to fight for inte­ gration. The health of the field is not to separate the University from the internship. Probably because I grew up that way, coming out of the Yale institute of human relations, the dream of a real integration. So when I wnt to Worcester, with a University climate 4 ER cont. then, what~ used to do at Duke, when I came here, was try to get the students to spend part of the time out in the field, and so at the University, which isn't easy and give me a course number, and they were,buying it, and this meant using the stipends for all it was worth. Here was a stipend for the next year, and I thought it was very important that the places we used had somehow the prestige in their local place, responsibility for the training program, like the Worcester scene. so we used the LAPS as a place, we also tried to use some of this with NPI and it would work out, so we would send a student with our stipend, they had a stipend, they'd use our student. Then the Training Committee said no, If a student goes for an interne­ ship and it's their stipend, ~hey have to have 100% control over it, and I said, all at once, the students take a course. I remember I was on the Board of Directors at the time of LAPS, Forest was there. He was criticized for tell·±ng them they could not give a stipend to our people unless our people were 100% of the time, which makes no sense. It was a very valuable program. I felt there was nothing in the system. I felt that this was the way bureaucracies tried to shape fields, I wasn't going to drop this, probably it was the Training Committee, it was that they didn't have the right people on the Training Committee, who would have fought hard for this, because at that time the people on the Training Committee didn't have that concept. And In that sense it's interesting that of all the years I've been involved, I've never been on a Psychology Training Committee. I've veen to every damn conference, was active, generally in T-Board and all the VPA but when I did get on the Training Committee, it was on Fred E1Majen 1 s Biological.Sciences back in those days when I had some active interest in it. What is wrong with this system is that it loses touch, and I get very angry about it now. cl~Ri~II have known, there was kind of an informal study about(type of)programs around the country, and we ranked #1 , early nunba:r 1 , there was a narrow dispersion 0£ any university. The President of the University is pleased, it is getting money into our clinic. The trouble is that the program is based on the University's going on real integration, and the University's bought it, we have a clinic ER cont. in here, we have University funds, a p1anning committee, and they say the c1inic is vita1 to the program and supported, al1 of this goes with it. Then they come along in the VA and demand that all of these patients be fu11 time. We're here 1ocal, up at Brent­ wood, and now we have to say the the student that he has to be full time or mustn't come in to the University. The PI sits over here, and I've indicated this to the university committees without anything direct1y against people, but the way the system goes they could have been in San Diego. But here right on this campus we're allowed to have one full time internship because they might lose their accreditation. We have been allowed one fu11 time person out of the stipend and three part time people in a program the size of Michigan's. Utter insanity. It's bureaucracy. And You can't get back at the system. Ifve protested and now I find that the Committee is dominated by people running independent internships, the Clinical directors have met, i 1 ve tried to fight for some of it, and in the last couple of meetings we've 1ost the battle. But there's the uniqueness of the program. So we'll end up with the others and take ourstudents and wi11 send them to the East and the Students from the East wil1 come over here, there'll always be patients around and after all, we can't build up the integration. Well, this is a problem EAR I want to come back to that point in a more general way, Rod, because I think there is a very important issue about what happens to organizations as they grow and inevitably develop characteristics and points of view and then that evolves into something else. Is it an inevitability that an organization has to move in such a way that it becomes increasingly rigid, less responsive, I don't KNow. ER It's a very big problem, particular1y now that I've had to give up my spot in a year for forced retirement. This is about my last year, so I am very much concerned. The problem is a very critical issue. And you'd see it as you see an institution like NIMH which has had such an enormous impact. It isn't just another research institute, but in a field like psychology, the current shape of psychology has had two sources, the VA at first, but after about 1960, 1962, after you left, the whole change, the VA has lost its impact on psychology. I don't know the reasons, 6 ER cont. I think I know some of them but it could be the structure, it got too narrow a conception of the role of psychology and tried to deal with it, but then something very rigid, and I wouldnt be a bit surprised, I felt, it was a problem, it should have had a council like for tenure, it's something that keeps the university going. You know, one advantage of agrowing situation like NIMH, the people with the strength rose, the others got down here, and you didn't just of seniority end up the key figures in NIMH. You did have the university concept, the scholarship and the quality and I feel the Va probably, getting into a civil service trap, lost that and I felt didn't have the people in Washington to give it the kind of leadership that it needs. Well, coming back to the beginning, this kind of had an early impact, so my first contact was this one and then I left that situation, had little contact or no contact with the NIMH and then •••• EAR Were you not involved in the development of the Boulder Conference? ER Yes, I was there. I wasnft involved but I was participating in it. That had an enormous impact. What it did basically is that, and history has clearly recognized that now, is put a stamp of approval on basically a concept that didn't have wide acceptance at that time, and essentially Dave hit the right package at Worcester. Because others would have done it and kind of then dismissed it and in one sense the Boston people missed it. Worcester had a research mission built around Hos~ins and Atkin, a cluster of people, now at that point bringilil.g in people all the way from psy­ chology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, now what would pass as an SR guy, which I was when I first came there, and people went through like Dollard, but you also had the same thing occurring in psychiatry etc. It was a kind of a climate where at the research center everybody was a colleague for, and that which is not part of a university, of a typical state hospital, with its rigidities in any medical situation, and the uniqueaess of Worcester unless you were in research, a young PH.D., who didn't do much beyond that, and that I was accepted, my ideas were delivered and people like Hurphy wanted me to co!:laborate. It was just amazing to get in there and find these young psychiatrists and they wanted me to teach them research methods and so on, but it was a climate that wasn't due to any one person, probably as 7 ER cont. much as anything, it was the acceptance of systematic research methodo1ogy in briefing Bucky Je,1.:in:ek·.-.I·:-~did. You know Jelinek? He set up a psychometry setting, Hos~ins brought him in, so from the very beginning data had to be handled with good statistical design, probably one of the first places in the mental health area that really used analysis during its techniques and the :fresh PH.D.S like Lindner, Kenneth Green, Sykes, social psychology ended up heading up statistics for first the Census Bureau and then the World Health Organization and who was a Professor at Columbia, he was there while I was there as his assistant, so we had this climate which I felt had been so critical at NIMH, that is why Worcester had this uniqueness component amd didn't. and that was :fortunate1y what Dave captured in his plan, and there have been a11 of these battles in every group. Once you've accepted the assumption that a field has to be based on evidence you had no other choice. And a good profession is one that works for its own obsolescence because what you're doing is less good than someone did, that's something you're going to sys­ tematically find through research. EAR Okey. So you got to Duke. ER And so at that point, I brought Norm Garmazy with me and we were trying to get a research program going, essentially built around where it had been at Worcester. We cou1dn 1 t do the kind of research we could do at Worcester. The first thing we did was build our research labs out in state hospitals. The State hospi­ tals in North Caro1ina were pretty sorry things. Camp Buckner was the nearest one. We started by getting our graduate students working in there and decided we needed some money. at that point I was Department Chairman in Programming. I have always felt that we shouldn't apply for a grant unless we had done the pt1ot work and we felt we had something. So the first two or three years we worked on projects and we had begun to get good results, and at that point I said, well, maybe we ought to go for a grant. It was after that that we got the fuarls, and with rather a high priority and so I was asked to Join the one study section, I ~hink it was in 53, and so I stayed there till 56, 57, 8 ER cont. and then the last year, each year the miracles were increasing and we finally had to get Fish in, and· I sort of remember the conflict we had, we set up two, with different epices and people were surprised that we could do that, we tried to be two more images, but I can remember the conflict we'd run into and the first couple of meetings, it was about the same time, it was down the corridor, and feeling, one, that did you have the same kind of :ratings that we had, to be sure that we both had interesting things it wa:s an interesting period. There was one association I do have. In a site visit, some of the people in that particular group were Jules Richmond, Ted Litz and George Saslow and Harry Harlow, I think on the first few Don Lindsey was, and some others, Jerry Frank, and Crumbaugh • We were getting these applications from young people, what do you do with someone who really needs $2000, and so Harry Harlow had visited some, and we had fussed about it, we had one application from a couple of young psychologists at Bucknell, that's where Sherman Ross had been, and the application indicated they didn't have any facilities, they had to work with mice because there was no laboratory and no funds and so these two young professors, put in $25 a piece and bought some mice, and had to get eome space behind the furnace in the heating plant. So we went to visit them to see if we should turn it down or if they had something, it seemed like a bright applica­ tion, I think they were working out a field stress situation with mice. So I went there and at that point there was kind of an op:enness in that study section and it had some new ideas and some new settings, a sense of mission, and the thing that I found most exciting at that ppint was that the mission was to bring in some new bring research ideas, and to identify bright personnel and to use the dollars as a kind of a catalyst, and there was a great deal of concern, if you had to turn something down, to be sure you didn't turn down some bright ideas that wasn't packaged right. So we went to visit some of these places, and at some it was very clear that they needed some money, there were some very bright people and they had been publishing, they wanted to do research, they wanted to set up a good psychology laboratory, and they needed just a little bit of money, and this whole system was set 9 ER cont. ttp for these big things. I don't know the whole history, whether the ideas had already come from staff, and Harry articulated it only, but I can remember the session about small grants, and this would seem to be a natural and one to apply, and so with those original restrictions, it was a very important one, I would have liked to have seen that greatly expanded since those days. EAR Well, I think you're absolutely right, and I think that epitomized this one aspect of the NIMH flexibility and originality so to speak. organizational originality, the ability to be a facilitator in the best sense of the word. I had to pin it down a little more but let me just tell you where I am right now on that. The best I can figure out right now, is that I think you're right. I think that it did initiate with staff, I think it was originally Phil's idea, but I think Harry ran with it and added his own inimitable style to it, and of course gave it atAKtmp of authority even more so for everybody concerned. So that became, I think, the Small' Grant Program, in a way, really does characterize NIMH, to recognize a need, to fit a program operation precisely to that need, and to extend its organizational framework so as to encompass this addi­ tional need. I think that's an important aspect of the total pro­ gram in those days. ER I kind of felt involved, because this was the germination of some new kind of program and since this site visit, and a series of others, I kind of had the suspicion it might come up, because it came when Harry was articulating with a little too much detail, and you know, if you've been around these situations, that nothing gets born without any history of concern, otherwise it doesn't go anywhere, but that's how a system develops. EAR Well, I want you to focus just a little bit more on the study section because I should tell you, as I did a number of other people, that the germ of the idea for this whole enterprise that I'm involved in now, came interestingly enough through someone that you mentioned a few moments ago, George Saslow, who said to me at one time in the early 1960s, that I had to write a novel sometime about the study section system because it warrants that kind of description. It played, I think, an absolutely critical role. 10 ER There's so question in my mind, absolutely none, because I've been on committees where you're a consultant ••• it was absolutely critical to give the study section the feeling, you have the power. In one sense, I felt that the system kept the staff kind<:£ submerged. They had to be indirect in the way in which you maneuver things, but it was very critical because it was a feeling that the people doing the work out in the field were having control over the program. It was one thing that was at times weak with the VA. In fact, about four years later when I was on the Advisory Committee, you were on Staff, I can remember those damn meetings, don't embarrass the ••• you almost reach the point where you want to resign. I remember Howard Roan, furious, trying to generate things, you like to have situation where you discuss it, and I can remember one, the whole group met and it was on some plan for one of the new hospi­ tals, and Jim Miller was 01k:bfd e,-d I had just been site visiting on the part of the Title V/group, and so there was the issue of architecture and mental health. That was a magnificent area of research and Ittl~son of Brooklyn College, and I remember citing that with Walter Barton, this was about 57, and I remember raising the question first, well, sure the VA is building these big places and it might be a good idea to do some research on the architec­ ture. It's a probability. Here I had just gone through at North Carolina, first at Salsbury, because Congressman Barton insisted on building it down there, they were trying to get it on Duke, so here you had this 20 million, 30 million dollars, a terrible place. When we had the business at Durham built, there was already a change, so you had seclusion rooms, and it was clear by that time that that was no way to run a railroad or mental health. But you had your plans. So this next one came in, the next edition, I don't know how these pies get cut, but it seemed a natural. One agency, where an architect could have done some really first class research. As ~ar as I know, they never did a damn thing. So you raise this, it falls like a lead balloon on the staff, no encouragement, I remember fussing with Him Miller and saying, one of us ought to speak up. I spoke up. This was very clear it was one of the things you don't need a consultant alnnut. The issue at that point was some other problem. They really didn't want us to get involved. It was part of the charades. The feeling 11 ER cont. that you're important, but you're not. You're window-dressing. And so there'e a tremendous contrast between that, and that's where the study section was so critical. Many times it was under fire. They were told, do not do this. Compared with the NSF, what I liked about it, was that it was the one point of real interaction. I can read all of this, but what was important was the interchange. You get a view of Ted Litz, or George, etc, which changes my~ perception. EAR Well, someone has said to me, and it's a point that I'd like to get your reaction to, that in a curious way, the study section as a phenomenon involves what really should beaver~ common activity in the academic community itself, and yet it rarely occurs. You have academic people sitting, talking around key concepts, inter­ changing ideas, be~ng substantively involved, divorced from other•••• ER You're absolutely right. I think there's a reason for it. I've stewed about this. So much of my life in academia has been as an administrator from 45 on. When you start picking, academia has a conflict. We've never even resolved it. Is it the institutional structure, and you have people part of a team, probably a research organization does this, but the one thing in a university and its tradition is the individualist. your independent research. So you don't happen to share i t , if anything you already have built in trained, selected people who very jealously guard their independ­ dence and don't want to share this, unless its spontaneous. This would require a kind of major organization, reorganization of the university. So what happens is this gets dissipated only in the administrative paper work, you fight over an appointment, and the ghastly aours we spent in the university, on tenure, or merit promotion, and you end up at that level, which tends to keep the department and the unviersity is a magn:Lri•ment example of trying to work out a system so the departments because of this outlook system, where the chairman can't be a person in the department, they lave to be from other departments, and so there are masses of committees on tenure, appointments of surgeons, pediatricians, a long time they kept putting me on all these medical school committees. But it was invaluable because after I came here it kept me from isolation. I had a feeling 12 ER cont/ :for the problems of the medical school I wouldn't have had otherwise. And so in that sense, you have some of that, but it's only at that level, but not with the guts of the purpose e:f the university EAR Okay, so that is an important issue, in a curious way it filled a void, so to speak, that did exist in the academic setting. One other aspect of the study section, and anything else that you want to comment on, that I'd like to get your reaction to. Over and beyond the obvious that you mentioned a moment ago that it's been under fire and each time it's been virlmicated as the best and :fairest way of coming to conclusions about the competence of a particular project, but in the course of doing that there have been a number of side effects, one of which we've just touched on. Another is that it served as an enourmously important source of communication network, the opportunity to serve on a study section gave you a perspective of the field you could get nowhere else. ER You're absolute right. That's the reward, it wasn't the $50 a day you had, and taking it out of your hide, the weekends off to read and site visit, but it was the :fact that you're on the issues of a :field three years before you began to pick it up in the journals. It was invaluable. That also meant that the system sould be more widespread, rather than a :favored :few and that was, in many cases, what you missed when you get off that particular circuit is that reward. EAR Can you recall specific instances in which the discussion around a particular project, or set of projects, tangibly gave you an additional kind of insight or conceptual :framework for some things you were doing yourself? Can you say that you went to a study section meeting and came back three days later with a new idea about something that you yourself were involved in, that modified what you were doing in some way/? ER Not as much as I would have expected. That part of the study section would have been 53-57, the later study sections I was on were different kinds of things. I'd say yes. One did. But it would have been that original study section as much. But let me hit the first original study section. I don't think it had any direct effect on what I was doing at that point with Norn, to 58 or so, 13 ER cont. largely because that wasn I t part of. the climate that was getting research, besides we didn't want to lose our character beaause both t.of us were very unhappy with what the literature was like. So where it did hit me, and had an enormous impact on my whole view of the field, was the emphasis on the community mental health centers. In the early days there was the Palo Alto Conference which was done because a lot of universities ware losing that, Vestermark, Bob Felix, Max Levin, John was there Joe Bobbitt was there. Max was going around polling the universities, trying to bring on the mission of a broad conception. Eric ~ndeman came out and gave his report on his concept of the crisis clinic which he was trying to build at Wellesley, and I remember how the impact he had on that group in saying in his experience the psychologists were able to do a better job in this than the psychiatrists, and he had the psychologist from Berkeley who since has been in western training labs and so on, Don Klein, and so it was in that context, so that at the Palo Alto Conference that was the only thing he couldn/t really capture, it wasn•·t part of the climate, this was about 54,55, and then what that Title V did, for those of us who served on it, because that was kind of amission, and then when I was on the Professional Services one, that special one that Bobbitt and Lennie Duell 1 s staff were on~ that kind of really cemented it because that really was the essence of a real community approach in its early days, that had enormous impact, wouldn't have had that probably if I hadn't been reading, site visiting and discussing it, it probably gave me a healtlyrespect, probably more than some others, because I had that in my early history, of a respect for the field guy and that the sense of research that had to be done. I can remember site visiting a number of places, like the Bank Street School, and seeing, well, this is the kind of research, this is a different concept from the university. So that that had that effect, but it didn't really have its real impact on me until I came here, and as soon as I came here, that was the first report, and I was at that point chairing the Professional Services Branch, and that had an enormous impact, and as aoon as I came here, that was what I kept pushing for, so we got a demonstration going, built in our clinic, and that was part of trying to take a Mickey Mouse clinic. We generated, we tried to get something. Most of the psychologists were doing a little analog stuff. I remember Ledlow who was at that point the clinic I was serving as Director at the time and Kack Kaslon. They would 14 ER cont. bring research into the clinic, but where do you start? We established oontact with one of the schools and offered them free services. If they had pro~1ems bugging them, we would be wi11ing to sit down and brainstorm with them and try to be he1pfu1. They did have problems w1th kids doing poorly in school, who couldn't be reached, the parents blamed them, they had a poor relationship. So with the help of the schools, we set up a program in the clinic, kind of an open=ended demonstration, brought in members of the family, the teacher and tried to deal with the communication prob= lems. So that demonstration led to this reporton "Troubled Children" but it also created the program of seeing people on inidividual therapy routine things. We.11, that was 1960, when we got our first grant, first time it was a little pilot and I was involved in that, but then I wanted to disengage, because I wanted the staff to do it. It was very difficult to change a system. There was a lot of talk of clinical psychology, utterly empty, and what this meant, you didn't have to use words in clinical psychology, this was what clinic.al psychology was about. What it did do, was that about that time I came here, and Mike Goldstein, a young assis.tant professor doing some work on stress. And I said, Okey, let's take this over as kind of a project •••• with schizophrenia ••••• can we get into the system earlier, bring them in the clinic, so then we brought that project in. But it was very slow going. The problem we've always had is that that's the kind of money you could never get from NIMH, you should know. You have a demonstration grant, you set that up, and I roo ember the issues we constantly had in the committee meetings, you get some thing going, but then they take it over, whereas on the other hand, where do you get the money to take over something. This is a real problem, because a catalyst has to stay with it long enough so that the project generates its own momentum. You can't put time limits on it. And that's something I felt has never been worked out over the years, bectiuse I know in our own project, which I have just had renewed for another three years so from 1963 we've been well treated. The problem we've had is that to do some kinds of research, you've got to have the setting You couldn't use NTR. First I thmught we 1 d go there. I spent two years going around the VA, getting trapped constantly on drugs, patients; you couldn't really set up the conditions. Fortunately, we had some students getting degrees at a state hospital and we had an in there, and it turned out that the superintendent was an old 15 ER cont. Worcester man who welcomed and supported me. It was his concept of how to run a city hospital. He was magnificent giant, and so he opened things up, and at that point we had to get some drug effect out of the way, we were working with schizophrenics and so Nash gave us control of the whole ward, the psychiatrists on it, it was our ward to set it up, and we set up the rest of the research at Ventura and we gave it support. Thm.we found that we had this mental health center, that was supposed to do research but had no research money, but fortunately had a very bright and enthusiastic director, who gave us all the support we needed, no money but adequate space, etc. but then if you're in a setting, you've got to set up a clinic, and that's not the money we had. We had to take research money, set up an outpatient clinic to follow up these cases, but that's the kind of money you can't get out of a research grant. So it 1 s a constant problem, which I think has never really been resolved. You set a concept, and I have some real questions, because that's going to big power research and what you need are litile small groups, we didn't want a lot, Vesty Mike and I didn't want to set up a big army of 25 people, and that's the kind 0£ money you can't get, so you get a small amount of money and then when we want to add some more, add a psychologist over there, which means you have to take part of the psychiatrist staff so if you get about $75,000, plus about $100,000, $110,000, you have to put $40,000, so it's net going to give you more than data, but it makes it possible £or you to really get employees, and that's the money you can't get. So this is a problem that hasn't been resolved. There isn't enough money left for small grants, for graduate students in a Ph.D. program, where research gets done by doctoral dissertations, and I think our style here has paid off. It's not to get some data and then can it but to get grants written into a part of it, so you end up each year with three or four very bright young people, but that's the mon~y you can't get. Y9u hire a psychologist and a staff, you get that kind of money. But when all that you want is some graduate students, a little amount, a secretary to hold the piece together, that you can't get. EAR Well, to bring this back again to the point we were tal~ing about earlier. There is an inherent dilemma here in that if an organiza­ tion does a good job as NIMH did early on, and if there is an ambition for growth, which is an inevitable part of a good adminis­ trator's perspective, but that then if he succeeds, he is almost in 16 EAR cont. some sense digging his own grave because you have now trapped yourself into a set of constraints by virtue of the growth that you have desired, that you're shackled in ways that you didn't realize. Now that's a dilemma, and I don't know what the resolution of that dilemma is. ER This is often the problem basically in the whole science of manage­ ment in organizations J you're closer to what's being done in this area, but I see it all the time, if you've ~een an administrator, department head, there's a certain optimum size. At Duke we had about 30 faculty members, it too~ one guy to handle along with everything else. Then we began to find that we no loner had a real kind of communication, so then we had to have a steering com­ mittee for the department, so then you already start the alienation process. Before that you talk, you tend to bring everybody in on it, you make appointments, everybody has his piece. But then you have the steering committee and this doesn't happen. You get in this kind of organization where increasingly you end up with different divisions, so we end up with 100 odd staff people, then you've got your first class citizens, second class citizens, who's on the tenure track, who's on the soft money non-tenure track, because he can't be a senate member, then the chairman can't do it, so you end up with sub-units and there's a real problem, how to keep the communica­ tion going. Those of us who feel strongly that really a particular field, kind of a concentration, but it shouldn't work for its own demise, if it's going to be any good. Then it's no loner useful, and you wipe that one out and you shift around, but what this does is institutionalizes, there's that difference, because you're not getting the power. I have to fight and waste my time, yo~ lose a few appointments in clinical and I got nine other units to fight, so we have the old psychometric area, we have about ten people in that area, they got to stay alive, run out of ideas, they'll fight for every new appointment that comes up, every stipend you can get, and this is the price you pay. You start breaking it up, and the poor chairman can't take on fighting eight fief- doms, so he gets trapped in the system, because the Dean has to work with the Department chairman and we haven't worked out a civil system. There's a problem when every university gets to a certain size, you get up to 25,000, 30,000 students, you_.lose touch. I remember the old days, Clark, a small place, a faculty of 60, 70 people you have a problem, you say OK, go down to the President's office, he's involved, he stays with it, he has confidence in it, 17 ER cont. Whenever you need help, you call him up. Duke was small enough the Academic Vice President was always available for help and support and you could get the people you wanted. Now, with all the committees you can't do that. It takes six months for Regents approval. Now with this system, and the time lag in hiring people, it's a real damper when ~ ..it comes to long range planning, and you have some bright people who don't want to buck the system, so they work on their individual tasks and don't want to get involved. EAR Well, I don 1 t, know either, and it 1 s interesting that apropos of all of this, so many people who were at NIMH early on have spontaneously said the same thing to me, namely that it was so lovely in the history of NIMH, that all the senior staff ate lunch tog~ther around one big table. Bob Felix was there and the luncheon was a time for informal but very significant decision making and there was face to face communication every day at lunch. ER And that's where the communication idea is, where you can really function on a common mission. Or what happens when you're an outsider, like a study section meeting, Bob and others, you could make it a point of being there and actually having lunch, so that all of us had a personal feeling, what the mission of NIMH was like, and maybe its impossible to recapture those things again. EAR You mentioned Bob. Did you have very many personal contacts with ' him? What is your recollection of Bob? ER I first met him at Boulder, I was very impressed, primarily because of his warmth for psychology.mostly at the man who has the knack of relating to someone and making him feel very important, and the enthusiasm, which is kind of infectious. I reme~ber at Boulder, staying there most of the period, taking an active participation taking all these issues, including, he wouid smell out the rivalry with medicine, try to kind of stake it out, feeling that he was not a spy, that you don't have to hold back on it. Those of us who started to have contact with him, where he grew up in a medical situation, so I indicated the Worcester research thing was where the camaraderie occurred, and as soon as you get away from that the psychologist is a very lonely guy. This was very unique because the chief psychologist was allowed to be on the cabinet ••••••• when you start going on the wards with the physicians and so on you quickly learn the damn culture, you're an outsider and this is their show, it's like being an alien, and you didn't speak up until 18 ER cont. you had citizenship, but Bob always succeeded in not giving you that feeling. I remember one long evening at Boulder, when I had first met him, at the Palo Alto Conference, but by that time I had been two years on the study section, and since we only had one study section of consultants it was a very small show. The things that impressed me most was Bob's warmth and enthusiasm which was really brought home to me when the Title V thing got off the ground because as far as I can tell that is real identification he felt that that was what was going to change the face of American psychiatry. Probably he was right. And then he did succeed, the kind of sense of mission, the opBnness the willingness to get the research going, to try things out. Perhaps something more specific, it was due to Bob that I was asked to be a member of the Cosmos Club he wrote one of the strong supporting letters. I had another contact with regard to Bob. I had a colleague who was in political science, Connery, He called me in 56, and I met him on campus. He was an interesting guy. His major professor and senior colleague was essentially the functional mayor under La Guardia, you know, the New York System, He had a chap, a professor at Columbia, who really ran the show on a day to day basis. 0 1 Connery did that for a while and I think that then under Wagner, when he was on leave from Duke, so he had a lot of experience with municipal government and he and someone else, may~e Emory, wanted to do a study on mental health and the political science aspects of it, and I got to know Connery and it opened up a whole new horizon. This was about the time the Community Mental Health thing was beginning to break and he wanted some consultation with somebody that was involved in mental health. They were doing a study. And so I thought he would be the kind of guy Bob Felix would be interested in for the Title V project, here's a political scientist. I remember talking to Bob, or writing or calling him. Bob invited him and put him on some consultat.ian. I remember his kind of openness. Here was a political scientist, experienced in municipal government and Bob had a feel for making use of him. Connery was down here, here was the medical school and Bussey who was a politician of the first order never quite saw how to make good use of Connery. But that was the kind of openness that struck me about Bob. 19 EAR Another person we've just talked about briefly is Phil Sapir. What a are your recollections? ER I first met Phil when I had just come to Worcester. He had come up one summer, I guess invited by Dave Shakow. At that time John was the Executive Secy and Phil his assistant. When John moved out the issue came up of letting Phil be the Exec. Secy, but Phil didn't have his doctorate. And so this was an issue. And I can remember we went into Camera in closed session and a vote with a special appeal to ask NIMH to modify the procedure and let Phil be appointed because he was doing such an excellent job. Although he didn't have his PH.D., we all had respect for him. We had an unanimous vote and Phil became Emec. Secy without his PH.D. Again, this was a kind of openness of Bob at that time. EAR Do you think the study section vote was the critical issue in the appointment? ER No, not at all. .I don't think it would have come up if it hadn't been because I think John Benjamin was chairing at the time. As these things come up with the staff, whether it came elsewhere my feeling was that unless they wanted him, obviously it wouldn't; have gone further and probably John never would have made the sug gestion. It's a possibility. EAR Well, it is interesting, because I think it is again another indic­ ator of the kind of flexibility and lack of rigidity that the NIMH had to do this to break some kind of unwritten law about professional status and the responsibility. Another part of that story you'd be interested to know is that Bob Felix did very seriously delilierate on that and one of the critical variables was that Alan Gregg knew Phil and told Bob that he thought Phi1 wou1d be the guy. ER (Yes, Alan had been with the Rmckefeller Foundation). I sus.pected that kind of took place because in the system it does occur. A good bureaucrat never lets anything get out of hand, and you plant the seeds. I remember that point. It was probably the first year I was on, maybe the second session, but it was part of that flexi­ bility, lack of rigidity and particularly when one is acquainted with the medical situation and could see how long it took to get the Deans to not be one of the clinical professors. Jacobson could do it only because he came up as Assistant Dean in selection, but it was a major landmark, I guess, for a psychologist. By that time Conger came along, probably because of Gaskill, Colorado never would 20 ER cont. have done it. Very few places would have taken someone like a. Johnny Conger, I can remember what impressed me about Gaskill. I tried to get him to Duke. He had some of that kind of attributes of Bob Felix, not letting his field get in his way. EAR Well, it is an interesting aspect of the whole story. Are there any particular incidents in the interaction with Phil that you think might be worthwhile to put down. Of course I know a lot about him, but maybe something to do ••••• ER I always had some warm feeling towards Phil. I don't know if I can think at the moment of a particular thing that comes to mind, except beyond his own style. EAR In any way, did his family situation ever get mentioned, you know, the fact that he was the son of a very famous anthropologist. ER No, everybody knew it obviously, but it never got in the way. Phil never talked about it. I knew about it because I was at Yale and my brother was one of Edward Sapir 1 s students. He got his doctor­ ate with Edward Sapir, I knew about it so Phil stood out that first summer. I wouldn't pay any attention. On occasion I would have undergraduates come, I'd spend my summer, so I knew who he was. But I must say, Phil never put that in and only on rare occasions did he ever mention the fact that his father was even a university professor. EAR He is a very interesting man. Anything else about the research program and your involvement with it that you want to mention. ER Yes, let's take this very section. I'd like to comment on the Title V, the professional services one, which was very unique and probably the most interesting time I ever had with NI]),,1H, especially the brainstorming. You have the feeling you're in on the brainstorm and trying to let the germ of something new develop. It was a mag­ nificent concept because I never did know all what happened when that body went out. It was a very useful kind of device and that was the one group that really brought the consultants in close contact with the staff, and with the staff expert in the area. That's where I really learned, because you'd spend a whole session with somebody on alcoholism, or someone else would take some other area and he'd really comb the literature, and then you'd sit two days and brain­ storm and feeling its joy and the fact that you're generating some­ thing, it's a different kind of a relation ship, because you're trying to nourish something, so you're not the enemy looking at them. That I thought was an excellent idea. 21 EAR Who are the people that stand out most in your mind? ER I have to kind of refresh my memory. Some of them went on when I went to the FDA Advisory Committee on Drugs. There was a fellow who died of a heart attack about 1968, a sociologist and we had contact with him on the whole drug area. I don't recall his name. EAR How about on staff? Did you have much interaction with Joe Bobbitt? ER Yes, of course, and probably ever since I first met him at Boulder. As a matter of fact, I tried to get Joe from NIMH to be Dean of our School of Social Welfare. But he decided against it. Joe always left me a bit perplexed. I was on APA committees. I followed him as Chairman of the Professional Services Branch, because he was a very verbal kind of guy, once he got going, very shar,p, and he could be very deceptive. People didn't see him as he really was. But at the same time there was a kind of a non-intellectual aspect. So many of the people at NIMH are kind of codger-heads, professors, Bob is one of the people who probably wouldn't have thrived at a university because he was a non-intellectual kind of a guy. EAR Did you have any feeling or sense of his relationship to Bob Felix? ER Yes, but I donlt know how accurate it is. One night, this was at Palo Alto, kind of reminiscing back in the old days when they were both in Coast Guard, and Bob indicated how he picked up Joe when he was at New London and then they worked together and he was the one who brought him into, essentially his assistant, he was Bob1sassistant. EAR And Sid new it too, early on. ER I first new Sid because he had been a Clark graduate. I think I first met Sid in the JOs, before the war because he got his degree from Clark about 1935 and on occasion he would come back to Worces­ ter. And then after the war, it had an impact on my getting the training grant, so I already knew him, he stopped by, EAR Any other people at NI:MH that we haven't mentioned. ER Of course, Vesty. I never got to know him well, he had this concern. At these various meetings, he had some of these same attributes as the NIMH staff, of not getting in the way of the field so psychologists felt he was really trying to understand psychology I had been on many committees where I felt a certain degree of condescension towards psychology, but that was never the case with Vesty. But I didn't have that much contact with him, I was an outsider, I wasn't on any of the training committees at that point. He used to come around quite regularly to the study sections 22 ER cont. to see what was going on in research, so that on the research study section I felt that I had a lot of close contact with him. The others are lower echelon staff. I think I commented briefly on psychology ••••• EAR What prompted Norm to take the job for two years? ER At that point Norm wanted some other kind of experience, and Max asked him to take it. He wanted to take it for just about ayear and he extended it for about a year and a half or so, but I think at that point it was a new perception. He would tramp all around the country, see the university programs and Norm was basically grooming him to be the director of clinical, when he got back, but I think it was just in that kind of atemporary period for a year and a half. EAR But you see, it set an interesting precedent because Max, of course, left, not to go to a university position but to the foundation, then Norm came and went back to the university and then from then on, each senior one went back, or rotated, Ken left, Irv left, Basowitz left, Forrest Tyler left. The only one who stayed now is Stan Shneider. ER Stan stayed longer than he ever anticipated. He probably thought he would be there a short period of time, when he first went there for the year. EAR But, in an accidental way, this was not planned. The psychology training specialist sequencing was a built in way of insuring that you didn't get overly rigid. ER Your 1 re absolutely right. That was one of the strengths. The fact that it could be turned over. You-probably had to pay the price. Unless you got the right kind of training guy then, who was the equivalent of a Vesty and would have had the chance of preparing long term plans but probably with the growth, he wouldn't have been there for long, he would have moved up along the line. What was also important was to have people who could communicate to the universities, and some problems more recently with staff on that •••• EAR Let me make one point I forgot to mention earlier. This story is going to end in 1971 at the 25th anniversary, because I think more recently things have happened that I can't explain, I don't want to describe, I don't want to be involved in, I don't want to talk about it. And to rationalize it to myself, I think we are too close to it right now. I think if you're going to write a story you have 23 EAR cont. to cut off at a point someplace •••• ER That's the story, I realize. When you deal with history you have to do it with objectivity. EAR Yes, you have to have a perspective. Did we leave anything out ••• ER Yes, let me include one, that specifically affects you. Do you remember Fritz? We had Carl u. Smith at Wisconsin, and I remember Carl way back. I can remember my first APA and hearing his report when he was at Rochester with Carmichael and kind of a feistiness about it. Then I taught one summer at Wisconsin and I got to know him reasonably well and you get under the surface of a basically warm, kind of shy guy, but at the same time a guy who always has to get into a fight over something, basically he is not a team man. But at that particular one, I was just kind of recent, Jack French was chairing it, Fred was trying to generate, it was very clear, he had several reports, he was not establishment. And I made at that time, well it was kind of warm, something that was quite unique, and it wasn't Carter Smith per se, but the idea was to try to get away from the classical business of the bench science and here he was trying to get into systems stuff and industrial background, and yet he had a physiological background. But it was clear he was having his undergraduates, probably unorthodox, and so I thought there was going to be a little discussion and Jack French quickly said let's give him the grants. And everybody was quite puzzled. It's something like ~he small grant business. You have a kind of maverick out here, you don't want to create the impression for a program that you actually want to have people come and run off their ideas and the only way to do is occasionally drop a little pellet in that, but not too much, so the field knows that, so there was so much enthusiasm, and you were trying to put a damper on it and saying something about Harry Harlowe and it was very clear what the answer was. But then I remember Jack pushing it through and Jack very typically making a quick decision. Well that stands out particularly in your case where you were trying very gently fix on the relevance of that, I never talked about it with Fred because he was constantly fighting for what he had in mind, he was invested, he would cut every~ody in sight down. EAR You should take a couple of minutes to talk about Fred. He's another phenomenon, really, of NI:MH. We brought him in, and I thi:nlc Fred has, and I'll reveal my own bias, I bhink Fred has done absolutely 24 EAR cont. an incredible job, almost a one-man job, of building programs. And in a model, interestingly enough, which was somewhat at variance with otherpeople. Most of us at Staff were very sensitive precisely to the point that we had money and that people deferred to us, you couldn't help it, people tried to seduce you all the time and you had to be aware of that. So, many of us bend over backwards to avoid acting in some ways as if this bag of money that we had would influence our behavior toward you, or should influence your behavior toward us. And as you pointed out a couple of times, I think Staff facilitates, but didn't push and didn't order. ER And that was clear and was very important because it meant that the consultants that you brought in felt free enough, they just weren't tried being manipulated by somebody. EAR But Fred took a very paternal role and he had no difficulty telling people what to do. ER But the twist for Fred was this was not bureaucracy. The fact that he was constantly going around, I represent the bureaucracy, that's the typical opening gambit constantly that Fred would use. But basically Fred is not anything like that. He has such a personal view as to where he felt the field should go, it was conviction down to his toes. And in one sense, it's somewhat with a more polished form that Bob had. This is where the field should go, probably what Dave did, otherwise you give up too soon, and you have to relearn how to make use of the system. So Fred has his convictions so in one sense, if one were somewhere he wasn't going to back away too readily. It wasn't because he was doing a bureau­ cracy or manipulating people, he essentially wanted to fight it out with you, whether it was staff of consultants. And in that sense, it had a lot of impact, probably much more because he was also kind of intolerant of mediocrity, the thing could have really floundered if Fred were a mediochre guy. But he wasn't. Probably the fact that he grew up in a good setting, with good science, was a bright good scientist himself and hardworking had enormous impact. I know Fred had a number of times, since we were close colleagues for a number of years, that his shaping wasihatWorcester situation and with Hudson Hogan, who was a p~ychologist, became a physiologist w.no it was that whole climate, and the people/had an enormous impact on Fred, I keep saying, was Les Phillips and myself and Fred now occasionally comes buy and he will free associate about his early 25 er Cont. days. He says ha didn't know anything about psychology, but he had ~ind of a personal component, but it opened up a factor, that for him as a pharmacist, came in that route, not even a biochemist,, and so the behavior was too far away, and there was a whole universe of very capable people that you didn't quite understand and that this had to be part of the matrix. He stayed with it and produced one 0£ the most beautiful studies, he and Les Phillips, and I've used it in classes, it was one of the first s.tudies that showed a correlation between CR of .65 between a Rorschach and Rea11y you'd be satisfied with a third of that. It was probably published in the 50s. Les couldn't have done it on his own. In one sense it's a validation of the Rorschach which the Rorschach has never used, and at the same time it's the other side because it means , what kind of a: system do you have to postulate that's going to have this kind of an impact. That was the kind of thinking that Fred brought to bear on that business, so he wasn't just turning a crank but putting it into a framework of psychology, behavior, biochemistry and so on, he rea11y meant it. Probably, unless he thought that way, I can see in many of those cases, when I was on the committee, it could have been some lousy grants but most of them have turned out. Some of those eye=site visits, some of them, Hrl did 1 nt have as much power, but when you consider the early genetic stuff, etc, and a few places had pipe grants, the Florida program is a beautiful case where I was so impressed with their surgery department. You get a psycho­ logist and a neuro-surgeon, key people in my department would be psycho1Qgists, I could build a program on it • .And I have a feeling that if you go through conventional systems, if it hadn't been for that one, if you went to psycholpgy you wouldn't have gotten in, Medicine wouldn't have as much as one of the other institutes, but it took that particular program that could bring them in without regard to who was the top guy. So that's a point aspect of Fred's. More recently he feels outdated. He's on a new mission, do you know that? Fred's had certain frustrations. He really would like to be an acting • That's true I'd say, of about 60 or 70. He'd like to be in an administrative position. At the same time the right things hadn't occurred for one reason or another, it has to be a medical school at the same time, it has to be a super kind of a situation for him, so he had the idea of trying to put on, being in the management aspects of science administration 26 ER cont. and how to do it in such ways to deal with this problem of the power business etc, and how do you get an administrator who isn't trying to use it for developing his own little field, so it caME OUt that Richard was going to work with the School of Manage­ ment on three periods, I don't know it if it going to end up any­ where, but he is trying to set up a set of interviews, the first time he interviewed people in medical schools and Jack French had got it. Then he wanted to know, on this campus, are there some other people in other fields who were interested in Science Adminis­ tration and I put him in touch with one of our people in Philosophy EAR Well, he's going to be a powerful man. Is there anybody else whom we haven't mentioned that you want to put on the record? ER Well, Jerry Carter. I have enormous respect for Jerry. I think Jerry had an enormous impact on the training program, even though he was not formally a part of that training group. He had this quiet way of going around, I think that started off even at Boulder when he was at that point Chief Psychologist of his own clinic, and essentially making that clinic a psychological clinic, an excellent model, and doing it in a way that we were not fighting anybody and it was very healthy. Over the years Jerry was very important. And another guy was very important. I can't remember his name at the moment. And at North Carolina one of the people from NIMH, a social worker by the name of Dolan, Dorothea Dolan, was put in Raleigh, then there was a psychiatrist at NIMH whose visit was part of that program in supporting things, I can't remember his name, but the key thing was wanting to get some support when I~ came down to Duke, my first commission basically was Duke, in the psychology department, basic­ ally a new program, trying to build its relationship to the depart­ ment, I was looking for things that we could use for training in the community, to the two places, Dix Hill and Putnam ••••• those early days, trying to characterize some aspects of the NIMH situation, Curtis Southars, Well, in any case, I was happy to see Jerry and met him at Boulder and he was down, and to give it a kind of community sense, I was looking for places to train our people and what was happening when I came down to Duke was that basically it had kind of lack of imagination in training, so we used the VA, we got consultantships so at Duke they had brought in Fritz Kubler, but paid his salary by making him a full time consultant, that was fine, that was how you shoe-horn something. But then we were having 27 ER cont. trouble with our first evaluation, so the task was basically to do a job with the Worcester setting. I probably came there because I knew Carlsey there and Koch and since I was also a research. So my conviction was that training, research, teaching, should all be in theS:Une setting, which was what was happening there. I was sending someone out to the VA somewhere, it had nothing to do with research and then the people trying to fish around £or some research problems, it had nothing to do with their clinical work, the usual state of affairs, not so much out of the university after all these years. So it came down to the problem of how to find settings, and the medical schools were very weak at that point and we only had the VA and I wanted to do someting in the community, something comparable to the Brains Clinic, I had known Maury Greenhill who also has been on various NIMH committees over the years, and I knew Maury, had first met him back in the Worcester days when I met. George Sazlow. So when I came down there Maury was one of the people in the medical school and one of the key people there in psychology. We had a small Child Guidance Center in town that was being supported by the Junior League and Maury had some contact with it because he wanted to get some of the residents there to get some experience. As soon as I got there, we needed some things and had some ideas about how to make the place better, and tried to get funds. We needed to get some community support for the clinic, this was where Jerry was helpful. He told me about Dorothea Dolan in the community, there was no state money available. Dorothea was kind of a feisty gal, but had the right values. I got to know her and put in a bid. Curtis would come down regularly. Then I tried to get some support from Raleigh. I went up to Washington at that point. He was down town. Curtis was a little helpful in getting us a little money through Raleigh, which was to support the social work, and I wanted to get a psychologist in there. I got the Vice President of the University to okey our getting some university money for a psycholo­ gist. So we got the university involved, and then we got a small office space, and then we got Maury involved in trying to get some federal money, we got some dormitory space from the university, then we were able to bring in a psychiatrist, and from these little beginnings. It was an example of that early effect, it was just a dollar, it was the openness. I felt that this was not part of a mission, it was not a program at that point, it wasn't part of our 28 ER cont. train;ng program with our little grant, because that's the kind of money you couldn't get for this because we were talking about building up a community :facility, but then again there was tftms early openness. Now_this was not Bob Felix and it wasn't the training branch of Vesty 1 s but he obviously had the influence. I remember initially Dorothea Dolan was a cold, kind of :feisty. I was kind of distressed thinking she would be a kind of a pain in the neck type. But then as it opened up she ended up being a very warm supporter in this little Mickey Mouse program growing up at Duke. EAR And obviously we did multiply this by many other instances. I'd like to be able, I hope I can, really by this cumulative presenta­ tion of all.these little instances and with some inte ~retation, wi.L11ngness really to characterize that kind of openness that(one has)to take a chance on something that would benefit the :field, that each o:f these was an opportunity both :for itself and :for the totality, that we had a mission, you used the word yourself, that we had a national mission which would be implemented with all o:f these particular activities. ER What it means is probably the essence of a good bureaucracy institution, o:f being sufficiently open to be even identify and take advantage of little targets of opportunity so that you can't generate it by a big plan, you have to take the standard opportunity and move it to fit your needs, where the program is going. And so it is in this sense that Fred was a good example, because he's taken this in its complexity, but his thinking is that you :find a guy and you pick a price that he thinks has his values, then using all of his strengths to shape and build a program and see that he gets some money. EAR Well, you see, it raises a very important larger issue in which also in one respect gets back to the point we were making about what happens with institutions over time. The whole NIH, not just the NIMH, ethos early on of which I think Bob Felix and Jim Shannon were two o:f the best proponents was to find a good person and to give them a chance to do what they wanted to do. To :find a good person and give them as much flexibility, that worked absolutely beautifully until the early 1960s when a congressman :from North Carolina by the name of Fountain decided that Congress needs to get into the act and a very important thing happened. The gift approach, which Shannon espoused, federal money given to people, inherently :flexible money to do whatthey wanted to do, was changed to a contract. 29 EAR cont. A contract between the government and an individual. You made a grant applicat.ion, you said what you were going to do. That I s what you had to do. It was not a gift, it was a contract. Shannon lost that battle. ER I didn't know that this was out of the import(?) and noticed the change that took place, the whole concept ••• EAR That was the surgerg----- now i think to be fair, there is apoint to be made. You did sign a con~ract, you did write a proposal, you were reviewed, the study section read the proposal, that's what you were supposed to do in the larger conception, but not to be nailed down every god-damn detail •••• ER And that's the problem at the present time. I find it very difficult to talk shop and those of us who had been under the early influence still try to use the old system, like in the 50s, with the study section, you got a good guy and then you didn't worry about the details and a As a matter of fact, you slipped him a sack full of ready-to-do/site visit, and it would be a very open thing, some of those applications were very short. Everybody that is doing research knows that the only way you can protect yourself is that you either go and things down or you're doing a Mickey Mouse kind of athing, or you've already done the study, and many of us who have survived this system could tell you how it's going to come out, because you're always three years ahead. I remember how shocked Phil was by the time he came in, the reason why I muld write a strong appli­ cation was because of all the pilot work, and also you got all the bugs out and so you could get papers that were coming out, and so you built this on stuff that was going to be processed, you built your application on this and then you ripped ahead, you use this as an example to show your merit and then you have the open=endedness. That's what the projects that Norm and I, I was not going to associate it that way, it was true with the training grant kind of monies, but some of them that succeeded were having that trouble. The first time around, you took the grant that was originally like for coping behavior, and what we wanted to do with that was open up a field lab at Ventura. I talked with Camaria and what we had done was to go ahead and take that money and set up a ward, and use that grant money to pay for psychologists and then we went ahead and wanted to use the grant and found we couldn't because this didn't talk about drugs, so we had to go and get a second application and it fouled us up. To get a batch of these things going out, all you're 30 ER cont. doing is constantly writing applications, deadlines, site visits and those are the kind of reasons we get in the track record. What we really wanted was some upen=ended money that we could be straight about it, we weren't asking more than we need, but if you're going to be tight, then we have to start protecting our= selves. So you don't have the continuities, you have to secure an extra unnecessary grant, and then we have to with them, other- wise who could sit around and suddenly have them collapse. The prob­ lem was that we then had two grants, which we'd like to integrate into a single one and we can't do it. We ended up with different sections and then we start using some of the money for some of the others, and now it's under fire and the auditors have been complain-­ ing, etc. but this kind of system won't work. The problem, I suppose, in the early days, was smaller, monies were 1ess •••••• but you've got to watch the.ripuff and probably in that sense the contract gets more important, but you still feel you have to get that flexi­ bility in there, there are some who are still capturing it, but it's getting worse and worse. I remember now on the study section, it was very important in respect to the early days on the integra­ tion of training and research. Frequently applications would come in and it was kind of a teaching setting, and you'd say, well, give him some money~if he's supporting a graduate student and put that research as training, so we even added some more than he first asked for. We had been under fire because we should hire employees, we were operating like a research institute and if you're supporting a graduate student, you have to have employees, and all we wanted was some graduate student stipend money so that•s the proper way to really get the research done. But the system is eo articulated, this is training and that's research and you can't integrate them. That particular problem is getting worse. EAR Well, anything else you want to mention. It's been very helpful. I am continuing to get increasing documentation of the character which I think is very important. ER I can mention one other. This involves Yo11es. It's one that is only likely to bring trouble. I think you were in on it. This was just about 66 or something, and we had a meeting of the various training committees and that was at the time the Community Mental Health Centers were coming in. Poor Yolles had a rough time because some of the people were really very angry with NIMH. I remember 31 ER cont. a psychiat~ist up at Yale, Seymour Saracen, he was very upset because he had this little program , so he wanted abroader concept and in training, and I don't remember the staff' person involved at that point, but there was kind of' an agenda, and then there was all this concern, not only with Saracen, but there were two people in psychiatry, who wanted more discussion, and we could not because of' the agenda, and Stanley got them very angry, he came in with his little talk and he just didn't have the knack of' relating to the groups the-·· way, Hal wou1d have had them eating out of' his hand, so it ended up he was trying to give a report and it didn't hit, because he didn't sense what was troubling these people, and they were on the firing line, and they wanted a discussion about it. The next morning we had a breakfast meeting and I knew the staff' was on the spot, because he'd start changing, he opened up a can of worms, and you had the other people angry at Stan because he didn't do what they wanted, and so this second day he said he would allow some discussion, of an open agenda. It always bothered me because I didn't know what the aftermath was, whether some staff really got kicked for letting that thing get out of' hand. EAR No, but you point up a very important, in terms of' just sheer brain power there's no comparison. He's an extraordinarily bright man. Bob, in a peculiar way, didn't have Stan's administrative ability. One of' the themes that I'm going to bring out is that in an unusual way, Bob was exactly the right person for the leadership of' NIMH when he was there at the time, and in some respects, Stan was the right person, putting aside some of' the personal problems he had with people, but exactly the right person £or the organization when he was there. He is an administrative genius • .And maybe it touches again on the thing we've mentioned time and time again that there is a period in the life of' an organization where it changes in such a way that the approach that one may have had early on, no longer works later on. I don't think Bob could have done the job organiza­ tionally that Stan did. I don't think he would have wanted to. ER Because this was kind of' a personal relationship with people. EAR He wasn't that kind of' a detail man. You know, Stan sees boxes, he lives boxes, he sees detail, he lives detail, he knows organiza­ tion, but he's not locked into that. He's a very creative guy too. Not just an obsessively detailed guy, but he's intolerant of' other 32 EAR cont. people in a way that Bob never was. He had an inability to allow the free interchange that Bob •••• ER That was what I was picking up at that time. EAR That's what you were getting. He didn't have ••• ER Since I was kind of nominal chairman of this purely training commit­ tee which wasn't an open-ended thing, and to deal with staff issues, and once it gets out of hand, and at the same time, I felt that you don't want being sat on, because it was the strength of that whole committee system. Once it got opened up there was a whole set of moving against policy and so on, the kind of thing you don't want to have happened and worried me because I didn't know whether I should try to get staff support, I didn't want to get anybody in trouble on it, it was one of those unhappy kind of times, things didn't go right. There was one other aspect, I remember, about Joe Bobbitt. Joe and Stan never got on. EAR That was a problem and was from the very beginning. One of my regrets about this whole book is that I never did get to talk to Joe Bobbitt. He died before I got to him and I'm going to have to talk to Sid Newman. I haven't really thought about Sid as being part of the stocy, but in many respects he is, and he also, over the years, was a very very close friend of Joe Bobbitt. ER Yes, they were in the Coast Guard together. EAR And from then on they were very close. No, Stan's relationship with Joe Bobbitt was very strained and very bad. Bob's in a sense, more one of personal anguish than Stan's• because Joe Bobbitt was the one who was being pushed out, ER And particularly since he had such a close relationship with Bob Felix •••• EAR But I don't want to get too much distance from it. I think it's one of the things that happened in ordinary interchange of minds. ER Joe didn't talk about it at all, except it was clear that they didn't get on, and he had to move out and went over to NICHD but he really didn't want to get in his hair, so he never got into that except he really didn't speak of what the quarrel was. EAR It's sort of a major schism among people because there were people who were very close to Joe Bobbitt, John Eberhardt, Phil Sapir, Seymour Curie, and later on Lou Wyncowski, all of whom were tripping alliance with Joe against Stan and my situation is a 33 EAR cont. little bit anamolous because I'm one of the few people around who is on good terms with everybody. It's really funny in a way, but, you know, I'm obviously very close to Stan but it hasn't in any way inhibited my relationship •••• ER I think you would have been able, if you hadn't gone through the VA, if you had been for a while, but had been part of that whole (EAR- no) along with, at the same time with Joe, (EAR - no_) probably you would have gotten in league, you wouldn't .have managed ••• You came in at a later time, you came in just at the right time ••••• EAR Actually, I was there before Stan moved into Central Office. He was at the Prince .George •s Study Section, and then Joe Bobbitt went on something we called the "Twenty Schools study" and then that's when Stan came in as Acting Assistant Director •••• ER You moved over at the time that Ray did ••• EAR Yes, Ray.just preceded me. I came in Feb. 58. Ray just preceded me and brought'me in and I was hired after he brought Vesty, so it's a very vivid memory in my mind. Well, listen, this has been extremely helpful and I appreciate it very much and in my effort to avoid my being completely captive of my own prejudices and so it's terribly important to have all this input, and om of the things I h~ve to do more of, we just touched on it this last moment, is to make sure that it isn't all sweetness and light. I think to some extent it was a very happy time and I think all of us who were involved at all levels, almost everybody I've talked to has very warm, positive, enthusiastic feelings about their relationship to NIMH and I think that's essentially what the major story is, but there were some internal problems, there were some stresses, there were some people who were badly hurt from time to time, both inside and out, and I think, whether it's a Carl u. Smith, in some minor way, or whether it's a Joe Bobbitt, in a much more important way. ER And there must have been some major things, in a counterpart of a group, it's just a little ripple part here ••••• There 1 s another aspect I've heard more recently, people would comment around NIMH, some I had contact with over the years, had felt that maybe it might have been an error to have kept this big organization getting so big, when it dealt with services as well as research and training, and maybe it should have gone to the old Institute and let another offshoot because in one sense, the problem of full complexity right now ER cont. and those on the outside, feel that a lot of its pro.b.lemf iswhat you do if you have a certain size, you have probl~ms. Remember when I took over from Dave, Dave kept a happy show, his problem whs that Phillips never quite captured that , that is, when you're in an organization you don't want to get so big that all the other people gang up on you, and I remember Dave's feeling that psycho­ ogy's gone, don't let it get so big, particularly if you have weak psychiatry.,. and I tried to do that. That's one of the reasons I -bfJaink I've been a successful administrator in universities. A lot of the problems are when you dominate. When you get very big you have the problem of dealing with Congress support, your mission gets fuzzed up all over the place. EAR Well, that's an important point, and of course, in an even more extreme fashion, the Danny Friedman concept is that NIMH should never have shifted from the NIH .mode·l, nell'er, that was a mistake from the beginning, it shouldn't have been done, and research should have been first and foremost •• t •• ER But I can also see the problem, with Danny, and his biological implementation(?) he doesn't want them to lose that big size approach, proably it was the set of attributes that would have been difficult to stay with, within the classical NIH model, but that was clear back in the 50s. I think the clearest thing was like that Title V. When yoy look back to what's happened to fields like psychology, what a long haul it's been to change the matrix of the researcher and that probably would have taken •••• EAR I personally feel, and again I have to try to make the right balance, I personally feel that the tripod of research NLM NOTE: Interview tape ends abruptly here