DR. JOSEPH SPEISMAN November 7, 1977 JS I don't think I really ever had a genuine sense of the operations of the Institute to external politics which were very important and' obviously all of us got some sense of that. Let me give you some impressions first of all, those that remain vivid because I remet1!,bel'.' when I first jotned the Institute I was coming off a disappointment~· academically, and was angry in many respects about what I felt a particular academic Institution was doing that didn"-t enable 1 psychology to really put to$ether· what was possible and I' found at the Institute, I think at almost every level-where I had contact in those days, the willingness to think and a willingness to approach issues, first of.all from the specifics of my particular set of interest, psychology as such, but also in terms of an integration.. I used to say this all the time .... it was. a f irst~class outfit. The people there were and they were from all disciplines and research focus or training focus didn't matter a hell of a lot, but there was always the concept-ion that we had a very broad mission and that we could do it and it seemed to me that charact~rized the place for many years while I was there and it was only toward the latter part of my stent there':" I cmne here in 1968 - that I had the sense that we were headed for difficult times and it wasn ''t always the Institute "s problems by any means but the political changes., EAR You .gqt there in 1961 or 1962? JS In 1962. Just the Psychplogy Section alone at that t;bne ~. whe was the Ch:t,ef e;e the Branch? You were the EAR Ray Feldma~ JS Yes, Ray Feldman was Chief at that point and you were the Assistant Chief and I even the Psychology Section itself not too liong befor~ that for example li.ad made a strong pitch apparently to broaden its scope and7::to include what the field could possibly contribute to the mental health area and that turned out to be to my mind at least, what one could see the most effortful kinds of things and 2. JS'(continued) still not achieve all the p0ssib:l1it:tes that existed SQ i;n.. tl\at impressionistic sense the Institute was· a place to dig :tn ·and do wh~t: was needed to be done.. It is not as though there wasnlt critical exchange there always was and I am speaki'~1g now quite outside of the internal politics those were there and they had to be dealt with bu.t rather in terms of ideas and exeba~es and competition.. The various branches were competing and they competed on the busin~ss of ideas and potential and program rather than on the business of polttic·s alone br any means. So that kind of thing~ I think one of the strongest kinds of atmospheric conditions that enabled most people to do a very good job .. EAR What persuded you to come to the Institute-? You alluded to the £act that there was a disappointment in prior professional relationships, JS Partly, it was the people ~ th.at is the people t s-poke to were· tap~evel professionals .as far as I was concerned~- Irv and Hal and Ken was just leaving at that point and they were'."!filled with the notions of what was possible and this broader scope to include research training and to try to provide that in the field so partly it was just the fact that these were people who were directly in the field of psychology itself.- I coul-d feel a genuine colleagueship with and learn something from and perhaps contribute something very real- People in other areas: similarly,. Stan Yolles, for example, was EAR He had not yet become Director, he was Assistant D;b:ec.tor JS In fact, Felix left I guess at the end of my first year or se~ond year._ - He was there for some time. EAR Early in 1964 JS So it was about a year and a. half or two years,: something like that anq. Yolles obviously was filled then with the ideas of what eoltllnunity mental-· health might be like, that again was on an issue that was progrannna.tic in 3. JS (continued) nature and indeed, one of the very first things I did in talking for example to Hal and Irv .... they suggested you know is there aj,piece of this that you feel you would really like to dig in.to, what's possible and I said '''why don't we tie into this, these ideas of community mental health'·' .... there is no such thing as community psychology or there wasn '\t a few people thinking and ta.llcing mayb~- there is something there and within six months or so we had a couple of people in. I think Eliot Rodnick we asked in as a consultant and.,.. I can't remember, there were three people all together. ' --: EAR HaroJ.cil Rouch was still in the Intermural program,. he hadn "t gotten into eonnnunity, yet~ ' / ' JS It wasn•·t Harold - t_here wer~ ,three outside people. Anyway, ·that was o~e of the kinds of things that were easily done, you bring in .some pe'pple who have a critical view of what a potential program might be and you·· started to put it together and we had that· --------Conference as a result of those· beginnings and the people in the Institute ~ I don ''t want to make this sound as though it wa.s all a bed ef roses, it wasn ' t,. but 1 there was always a genuinely critical approach rather ~h~hany, that I felt, an. ,ov.er.lay of politics, internal politics that you simply had :to wade thhough and for whatever that was worth, it was an effort then to put something together on a program basis, it was simply done- I· am not so sure what the ultimate outcome of that c0nfereneeand what followed from. it, some good things happened and it was never a highly successful t-ld.ng in Psychology but there were some programs that were put together from it. The relationship with the other areas in the Institute, there were the kinds of tensions, Eli, that I always felt were productive, even when I' might have been at my feeling most wrong about something that was going on, there was always the clear sense that nursing had a piece of what was going on 4. JS ( continued) and could mal<:e a_ good case for what they were doing,. sacial work could make an~exeellent case for some of the·things that they were doing and psy,chia.t:¥Y and s_o forth and this was even before the Special Branches 0 were opened·L- that is before Ralph and I guess Ray Ballister started in the Special programs or the experimental area, it was Just about at that time that it was beginning in service. Psychiatry always was the fall guy in those days, they had the biggest chunk of c:ash;_ the biggest prog'I'a1:ll and possibly least able to attract top~level pe8ple through that period at least so you always- had -those tensions, we don "t have enough. and they have too mueh but in the exchanges I -~~ver had· .the sense that there was simply such a dominant theme that nne couldn't get done what one needed, even on the level of internal politics, I guess I am saying, you could make your way and that simply lends itself to something you can say that this is a place for me to work and think, EAR You had no feelings then of profession or ~chelarly distress in ha-v~ng moved from -------.-- JS In fact, the choice I made, I had two j_ob offers that I had sought out, one was the Institute and one was at the University of Michigan, which after all is probably one of the best departments in th.e country, and I made a choice for the Institute partly on kind of personal grounds, that is, I wanted to regroup my own thinking and rethink where I was and the Instttut-e was probably the best place to learn what was going on in psychology throughout the ________, no question about that, so my choice was on that\ level as much as it was on the basis of~· if I felt that the Institute was a place where we were simply a·bunch of bureacratEJ, I don"t think I' would have made the choice, but it was clear that given-that kind of opportunity with a professional level of people, I had no problems with the choice, and it was the right one as far as I am concerned.. l think I went :tn and out good, healthy in all respects11 5. EAR Well, it is interesting to put a little btt morea;t; a desev~pttve. eQlllJD,ent (i)n the four branches, I' think you are right, I' think that for a variety of reas·ons the scholarly level and the national prestige of the people in psychiat-ry.were not equivalent to that in psychology ~nd by the same token, what you ha~e jus't cotmllented on, was almost the give1:dn psychology, people came in, knowing full well that they ware going to b~ th~re for three,four or five years at most and then go on back into the academic connnunity, in social work and in nursing work it was not true. And, in psychiatry it was a mixed bag, really, it was not as clearly a place for some­ one to take not an interim position but a position in the sequence of their professional growth and development that would be very useful in the subsequent responsibilities that they took on, which is exactly whats happened with our ------• What can you, I am kind of refreshing your memory on some things~ Can you think of anything either early on or later on that you could recall as kind of being illustrative of an ac,tivity or an event, or an incident illustrative of some of the unique qualities of NIMH, its responsibility nationally, it;s involvement in the growth and development of psychology, something that you remember as a vividly as being a good example of the manner in which the program operated and revealed the kind of quality you just described? Any one? JS Well, one of them was that Swamska, for example which was a~~ development where all 1 staff work was available where the necessity to bring in people and get their critical responses was easily done. Any kind of option that was necessary in order to bring the best possible group together, the Institute sintply supported it, Once the idea was accepted that t:Iiis :,would _,be a good thing to pursue.,- in other words good f:or mission of the Institute, then everythillg was done and all I had to do or,we had to do at that point was put it together and to find the best people and bring them together. I think is a good illustration, whether ultimately we consider its outcome to have been what we all wanted, it was the kind of thing 6. JS(continued) the Institute did ~ceptionally well~ EAR Prograt1t..1development. JS Yes, program development and even Program Development where up to that point there was no program in the field, in other words, we would genuinely develop in the field as much as we were trying to put something together that existed and make it better or make it more available. It was genuine development, almost from the ground floor. Now, on the other side of that, another kind of illustra~ tion, psychology has always been a field that, espe~i~lly clinic21.-1 psychology and the other areas of psychology always been somewhat publically self-reflective. The Institute was probably the major organizing force for allowing the field to have its several conferences to bring these people together and enable it to have that kind of probe pattern. Now, that wa,sn'-t organized from the grouE,d floor so to speak or foundation level but rather to enable a eentfnued reflective development on the part of the field. We still don't know the ultimate benefits or lack of them on those purposes. So are things I would think of without any hesitation. EAR That's a veryccritical point, I think, not only in psychology but perha.p~lnost clearly and most vividly in psyehe>logy the series of professional c:onferenc·es which took place. JS It was always the Institute'· that enabled them.- EAR From the Bolder conference on. That,. s very good.. Years ago George Sazlow ~ did you ever interact with him? JS Yes EAR That's JoeModerotso•s better half. George Sazlow to1d ·me. He said, ttEli, some day you are going to have to write an novel about the way the various committee '·s worked .... review committee '·s, and I think in many ~e~pect_s that whole story has not been effectively told .. · I th:lnk of all the: single phenomena wfth:b1. the operation of the Institute, the one which probatrihy had.the most beneficial side effects of various kinds was the operation of tbe various Review· groups 7. EAR(continued) training Committee and of course, Study sections, Now you were very intimately involved obviously with one of the most effective of the Training Committee's because of'!'."' well, in some respects the unique quality of some of those people on those Committee'··s r think just as the s·taff was, extraordinarily competent so we were able t()): draw on" Would. you·wa:q;t tE? talk~ little,b:f;t about that, JS I am glad you reminded me because if I could think of anything that gave professional plea.sure, growth and a sense of really being able to accomplish somethiag, it was through and· with those Comm.ittee'·s and· it was .,..• :r don''t know how to say this to make· my meaning clear but when he said write .a novel he had a sense of what I think I am trying to be responsive to because'~'it"; was 7 :at the high,est levels of of professional exchange always. Each of the Staff as::.they in turn took on the. responsibility for the meetings of.the Psychology Training Committee for· -example, we would always go out of aur way, to provt,d.e those Committee members with the pr,oper -"v. that"'s ptioba.bly the, wrong word, ~ the kind of setting that enabled them to do the work that we felt was most critical and I think they did, we dicj it obviously__ in the professional sense that is with the best kind of Staff support. I mean the women for example \ . ' and they were women who worked in the records group and'in the·eontracts management group and so forth were for the most part supeitb. The secretarial staff, now all of those things occurred Rot only because there maybe was a large labor force in Washington or things like that, but because they were attracted to the quality of the work that was being done, so on one level the Staff was being responsive, that is the Psychology S'taff at least I: don l t know the others as intimately, 'to -the real potential of brirtgi,ng sµ.~'h , group together and enabling them to work and to participate fully in the work as we went on and as_I said even on a social level the>kinds of evening dinners 8. JS(continued) that we had were of the highest order: tha.t r can recall ~n. any are.a, of the level of exchange, the kind of eonvers-tati.on., the quality 0£ interact·ion among all concerned simply was superb~ EAR Can you think of such speciJ!':t:c incidents, !nd:r;v:tdua.l circun\atanc·es ?>even tal,k about people, I will give you one of my own· prejudices ~- En\<>-ry, Cowan £or ~e was one of the hardest working guys you ever had' •. JS He probably still is, EAR But, he was by no means unf-que. JS Now you know Seymour Saracen is a guy who comes to mind'for·example ..- Seymour is a kind o.f ------ in many ways, heis almost always cr:ttical of everything and yet ·when Seymour was operating with that Committee I can''t even remember just who was on the Committee with him. at allti'.llles, ~e had a part:tculqr;perspectivv~ and a point of view about psychology and wha1::'•it should provide and it was?.:broader than the perspective of most for· that .time.. And, as critic.al as he was-,,. he was \'. always able to get his ideas pu1t :.~forward and do so in context where he knew he was going to get honest responses and critical responses in that sense~ A quite different.kind of guy, but his name is eluding me for the moment was the Chainnan at Duke, who was the Chairman of the Committee the first.two years :twas there .. r· think he is dead now" Very different from S'eym,0ur that ~. they ~te a,lm,ost entirely opposites - and yet his impact was quiet but te1;1ribly effective at the same time. A single. incident, I don't know whether I caa really you know with a dramatic flavcn; I am ·not sure<C-.can raise~ but - _, - - ~ - EAR Well, let it lie a~-tnf.nute. I thiak my feeling about the Comm.ittee· and her Connnittee was especially even. as the membership rotated as. it inevitably did each year or so JS Carl, the name is still bugging me. EAR As the membership rotated somehow the Committee remained a ,very integrated whole, everyone in a sense played a slightly different role within the Connnittee; 9. EAR(continued) but it wasn't a group of disparate people working together, just as Seymour for example played a particular role or Emory played a particular role or Dave M.a.cClelland or I guess Herb Kelman was tb:el.".e .- after~.:y;ou had left, but there were a number of people' who were there ~t various times and the Committee changed its personality so to speak but it always had a kind of personality·~ JS It remained as I described it earlier all through, never had an instance that I can rem.ember at least where the Committee didn't take on its own character and personality but always Task orien·ted and effective group 'l !AR You might waIJt to talk a. moment or two about ~ I \(new it was a c·omplete pleasur.e for ev;erybody to work in that kind of atmosphere. because it was so intellectually stimulating and so professionally relhfclrding but what do you recall if anyone even shared with you the thought, what do you recall that may have motivated the various individuals to be members of the C0tnmittee. T1.;,ue:, tµe most obvious was it was a national point of prestige to be a ·member of that Committee but there was more than that,~ whq.,t: were some of the comments 1 if any that people shared with you about why they.'served on the Committee? JS They had the same sense that is the Committee members felt that this wa.s a place where their careers'as scientists or as profession~ls was going to be enhanced intellectually in all other ways.. That"s not something I·"'m. inferring that was said any number of times It The kind of reluctance with which people left the Cotnmittee was a clear instance af that, .Joe, the DeveloPlllenta.1:i::st at Illinois, I am still as bad. with names as I' ever was, Elf, 1-l,is 11.a,m,e ~ll have to come back, but I can remember h-is last ses-s:ton on the,::,connnittee and he made a little speech when we had dinner to the effect that he had felt that he had grown more over that period of years, three years or so, in relationship to the Committee members than at any other given period of his life, profession~ al life and I don't think that there is any question about the fact that 10. JS(contin.ued) . . . they felt that there was real service to be' pe;rfonned that is they had a clear an important function to play with the Insf:f:.tute but what they were gettimg in return was equally clear and equally effective. EAR Well, q.lf the parts interacted so well because I think that you had to have reasonalily good applications to begin with, to spark this sort of thing, the site visits had to be meaningful and a circumstance which the give and take between the potential grantee and the s·taff and the site visitors had to be illuminating nat only of that one particular program but what it would mean_ or could mean to the total effort on a nati;onal effort so all these things interacted in a very positive way.t ' JS Right. You know it wasn •t as though the Oo.•~ttee eou!dn•t~ be toughi ev~n with very well-known people and programs, and sorforth •. They were quite willing t9 be to apply a critical view to a program~ I' guess lam trying to talk to a sense of integrity and honesty now, that is the Committee never 1 felt a political pressure for e:kampl'e that was external to its own work,. There was not even although obviously we spent hours taling about the relation.,. ship with the Conncil and what their policy function.might be and the other staff of the Institute and what their positions might be and vewould spend literally hours trying to think through the rel~- of this particular Connnittee with the larger sense of the Institute and jealousies ~ the same kind ~·· they have more money than we do to distri'bute but even within tha4there was nevet'­ any sense that I had that the Committee felt it was being pressured in any direc•tion other than its scientific or professional merit~- S0, as a quality of what the level of exchangei the level of honesty and :tntegr;ttY' was s;i:,ngular:~ ly excellent- EAR Again, with the Committee situation,- can you recall any par-ticula.r ~eetings, 11. EAR(eontinued) that may have focused for some significant part of the meeting on a particular program development, whether it was either in the·extension of Community Psychology or in any other facet in the extension of program operation that would be useful to comment uponl JS One thing that continued for a while even atter: it: had been established as part of Institute policy that went through .several meetings and several Committee's, was the degree to which the broadest conception of psychology could or should or might be engaged in the funding program and again it reflected the l~v~l of the field's discomforts with its own par,ts,· I· can rememb~r clearly for example, Saracen for one and Ed Borden for another, well any number of people, there is another name that is trying to come through and I can,, t remember now, Vassar EAR The one who died, a·child psychologist, .Joe Stone1 JS Joe Stone, that's right~ These were p~ople ,-who felt that psychology had been too tradition-bound that the sctentism of psychology rather than the science was too overpowering and were altvays terribly more critical perhaps of traditional research training programs than they were of programs that were attempting to get started in a relatively newer directi@n and yet there we:re many people on the Committee's always who were in traditional research ar,eas,. they ;too, never felt that they were simply being overpowered and overwhelmed so that that was a theme that I remember through ~hose Committ~~ meetings that served an enormously useful function. Ultimately,. what we turned to was if our site visits have any impact to· have on the field directly as site visits with Connnittee members, with consultants and with Staff, it wasn·''t discussing these very issues and I think an awful lot of what ·was possibly accomplished at the Chicago Conference for exa.mpl_e, or even ·the later Conferences, was initiated in those meetings and those groups to provide a consensual vali~ity_ 12. JS (continued) for the newer issues of psychology and it didn •·t ev~n ,hav,e ,toL;be something the Institute was trying to organize and form:tlike the community mental health area, but other things as well came forward there, all within the context of never believing we had a big enough budget so·things couldn t· t be funded or .experiments couldn't be tried that perhapt should have- been;. even within those tensions· it was ena.bled, EAR Do you think there is any one part of psychology that may £eel o.r may have felt that it got somewhat short-shrift from the Institute. Obvd:ously It is a leading question, I am thinking of counseling psychology where somehow it seems to me if my recollection :ts e.or1;ect we never really seellled able to expand it always seetned to be:~cour.ted sem,e kind of bind as be:tng. the poor stepchild of clinics11 JS You may be right about the sensibilities of the people in the field, you didn't ask me whether I thought it was correct. EAR I want you to, JS I think so, I would include also industrial psychology beeaus-e both were not large but relatively vigorous~ Now we had pr()grams in both of•. those areas, counseling and industrial, but we never found the means, any of the staff for example nor for even that ·matter to any la.rge extent the Committee· members and we· had counseling psychologists on the Committee Jc,$ ever £elt that we had a conceptual means of approaching thoseareas for growth patterns, for modification, for forward looking programs., so if I had to say w:lth that good program •;or bad, I would say it was good and indeed, they compare to other areas t,he_y didn 1:t .get as much attention or money,, EAR Alright, fine,hnow one other.iaNation on this same theme;. I think the Committee members certainly and the staff with equal vigor, would support the point that you are making about no .appreci~ble internal politics- or no appreciable influence on the :part of any,meinbers of the Committee or Staff 13. EAR(continued) in one direction or another except for the purpose of you know the total program are good, but what about the ver·y• small departm.ents he-re and there, who may have felt that they need.ed even m,ore of a boost to get off ;f;rom the bottom a}ld by the time you left r guess there wa,s an i:.ncreased sens:lt::f.:vity totthe difference between the havets and the have not"s and the need perhaps to think about the have notls as needing even extra help t,ey@nd what the;lr confidence revealed was worthy of., Would yau want to talk a little 'b;l;t about that? - JS There was a:lways a minor key or minor theme 1 we do have an ob~i;ga,t~en to tl{y to get> the best better but shouldn't we be worrying about those that are struggling to establish. I think it was I left or at least after I left the psychology program per se that at least we the program went to o~ti.on :tot" example of supporting non..,.accred:tted programs- that were in development which I always had felt was a good idea and a way to do that k.ind o~ th:t~.. I:· guess if there were anything that was seen a.f3- a k:f.:nd of a imposi;t:;i;on at tiDleS it was the notion,whfch may have been a correct notion,. that geographically, and in all other ways :we should he more sensitive to what was not :tn :rstebraska rather:th.an wh~t!ier there was• another great program in Boston and in that sense \!We d.idn 't: ·have good 'coverage at times in the committee or in the staff, so that I think may have been kind of a weakµess in the group and there was no serious effort that I ¢~~_,think of -at least to try to worlc through those problems or at least to conceive how they might be enabled. There was a time that :r think we all fell back on we don"t have enough to do with now that we could really support well if we had enough funds, EAR How about, I ·am really moving around in various di:f:~el,'lent dJrections here~ but how about now thinking back over the six years you were there approximately six years, in the six years you were there can you see in the perspective 14. EAR(continued) from the present vantage point anythiJ).g over those six years that markedly changed or anything that represented beyond the program growth per se a kind of e.voluti.onary dr a kind of change over time that comes t'o mind, you have eluded to ·ane, of course, by the time you left things weren't as good as they were whep. you first ca.me. JS You know when I - Don 1·t know whether this really speaks to what you are asking me - but when I left the Institute we had a party, as we always I I used .to do for people that were leaving, and I' said to the group and I: mean't it that I could foresee nothing but real\: problems on the horizon, that it was obvious if we could maintaiR the kind of quality that I had felt we had maintained up to that point, we would be very lucky, but it didn"t look to me as though .... that was already after many of the massive problems started to appear on the horizon, I wasntt being any kind of a prognosticator, I was simply saying what-my feel~ngs were~ in an evolution~ ary sense?- in some ways the mental heal.th, the community mental health program was almost indigestible, it was too big a chunk that we got into, maybe that's the way those things-have to happen but it seemed to me that at that point some of wha.t had always been healthy tensions became problems between psychology and psychiatry ,between social work and a~o.tper area •. ,The admin:tstrative functioning of the Ip.stitu-te it s~em:ed to me -at least, I :·started to creak under the strain ~ that klitnd of progranuning, yet without it, I don't know how well we would have gotten into many of the things that had to be gotten into, the minority issues had not surfaced really well prior to that time, if we hadn't be~n opened up that much :ii I don·t.t know whether they would have gotten in at all or how well~ It may have even been worse, but that as an instance of the kinds of problems that aren0-wcmnp0unded, it seems to me was around that set ot is$ues, maybe it was only the time., 15. EAR Let the ask you because. we haven •"t deal ''t with it at any g!t'eat length a-Q.d- maybe it is not worth a long discussion, but there ~~.re obviously, tensions, some healthy and perhaps some not so healthy betwe·en psychiatry and psychology. I think psychology of the three other disciplines beyond psychiatry was the most competent to be articulate about its concerns in the competition for funds and in the competition for program development, ete11 and there cont:Lnu.es to :b~, '.' f as you well know, stresses and strains_ between psychology and psychiatry. Now you have been relatively gentle is saying that much of it was healthy but there were instances in whi.<?h-~thete-.were some serious points of difference and I know in my case, for example, I always had the feeli.ng rightly or wrongly that I was being seen partly as an apologist for psychiatry when! would say people. like Irv and Hal, I think I had less of that kind of interchange with you, but with Irv ~nd Hal, in a sense I would say you know you really have to be sensitive to the point of view on the outside, which in effect says that mental health really is primarily a medical specialty and all the other programs that were supporting· onrbenefiting partly because the Congress and the people are willing to give a significant amount of money to psychiatry. Now that was partly a politician point of view but there was also a thread of truth to it. what in terms of your interaction with people in the Branch in tenn-s of your· leader~ ship in the psychology program, what other things can you think of where psychfa.try,1 because it was t:ne ~edi,cal specialty, was trea~ed somewhat dif£ei::~ ently thannthe other three and·•perhaps to their advantage above and beyond program. JS It is hard for me to respond to that, that is, there were two things about psychiatry that were problematic from the perspective of psychology" There wasnt a sufficient awareness at. that time, that they were trying to be both their own basic science and their own medical specialty and the viewpoint that 16. JS(cdntinued) most of us had in psycholo.gy, most of the time, was that it, was such a mixed bag that was accomplishing nothing.~ that is one set of issues - the other set of issues was I suppose,-:simply based on economics that we were train-.­ ing a lot of people to beco111e private pract:Moners rather than what we felt was a much more iong-..term or enduring contribution, which is either. in research or in training new people but I always had to look at the Institute as a kind of a totality and the kinds of support that psychology was getting in: research for ex.~ple in many.ways off-ba~anced for me any particular emphasis in the training division in psychiatry. That's what I mean. by healthy, it's much easier for me to say it now many years later but even at that stage I: could never get terribly upset with· the notion that they simply had too much money,· How well they used it was another set of issues and there was ver-y little ability that we ever fel.t ... we never felt,, I: think, effect:tvein trying t<;> I achieve modification of that program , there was t0.o niuch strength. outsi,de of it supporting it, not just you or anyone in the Institute but outside of it. On the other hand, it always seemed to me that politically psychiatry was doing better than psychology or anybody else in terms of general support for the Institute so maybe they had to get their due in that sense. This may sound all rationalized, Eli, but in fact I think that's w.hy I thought about it~ EAR That is interesting because, incidentally; I, Hal Vasowitzwrote me a note saying ~e was going to send me a long statement and he never· got· around to it , I· still have to talk to him if he is willing to and I' may· see Irv- ram going to North Carolina next month to see some people.. I may see Irv at that time but I think Irv and Hal, Irv more than Hal even, and Irv· mayhe even. mo-re than Ken because if Irv's personality,had the feeling that psych:tatry was in.; a, sense getting an undue share of the pot and you probably aren't as seµsitive to tl\e old 40-20-20 20 formula but that was the betonwar of psychology's life at that time because 17. EAR(continued). it seemed like such an artificial, such a completely irrat:tonal way of dividing the pot and, of .course:t when the genenal praettoner p-rqg?:am, came along, which was also slightly before your t;tme·, it became such that psychology was getting about 16 or 17% and psychiatry, when you added it all up, was getting about 45% and nursing and social work were getti,ng -even less than the- well, look you ean':t count the ganenal practioner pr~gra.m h.e~ause tha-t is a special pot of f.~nds and if it hadn't been for Mike Gorman it wouldn't even exist so that'·s no.t part of the pot, you know, which was kind of a subterfuge I but nonetheless, those was some of the discussions and I guess almost because of the differences in personalities you were less voe.al 'about that problem than Irv in the beginning, Irv would go into Ray Feldman's'office and almost pound on the table at times and the same with other discussions with me but };mt it is interesting part of the whole picture. Let's shift· for a moment I don '·t want to take too much of your time, but let "s shift for a moment now after the fact, you said that most recently you probably haven"t had a great deal of interaction with the Institute, but knowing it as well as you did from being involved with.it and perhaps I am not sure how much contact you had with other Federal·agencies that supports" ~an you ·think of a~y.~~her ways to identify the unique or indiviclual qual,it:iytof NIMH as contrasted 1with, let's say NSF or any of the other :Federal agencies, does anything _come tomittd? JS I am not sure whether I am talking after the fact or during :the fact l let-me I - .. , / just get a cigarette, the kiti!l of thing that occurs to me only in terms Qf J., more extended experience with NSF and some other agencies. They diidnj'-t: hav,e any of the ventursome that we did, none, that is NSF has done a superb job in some areas, not the social sciences by any means, and there they may be, I don't know with nuclear physics they may do some things that I simply don"t know 18. JS{continued) about that are genuinely exploratory and as I say venturesome I . but not in the- :areas of social issue, not in the atfelJ. ,of s<:>eial science at all, whereas .the NIMH, as far as I am concerned.;;,and tl,lat includes all the other Institute•s in NIH, was the one whd was willing to coke out into tge a,reas that were of greatest difficulty most'·complex, and willing occasion­ ally to make a mistake and pull back. Now if anything characterizes the diff~rence, and still does oy the way, if I had to compare on the most critical grounds, I would say NSF is high-bound where NIMH had at least always tried to get into the issues, we had our own high-boundness, bUt we were always wiE;.... ing to try, get into these things. For example, to compare NIMH with like the Education Group, you can't compare them. That group was going to stay wtth its past history as long as it possibly could·. EAR Not in the training program but nonetheless, I think a beautiful example of what you are talking·about was the small Gr~~ts Program, which was a derioV'tl \ thing. Harry Harlow once mentioned, of course,.;· r have talked to Phil Sapir, incidentally, and Phil said you know Harry really stole tl\a t ft'om me, tha,\t wa$ or:Lginally my idea, but if you 'want cpedit fo:1; it you---"-.e.an have it,. but that is inmaterial, the point is that in fa.cts someone ·~ent:tcmed i,t wa$ a totally· new idea. JS You listene~, _p~ople in the Institute listened and-.made mistakes occasionally but more often that!}'-- not came up with something that was a real gem as that small Grants Program was in to some extent, still is I think. That was always the case. EAR I want to ask you, what is going to sound like a very personal question, but you can answer it -~ny way you like'.~ From your own :tnvolvemen:t ,_j,:eri se, wh~t would you say you are proudest of or what do you recall most pleasantly in terms of your responsibilities, what would you say, Ok, Joe, you were there for six years, what would you like to be best remembered for in terms of what you did there? This is a Dick Cavet.t type question. 19. JS I don't know that I can justify this but I have some sense that the potential when we created the behavioral sciences training branch,. the potential of that unit as much as anything, I think I would l:i.ke to be 1:1~em,bered in that sense·, not because I organized it or it was lllY thought or any•th:i,ng l:tke tbat but the idea of bringing together the behavioral s«;:ie11.c~s- so called, liathe:P than the £aur units that we had worked with up to that point. Part 2 JS simply ·exist,s a9:d ~ome of the programs he did was magnificent, both in the train~ ing divis.ion when he was independent in that sense and in the Branch EAR No question about it. JS In his efforts, for example to instruct others and to inform other·s about the potential of the biological was superb. I think it occasioned itself really within that context when psychology had to talk directly t<., Fred dtrectly., and the social sciences group, whatever else that kind of -m:tx was._ tf the l!'nstttttte were still g;rowing and still in its old sense powerful, :C th:i;nk · that ri\~~ would h·aue come through with something that we don it really even envt~;i;Qn at th;ts point. So, if anything I think that's is the kind of thing I was most satisfied with EAR It is so interesting to me to see how every time you talk about the organizational innovation or development such as that, but it really comes down then ta people. Fred ____ is just a unique guy, who now and all the Ume he has been ·there has done soemthing that is so mueh an outgrowth of Fred Elmajian in one sense but so ·much taking advantage of the opportunities that were made ava:f,lable and develop~: ment. JS And, in his own way, tryin'g to make ,.them available to ethers, O(ten. by stand:f.:ng on there toes, but saying we h11Ve opportunity to think here, we can do things that are different than we were doing and obviously, everyone, at one point or - 20 - JS(continued) another got his toes stepped on by Fred,- sometimes very heavily, but always· there was that element'"'· EAR Once you got beyond time space and location you were alright. JS You were okay then. I will tell you though just as a personal instance of a lingering relationship with the Institute· and with ;F1;ed; he passed through here a couple of years ago and he had another one ef these things buzzfng in his head and ee called me up and he said, '"Joe, t don •·t kn.ow what you are doing, come to lunch with me. Fine,. delighted, We didn "-t. talk about the Institute eJ(:cept in passing. He started talking to me about ad0lescence '"-7'· he was on the adolescence kick,· Ile had spoken to other people aoout sim.:tlar kinds of things and he:-thad a set of ideas that settled in with me a bit and indeed, it is .not much, but it is a little text book statement that·includes some of Fred Elmajian's ideas and they didn't come from anywhere else except from Fred Elmajian. The last little chapter in that book is at least a flyer toward what is the function of adolescence in cultural and social process. It is a made up thing in many respects,that Fred Elmajian but that was also the INstitute" It is whatever relationship we established at that point and were enabled to during the years that I was there, that set of ideas could be passed along •.. EAR Well, that's it, r think, there are the F·r·ed Elmaj;lan 's and there are the Bert Booth''s and the Phil Sapir•·s and every name that y0u mentioned •. JS You mention Bert, I thought of his nam,e earlier~- I had inore late?.' eentaet with that group than I did with any other because I was on the Committee . . after I left the Institute. Now I began to appreciate that prBbably, I don t·t kn0w what percentage, but some healthy percentage of the: ·fine work that is done by psychiatry in research is the result of that p:i,o.gram and no other. EAR Absolutely.· JS And it wouldn't have happened without that program. That was the kind of thing that NSF could never do or any of the other Institute '·s could never do in a - 21 - JS(continued) million years except for the. I can only ascribe it to the atmosphere and the people, the quality of the people' that were attracted to•- ~R That is really what I would like to somehow get t0 come alive lrea.use you begin to sound corny, as a matter of £act, by the time I finish the three days with Bob Felix, I said to him, "'You are the most sincerely corny guy that I know'' and that is exactly what he· is. JS Well, Eli, I am being corny with you today, too. It is mush, but it is just damn·difficult. r c-ould be just as harsh and critical as anyone, in £act, :lf we talked about B·ert Rooth, who was _essentially a gentle spirit, he was enraged 48% of the time and he was en~aged about program things, but when I. take perspec­ tive on that, that is why I say tension, healthy tension~ it was becasue every rage that he had ultimately turned out into some: Jdnd of productive thing and if he were held down a little bit, the vitality that was being held_ down would come out in another way and ultimately would get put together. You can't do those things when you are in a setting, an organizational setting, where the repression or subpression of things is ultimate and ft wasn ''t in the INstitute and if anything, to me that is what characterized it.: :Ct was there,: when I say tension r mean real tension but that kind of vitality then was abled to be expressed. Somehow we were able to do the things we needed to do, even under the worst circumstances. Now that :ts corn,, but ::C- pre:f;er to say that is more important at least it is to me than anything that I: could say wh;f;chsa,;f;d psychiatry was a bunch of dmnb bellies. At this sta,ge it 'll\akes n0 sense~ Indeed, psychiatry trained a bunch of guys who were are making a lot 0£ money now and not making any other contribution, so who :ts to say it should have been better in an other way, I don ''t kn~w that.- Maybe 16% was bt!tter than 20%' if we had to do more with it ~ corny as hell, but there was an awful lot of, hard - 22 - JS(continued) thought about what we did. EAR Can you think of anything else, we really covered the whole field, JS Only that - there are two things, I guess, and I can't say very much about them. One I think we would have been even mere successful or better had ·the I Research and Training Branches been able to come together in the older days and later when the great push with, this is when the Institute :r:.eally took off and just spread all over the map, the newer Divisions someho'IAT were always the training bran.eh was never,• division, was never then able to get off track sufficiently. There were just too many pressures and too many points of diffi~ culty, but I coulcin•·t detail that, you know those stories better than I do anyway, but those two things I would look at wistfully. We could have. donebetter with those. EAR Okay, well listen I thank you very mµch, it is very helpful.- JS For whatever it is worth. EAR As I said to Bterb Kellman this ~orning, from each ;tndfvi;duat it must :f?.eel 1:tke -a part of· a jig-saw puzzle, but it ts, and I think it will fit together very nicely, if I can really do my job well, and that remains to be seen. JS It overwhelms me, what the hell you are going to do with this information. EAR Well, I should tell you when, what happened, Stan and I' when weecame to Stony Brook and we would sit down every once in a while and kind of reminisce and I would say somebody should really write the story about NIMH and he kind of agreed that that should be and I don't remember the specific incident.that occurred but I finally decided that I was gofng to do it and so I wrote a little prospectus which we discussed and went ever and? modified it somewhat and then I called Bert Brown and I: said "Do you think that NIMH would have some money for thisttbecause at that time I thought ·without mnney how could I do it. He said Eli, tell me why you want to write this book and r thought what in the - 23 - EAR(continued) hell is he talking about, you know and I still am not sure but I answeree him on the level that I thought he was asking but somehow this was going to be ego-gratifying to me, which of course, it wottld be or that I had an unfinished part of lll.e that had to be finished and I said Bert, I just thinkg that it is a story that needs to be told and I have been thinking about it so much, now that I have left that r want to do it. H~ said okay and then as I said, I went to see him and it was unfortunate, a very disappointing hour because just nine. other thin.gs were happening at the same time. Then he even dropped an amusing little one shoe on me, he said Hyou know, I have three days of oral history that the Kennedy people took, when the:Kennedy assassination took place because I had.been at the White House through those years early on and they were putting together a whole volume of materials which some day will be published as a book and I said '"Oh,· really, is any of that available, he said, no, that is all locked up in the Kennedy library, so whatever it is that he has·.got there about his own original invc,lvem;ent with NIMH, U:terally, almost nnmediately after he came to NIMH he went to the White Rouse and spent about a year there working on mental retardation progt"am and that t,s why we got so heavily fnvolve·d :tnto t'he whole White House business with com.m.tinity mental health., and I suspect that llert may secretly bel-ieve that he was- the instigator :f::nto the colQJilun.:r:ty mental health program. and it m,ay be partially true, I don "t know and I think what he ignor·es is that B.ob Felix ha.d his own feelers out, so did Stan and so did Mike Gorman, there were a lot of people working in many different avenues for the growth and developo:';' ment of NIMH. The Mike Gorman story is the most original. I have a problem with Mike Gorman NLM NOTE: Interview tape ends abruptly here