DR" Frank Braceland September 23, 1977 '1 , ..I FB Here is a paper which Rome and I gave before Congress about starting the need for the NIMH and I remember that a number of us was still in uniform and_ we went before the Congressional Committee ls ~ our beef was that "'.'."· this was also the reason for the formation of GAP - the society had not helped us at all the American Psychiatric and also Feli;x was going about "'."'. I rem,e:m,ber Lawrence Cobb, Sr., I think he had Admiral ''s bars for a whiJe and then a Capt. and I remember talking to the then t-1ead of the Public Health who was I forget his name, who was a good man and who agreed that we should have this. Now, I wrote Bob Felixuihis biography, and may be a copy of that would help you - would it? EAR Yes, it certainly would FB Because Felix I had known when he was at New London - I went up there one day and I took a man to speak to the American Psychiatric but they thought I should have taken some other fellow. Well, at any rate, I did a few little that put me in wrong and when the announcements were made that the Committee's were to be made up, I thought sure because I had testified before both Committee's. Will Menninger was sick and I took his testimony and so on, that I would be asked to do something - I was for a while to go on the Education Grol)p. Well, I don't know I felt that Truman's secretary had a brother or sister who was at the Chicago Psychoanalytic and I felt that they were sort of dictating --- came on and I got my nose out of joint - stayed out of things until I got up to be the President of the Association or close to it - 57 when Vesty and Bob came to see me and sat with me and asked me about coming on the Council~· that is when I got on but then things got much better Bob asked me to write his biography and I was very happy to and here it is and you can have a copy of it, EAR Terrific - that's lovely 2. FR Why don't you ask me some questions? EAR Let's start with something that would kind of give you a general f eeL:~of what I am trying to do. As I started to say, I don't want to write just a traditional history but I think what is so terribly interesting and so important about NIMH is that the unique qualities of the Institute among all the rest of NIH really made it stand out in certain ways and I would li.ke to be ~ble to describe the manner in which the unique characteristics o:e the Institute te~ded to direct the way the program went,. Now one of the obvious circumstances is I that none of the other Institute's at NIH had a combination. of research~ tra:i:;ning and services - all the rest of them were primarily research with a little bit of training and absolutely no services and so one of the questions r 1:ve asked people is""' and I have gotten a number of written replies,-but ther~ are a number of key people, like yourself that I am doing these personal interviews on, but this is the question I have asked and you might want to respond to it,.- In terms of your own perspective, what key decision or decisions you believe most influ­ enced the growth and direction of the NIMR program - who within the total NIMR family or outside were involved and how would you describe their role? Perhaps you might want to react to a question like that. FB Well, I think that Cobb, Sr. was handling things pretty much and there was a Frank something and then a man went to California, an older man, some of these names escape me - they were in Public Health and they, of course, had talked and always hoped they would have some sort of a thing., Along came the war and I was a Dean of Loyola Medical School and I wasn't happy~- I was trying to run a medical school without too much money and I had been a Reservist since 33 so they asked me to come and they let me graduate my class~ as a,, matter of fact they put me in uniform .... I didn't know why to stay in my own office but I found out why they were smart. I could go around recruiting B~l2 students and I was coming as another Dean not as a R,ecruf tj.,ng Sergeant until I 3• FB(continued) got to Oklahoma where the Dean there had been Surgeon General of, the Army and he called Washington and ·he called me up. Now, in our testimony - it began under Pepper, Congressman Pepper or Senator Pepper then and Congressman Priest and they were most friendly and we were complaining that we had no help - everybody was worried about the great number of casualties in the war and casualties1. General Marshall send a man around to talk to us and he wrote a book it was called "All but Me and Thee'' and also at the same time there was a man in the Bureau of the Budget who was anxious to get the patients out of St. Elizabeth's - the navy patients which I thought was awful that had been going on for some time. Now, if this is disjointed the times were disjointed but we appeared before Congressman Priest first, Will Menninger and I and a fellow from Minnesota, Dan Blaine and I forget the name of the man - a layman - who was sheparding us for the Mental Health Association. EAR Charlie Slafer FB No - he came later. George Stevenson, you know, was their Medical Officer and he would come and sit w:Lth you for a half hour to a.sk questions but really did nothing much for it. But, at any ra.te, we knew something had to happen and Felix appeared on the scene and one afternoon the meeting of the Council of the American Psychiatric Association was being held I think in New York at the Hotel Pennsylvania and the three of us appeared before it and the APA hasn't been the same since. We let them have both barrels, told them the whole story they hadn't done a damn thing for us and I asked Sam Hamilton once - he was sitting in front of me and he said we are not an active organization so it was pretty soon evident that we better have an active organiza-c ti.on. Austin Davies was running the American Psychiatric Association as the Business Manager and while his office was in New York it was mostly 4. FB(continaed) under his hat you see so that we were disgruntled about the action of the .American Psychiatric Association, very much so, so we appeared before that group and we horrified them and I remember Bob Felix'B statement that they either get busy and help or he would go off on a different track without them. The people who were there were men of the calibre of Bowman and Strecher and Sam, with the bea.rd, a number of those men Singer, conservative old heads of institutions and so on. So, we declaimed for three hours really and we told them they had better get busy and get a Medical Director and we went down to have a drink and later somebody came down and said it looks like you are going to get a Medical Director for the APA and they also wanted it done quickly. Meanwhile Dan Blaine who had headed the Coast Guard, not·the Coast Guard but the Maritime Group, had come into the scene and hevwas in Washington and he was invited after a lot of trouble to take the Veteran's Administra­ tion because there was - Deutsch was writing about the Head of the thing at the time and said while he was dollar honest he was not doin:g the job and so forth and so on. Deutsch kept a pretty good eye on us, if people came up from the South Pacific in cages I remember him telling Bill Menninger he better get it stopped or he would be in there, so he kept watch on us and he was after this fellow in the VA because they hadn't done anything. Well, finally they decided to take Dan after a long harangue around and at the same time, Dan was going to be the Professor at Georgetown. We decided up·there that it was necessary to have a man like Dan to head the APA Group. They decided to have him finally ... I will leave out a lot of the details~· but Dan would not leave Washington and Austin Davies would not leave New York and Farrow was in Toronto with the Journal. So, the office, however, was made in Washington and Davies had very little to do with it but D~n r~n ~ good 5. FB(Continued) office and he got started very well and we appeared for him for the Veteran's Administration for money for Residents for places. like Menninger, I think once they had 125 Residents but wherever we could for Residents - each time then when it came time to think about NIMH - What year was it formed in? EAR 1946 but it didn't actually begin until 1948. FB Alright, 46 we were still in uniform and this paper which I have given you there we appeared and told them something like this was necessary and Menninger and the Group came something like was necssary and Dan came and Bob Felix was on the scene. He had been at New London. We jittered for a while and finally, things looked like they.were coming to a head under Congressman Pepper who was Senator Pepper, who was a· big help, it was obvious that he wanted us to make a go of it" Also, Congressman Priest was anxious to see it go so testifying before the two of them was very easy because th:ey were helpful, they knew what we wanted and they were anxious that it be done. This went on and we would have to come back for different committee's and I remember once Bill was sick and I took both the Army and the Navy position for him~ T remember having to address a group in Chicago for him ~- he wasn l,t feeling well. But, at any rate, the details of the start of it are fuzzy but then came the founding of the NIMH, but they passed it ... then they went home without leaving them any money and it in my paper there where he got it and you know about, of course. EAR The Greenwood Foundation FB Right, well, then he was off and run,n,in,g, Allan Gray, J·ohn Romano and men of that calibre were around, Edward Strecher got on the first one. I don't know how much Strecher did but he was good to have on the Committee 6. FB (continued) and they were off and started with meetings, and I didn ''t know how they were going to go or how they were going to do. L_didn 't have much to do with it then because I suppose my nose was out of joint a little bit because I had so much· to do early that I think I stayed-away so far as I can tell. Then I ~as made the Secretary of the American Board Psychiatry and the secretary runs the Board. Freeman had been the Secretary and they were going to can him and somebody had to take it. It was an awful thing because I knew nothing about it and there were h~ndreds - there were thousands of men coming out of the service. So, the first examination that I had to set up, knowing nothing about j_t~ were 335 men to be examined. Then, word c_am,e that anybody who passed the Boards would get a 25% raise in the Veterans·~ they were going to fix it in other hospitals. We objected strenuously to that. We said "don't put a price on us." They said as long as you publish that list we'll us~ it and there is nothing you can do about it. They were troublesome days but people came along taking the Boards and one little offshoot that I can tell you about.,... I don"t know that it makes much of a story but Felix, Bartemeyer and Menninger came through carrying cards one day and when I took the Board over, the Neurologist sat nn that side and the pyschiatrist on this and really were at one another and that night Percival Bailey walked up and d,own ~ we wotild Jl\eet til,l-very late"'."" he had Bill Menninger on basic neurology- something in it I don "\t know ~· that would really, of course, so at any rate we arrived and he reluctantly passed it was on some microscopic stuff that Bill Menninger would never use but a little later we made friends to where we could talk- to one another and that was my job to keep peace in the family--and keeep them reasonably happy - it was a first class group of men - you don't know the year that the Hoover Connnission met, do you? 7. EAR No, that must have been ~n the very early 50's I think. FB Ok, the very early 50's I think, well I was sent for and President Hoover said to me Doctor,''do you know why you are on this Co:mmittee?" I sa.id ' 1no sir" You are the only psychiatrist that three others can agree upon in the United States as far as I know .... I thought that was very nice" But we met and we worked very hard and finally it was up to us to write a re~ort and I wrote the Mental Health Report, but they were all squelched except Con.gressJqan Priest said he wanted it and he blasted it out. Now in that repor·t at the en.d I said "Were it not for the U.S. Public Health,. NDnr and the Veterans Admi.nistra~ tion training the people they've trained, the care of the mentally ill in this country would be an absolute chaos" they have done a wonderful job. I understand that the afternoon that hit the papers, the Council was meeting and they had their hearts in their mouths anyhow about it/and this wasA'relief and it got through something they were after got through as a result of it. Do you remember this? EAR I think it was an increase in funding that they were working on at the time. FB But, at any rate, up to then I hadn't had much to do. Around 1955, I don't know the year I went over EAR 58 FB I went on the Board in 58? EAR March of 58 FB Well, in 56 I was made '""' toward the end of 55 .,.. I wa.s made the President Elect of the American Psychiatric Association and I served through 56 and 57 and it was in early 57 or late 56 that at the meeting - annual meeting.,.. Vesty and Bob sat and asked me to come on. Now it is no use my describing those ~arly times for you - you know what went on and how it went on and the things that happened. At any rate, EAR Can I interrupt just one second - when did you begin testifying to Congress was it after that or was it before that - considerably before that? 8. FB Yes. These testimonies must have been 46 that Navy thing and then I began I think in 57 and 58 - fiscal 58 - Senator Lester Hill and I began testifying th:en they would call me each time because I got on with John Fogarty and Lister Hill and after a while my nose was a little out of joint from people saying things like - Mike Gorman got into it and Mike would call the shots - I was already ,trestifying when he came in and he kept me coming but Fogarty would say "Mr. Gorman, your witnesses"so I was one of Mike's witnesses. Well, people objected you know and I said I don't care whose witness I am if they listen to me. John Fogarty and I got to be pretty good friends and he called me up when he was running once up in Providence and would I come up and talk on the TV and I said yes, but no politics. He said I wouldn't ask you. He asked me questions about mental health and I called him Mr. Chairman because that was what he was and then he took me over to a saloon with some of his friends, but I testified on up through the 60's somewhere - fiscal 67, 68, 68 budgets, 69 I suppose into the 70's. I would come and go up to NIMH and be prepared and there was a sameness to my testimony. We depended on what we had done for involutional melancholia which was really a great thing anyhow because that illness upset me,when I was a young man I began in 32 in the hospitals and 33 and parishes and the few little organic things that we knew. Well, I wanted some sort of a blockbuster to be able to tell them. Now, another thing happened - in 51 I came here and I had.,.. 54, 55.,.. the daughter Bf the Majority man under Fogarty and the daughter of somebody in the Senate as patients. So, Bob Felix sent for me and the question was a} could we get some funding for these things for the community centers. By the way in 57, I finished and 58, Harry Solomon followed me and Ewald I think was coming up but we were asked when Bartemeyer and Apple wanted to form the Joint Commission"'.":' I was one of the four from the APA 9/ EAR That was 55 FB 55, was it that early. You know how that started and how it went on. Inch­ dentally, I am one of two people who obj-ected to that report because I didn't think we could tell Congress to tax people for us. I thought that was one way of getting in-trouble. It was pusillanimous but nevertheless, but I would go down each year and be prepared and then one year I decided I thought I have been here long enough and I wouldn't go this next time\md Gorm,an told Listerhill and Listerhill that's alright we will just supeonea - we will bring him down here anyhow and Hill was so nice and Fogarty that it was obvious they wanted to help. Well, there was a sort of a sameness to it and I don't know when I stopped - in the 70's somew.kere but Bob Felix sent for me after the law was passed ... was it Kennedy in 63? EAR Right FB He got the Laetora Medal in 62 and I got it in 63,. The Laetora Medal is Notre Dame - it is a sort of a papal rose ... it is once a year and Admiral Anderson the year after me. At any rate, the Hoover Connnission - I don't know when we were through, the date - I was on another Commission under a man named Cooper from New York to unify the medical departments of the Armed Services. We went in ;with an Army and Navy Medical Service and we came out with three~ an Airforce Service. That's how we unified just couldn't do anything. I was on with Ray Allen, Dick Myling who was riding high, and Crosby who became President of the American Hospital Association or the Executive and so on, and there were all sorts of Committee's for all sorts of things. There are a lot of little stories that have a personal tend to them that I don't imagine would fit into this but Mike DeBakey, Pete Churchill, the Chest Surgeon, really the father of chest surgery in the country~ Mike, Pete and I were on this Committee under Mr. Cooper and I think we were on, the three of us, the Hoover 10. FB(continued}. Commission, too and I remember there was a man made Surgeon....Ceneral of the Navy and we thought he was awful and Mike, Pete artd I went to see General Joe,McNarney to ask to not have him reappointed. He said it is on Truman's desk - well, we said it shouldn ''t be. He said come back at 5 o'clock and we walked the streets til 5 o'clock., Came back at 5. He said alright, it's a deal. He won ''t be made Surgeon~eneral and you three will get out of town . So we said that was fair enough and we got out off those Committee's which probably were bugging them because Mike was a very good Committe man. He did his work, Myling, you know about him? EAR No FB Myling was on the Comm.itte, later became the Dean, and a very good Dean, of the University of Ohio, as was a man named Ray Allen, who had been the Dean of the University of Illinois.. Allen left there to be the President of the Universi~y of Washington and the President took him out of there - the President didn't - but a man named Johnson was made the second head of Department of Defense, Forrestal had killed him.,.. self. I was one of the final authorities on that examination, too, but I must have been at the clinic at that time, still in the 40's. Ray came down, took on the job, stayed a summer and quit it and Johnson really ate him out but a fellow named Dick Myling was the Assistant. This Committee by that time was bugging not Public Health but was bugging the Army and the Navy and I was still a Navy Reservist. The Surgeon~General was a nose and throater after McIntyre, CliffSwanson, and we reorganized him and the Surgeon-General of the Army off the Committee; they did not like that so one day he sent for me as a Reservist, and I came in and he was talking to a group of Admiral's and they scattered when I came in and he sat with me with a pencil. He said this Committee that you are on is of short duration. Tomorrow we are going to see that it is disbanded) 11. FB(continuecl,} a.nd I sai,cl to him~ I, a Reserve Captain, said, Clif:(, you t~llc too much and you are injudicious where you talk and he stood up and said "how dare you." I said, sit down and I will tell you. You just wrote a letter vilifying a man named Myling and you really did it and I just read that letter. You. know where I read it, out of Myling's pocket, he has got it in here and do you know something else, tomorrow at noon he is going to be sworn in as Deputary Secretary of War - was it at the time? EAR Right, that's what is was. No, Secretary of Defense FB That's right, he is going to be sworn in as the Deputy over you. Now I have to get back to the Committe and he was the next day because I had seen the letter in the morning and I'knew what was going to happen to Dick. I tell you this to give you an idea of what was going on. Now, I was sent for by Felix. He said, look, the man whose got the doing of it, the Chairman of the Finance Committee in the House, I even forget his name, is the fellow we have got to get to and I want you to go get to him because I understand that you''ve treated ______....,,_..,.....,..._ and I have. I went down and this man was very nice and he was very grateful. He said, ''Doctor, if we finance these things, community centers we've got to finance every other branch of medicine - we can't do it." So, I suggested maybe on a trial for a year, and maybe three years, and he did. I don't know the next year that Felix, probably shortly after Felix sent for me and he wanted a Stateman to head a Committee to lay out the ground rules for the Comm unity Mental Health Centers and the Committee was a psychologist named Kelley, Bob Strauss from now down in Lexington, a sociologist, I think a fellow's name was Cohen who was in New York and then went to California .... a nice guy~. Barton, Rome, Henry Brill and I, maybe somebody else. NIMH furnished us the resource 12. FB(continued) person, who was not good. He took part in it and he did nothing~ EAR Do you remember who that was? Not R,ichard W:Llliams .. 1 FB No, not Dick Williams, he came later on another thing~ but this- iellow was ill.. He had had an attack EAR Oh yes, I know who it is. FB Well, we felt that he held us back. Then, kicked and got that little fellow, psychologist, who was very active - I forget his name, too. I am sorry - was it Joe ,Bobbittt? Well, Joe became part of the Committee too instead of handli~g the thing and we went down in Virginia to write a report after a year - these things were really fights because of Lowell Kelly. Lowell Kelly hated Doctors, physicians with a deep:' hatred and psychiatrists in particular and he vowed that the psychiatrists were going to have nothing to do with those Centers. Now, our idea of a center as I recall it was where we could treat people who couldn•t afford private treatment instead of shoving them off to hospitals and that was the purpose and if it was 1psychiatric disease, if it was psychological problem we would have psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers we knew, the teams were operative at the time. However, no psychiatrist was going to head anything if he had his way. It is interesting that he became very ill and was in the hospital a long time after surgery. But, we would meet regularly and we got no where and one~ay I think the report was written and he was the head of the group - I read it the night before and they were talking about approving it and I said to Rome and Barton I said to Rome, you are the President of the American Psychiatric Association, you are the Exectitive Officer, have you ever read that report He said, "what about it" practically eliminated psychiatry from having anything to do with it. The answer is Stan Yolles came in about that time. What year was that? 13. EAR 1964 FB That was a:...long time ago, wasn't it. Stan came in right afterwards. The report had been made up under Bob Felix there were no reports - they got all our minutes but we couldn't write a report and I had to tell him and Stan said it was alright. They had used alot of the stuff that we had worked out anyhow. I would say that one of the top men on that Connnittee ~· there were two - Bob Stra-qss and Henry Brill - really big help~. Lowell who had done a good job I think in the Navy with a little fellow who killed himself~· in the Air office of the Navy - they did the examining and so on and this li,ttle fellow was a psychologist and first class, apparently? but he came out an,d killed himself. Kelly was number 2 in the Navy Office, but he was going to have nothing to do with things psychiatric. That broke my heart~ that was a year wasted, Stan said no, they used a lot of the stuff 'that I have my doubts about. Now, I have jumped all around but these are the things that come to me and I would like to answer any of the questions you have. EAR You indicated a couple of incidents that play very key roles and you've touched as I had hoped you would on some of the people involved because I really think that what you have just done in essence the real insight into how things took place. There were some people in certain circumstances at certain times who had an unusual influence upon whether something went one way or the other. Just to give you some background before I specifically ask a question, it's my feeling now in retrospect, and I am obviously a little bit biased, that Bob Felix was exactly the right guy for the time he was there, FB Right EAR and in a sense, even though Stan Yolles is a completely different individual, he did some things that Bob couldn •·t do and he could never have done the job that Bob did. FB That's right, now, I got in wrong with Jim Shannon for backing Stan Yolles. Jim didn't want Stan Yolles and I asked Bob - I didn't know Yolles well 14. FB(continued) but Bob thought he would be the man to carry on., Well, all of these things were going underground you know, a lot of it, and I remember standing up for him and I remember also,· riding to Chicago from Hartford and I was sitting with the wife of the President of the University, Babitch, Marcia Babitch, and the surgeon General was on, He is the fellow that signed the smoking report. EAR Yes, Luther Terry FB Luther Terry came back, wanted to see me and we sat together. He had this decision to make and he was being plastered from all sides and he said"what is your frank opinion?'' And, I told· him Stan and then there was some sort of a celebration, I guess it was· saying goodbye to Bob Felix. I saw Stan and I said "it looks fairly good." and he said that he thought so at the moment. The Surgeon General was there. Now, you are close to Stan now and work with him. There were a number of people who left pretty soon afterwards. Jonathan Cole, a fellow named Oker EAR Don Oken FB Gene Brett, Phil Sapir - there was a general exodus there. Orie or two of them came to see me and I couldn't see them leaving but they decided that they had to. I remember that very well. Bob, as my paper describing him will say, with hail fellow well met as·you know made a lot of noise but he could go before Congress and pound his fist and give the appearance of absolute sincerity -"damn this has to be, I'll stand up for my people." Then he would go up and kiss all the girls around and so on and I got attached to him, I knew him. well the:a. Earlier we were not close when I was in the Navy. I backed a guy from 15. FB (continued) up there that he clidn. ~ t like. A Commander in the Subll}a~ine~ and the guy he liked got a big job in research. I got to be friends w~th him later, too, but the fact was that there were all these personalities working. Now, I guess - was it 58 that GAP was born, around there .. EAR I think it was before that FB Was it? EAR I think so. FB Because you see there was another thing happened. I was up in Minneapolis. we . ' were having a second meeting up there I think and Archbishop Sheen made a terrHic attack on psychoanalysis from the pulpit of the New York CathedraL GAP was very much disturbed and they were getting something together, but that must have been 51 because I had just_ gpl\~, .to:;;the •clinic and they wanted an answer and the Catholic boys were all to write these things, so that they were troublesome times. I felt, of course, that Bill Menninger was the power that was in back of that GAP thing. He flagged a lot of us along to work with hi;m,~ Bob was part of it. John Romano, whom r•ve gotten very close to, was a little more rigid in those days. He was in Cincinnati, he went out there and within a year, everybody in Cincinnati was taken by him, he did such an excellent job. They still are going on what John did even when the Maury Levine got in and he surrounded himself with some topnotchers and everybody expected John to go to Harvard after Harry left and then whatever happened, he didn't, but he certainly has done a job now and is a distinguished Professor up there. But, this was the cast of characters. I had an excellent experience in the Navy, the White House a couple of times, atomic bomb place once and ended up in the prison in Nurenberg to see Hesse. We were full of ourselves and I was worried, there was a Canadian Major General who practically saw psychiatrists being able to stop wars in the future and he let this loose and my feeling was then, and I am sure of it now, we became too popular, we became people who could solve all problem,s 16. FB(continued) we took on all sorts of things that we had no business to take on_we knew nothing about and then took the nosedive that was very evident in the 50's and 60''s. But, this was all building up - you could see evidences of what's happening and what has happened., Everything except the appearance of the new drugs in 55, you always hoped for something but I had been in it, in the business in the 30's, and you know that we were without tools except sodium amytal and a strain of malaria and so on. Now, how about you asking me - i feel I am wondering EAR That's alright. I want to touch on your relationship to Mike Gorman because you spoke a little bit about it, but as you well know, and everyone agrees, in many respects he played a very influential role in Washington because of his relationship to both you and Fogarty and, of course because of his relationship with Mary Alaska. FB I heard all of the talk and the resentment about Mike it was all over~ but .I testified with him and hadn't much to do with him until he attacked Bob Felix in a speech in New Jersey and to me, it looked ltr-:e it was going to break up the works if he wasnvt careful. He was after Bob.,.. no doubt - so I went to Mike and I said "Mike, I r.vant you to have breakfast with me at the Cosmos Club," and he did and I said "now, you are after this man, you let him to hell alone, he is doing a good job and we need him,n but he didn't do this and he didn't do that and I said "it makes no difference, he has don,e everything he possibly can and without him in there and I put this in my paper, too, we had a man who was broad of vision, if we had gotten somebody who was broad of beam, we would have been in serious trouble .. " I said all of these things and T said, ''Mike, you are a goddam Hibernian disturber of the peace, some of its funny and some of its not."' Now, I could talk to him that way, I was older, I had 17. FB(continued) nothing at stake and I was another Irishman so, I said I would like you to get fixed with him and talk to him. I went right up to see Bob and I sat with him, I said "Bob, I want you to have lunch-~riJ:h' liim and talk to him and lay it on the line what you are doing, he's got the wrong impression and he thinks you can do much more and I told him you are 0doing all you can.'' So, he did, Bob called withi,n the hour while I was there, called up, and they arranged to have lunch and they rather buried the hatchet because Mike had made four or five but the hatchet wasn't down too far as long as Mike was conce~ned because he could pick up a little thing here and there and he·was after Bob and, course, ·everybody up at NIMH got mad at him, to the point when we had that Twenty Fifith Anniversary, I.was sick, he should have been there, but I suppose some of the young folks felt that he shouldn't have been .. If it weren't for Mike; many of these things would have been in vain. I would go down with a Budget which was suggested by people at NI:MR, hopefully that they would get that anq. Mike would up it, shamefacedly, no you ccd1 't possibly do that unless we do this and I put myself under and was subject to Mike as we testified and he blew up the amount of money just under your very eyes and I made myself subject to him and testified with him and was willing for Fogarty to say one of your men and for Lister's sake. EAR Well, that's a terribly important issue because I think it's in exactly like that kind of context that you have p.layed such a key role as a concila.ator: 1is the wrong word but intermediary between a number of indi­ viduals. Now, jet me just for your own edification, tell you about the Mike Gorman situation at the Twenty Fifth Anniversary •. You know, I was the Staff Person responsible for putting that thing together and when the Committe met with representatives from all the various professions to talk about the nominees, it was perfectly clear that Bob- Felix was going to get the award that he got and then the question became '7 now, what are 18. EAR(~ontinu.ed,} goi,ng to be all the other awards and Mike's name came up 1 of; cour$e, as it should a number of times, and each of the di.ffer,ent professional representatives 19. DR. FRANK BRACELAND Septem,ber 23, 1977 Part 2 FB Bert Brown is serving his residency EAR Well, anyway, there was this resistance and the compromise was that the so~ called citizen's award would go the National Association for Mental Health rather than to any one individual and that was clearly the award that should have gone to him, an award to Bob, and award to Lister Hill and an award to Mike Gorman - that's the way those three awards should have been and they weren~t. You talk about people having their nose out of joint, his nose was out of joint from then on .. FB Right away, and then I think in order to appease him there was a big celebration for Mike. EAR That was Bert Brown's idea FB Well, that was a good one EAR Because Bert talked to Mike. Now, my own minor role in this, unfortunately, is that I may have difficulty talking to Mike because I think he thinks that I had something to do with that and in fact I tried very hard to move them in the opposite direction but they weren't movable and I had been trained .... my experi.,.. ence at NIMH had been such that I really had been long since indoctrinated to believe that a staff person is a staff person and not a Connnittee member. FB Great, we would have a Gonnnittee if they had done that. EAR And, so that in subtle ways I tried to suggest but I wa-s'n.t a member of the Connnittee even though I was the .staff person in charge and there was no way of moving them, so it was unfortunate because I think I hope I can get to see him - I haven't even asked but I hope I can because in many ways his involvement threads through all of the truly political issues that were so important. FB He knew what was what .... he knew who had it. You know another thing that is interesting the APA decided they were going to get somebody who could represent them on the Hill and there was a little fellow who was crippled and Jack Ewald and those folks wanted him and there was some of us that didn'·t and I forget 20. F,B (continqecl) wh:y l cl;iAn 1t wh~t;h,e~ ;i.,t was from Mike or anything but Mike sa;i.d tc:> to me once -he got mad at me - he walked out of a meeting in my office in New York - I was feebleminded ~ he took me to some club up in New York to.. meet one of the laissez faires, a guy with a lot of money interested in mental health and that fellow told me about taking this man who had worked with Lister Hill, so I was sort of out of it when Mike said to me one day he said arentt they going to take him - it looks like it, Mike, he said "well, I tell you if they wait a little while, Lister is going to fire him for drinking, so you can have him after that. The nearest Ewald could · come to being apologetic was 1 . once I was a meeting, the meeting was up there and he was walking up and down the back of the room and he said something when I came in "I was a little bit off on that situation." that was it. He got mad at me really got mad at me, but my point is that I tried to be an intenned,iary and when Bob, as you point out, sent for me for t~at Committee he wanted a Statesman which was nice to be called that, especially when you are Secretary of the Board you were called other things. They were rough times because the analysts wanted me to put neurology out of the deal out of the Board, and substitute psychoanalysis for it and I had been in the Navy, I had to watch things - I had a little girl spy in my office to help me - I went away one weekend and a Neurosurgeon from California had convinced the Detail Officer that all neurologic patients should be_seen by the Neurosurgeons first and then the neurologist. I had a hell of a time getting through with that. Therefore, I do"'."" it was danger, I wouldn't do it, I said no - what will happen is if we do that the internists and the neurosurgeons will divide neurology between themselves - of course, neurology had no cures for anything or help and psychiatry will be off in the wild blue yonder. Well, just think where we would be had we done it. Well, then I finally said they said let's 21. FB(continued) have a Sub Committee, I said alright, You will have a Committee which you can examine of your, own, a Sub Committee,, but get all of the various psychoanalytic groups together. They said, Oh no, just the American Psychoanalytic, I said, Oh, no, that would be post~ graduate American Psychoanalytic~ no, and this is the kind of thing that was going on which would have influenced the futute of not only NI'MH but it would have influenced psychiatry in the country~ We tried to get together to get medicine in there but they couldnlt write the examination at the time. EAR Let me touch on one o,ther thing about NIMH in terms of people tha.,t is unusual and let me preface what Tam a.bout to say with a comment that I may embarrass you. Of all the people on the Council, I want. you know from personal experience, you were the most endearing to the girls who worked at NIMH. They loved you like they loved no body else. Th~ always talked a.bout you, they were always so pleased a.bout your perfo:o:qance on the Council. Now, my own experience, even more intensive than yours, with them is that we really had an unusual bunch of girls. Hattie Arnold, Doris Smith, Aggie Cosgrove - a whole bunch of girls who were extra.ordinarily good and in a real sense, it is a kind of circular phenomenon that is if you have good people at the top, they attract good people in the middle and good people at the bottom and the whole system works very well and I think this is what kind of filtered.:·. down but those girls, especially those three, Hattie Arnold, Doris Smith and Aggie Cosgrove among the others .really were in a major sense, the operational, the day to day operation of the program_ FB And, I guess it is that kind of thing that Stan couldn't have transfe~red to him - that charisma that Felix had, could.go a.round kissing them and tell them he loved them and so on. 22. EAR And, pinching their behinds - absolutely, and he still does that incidentally~ When I visited him two years ago, he is still doing that. He doesn ' t change. 1 From your perspective, even though I say it wasn't on the day to day basis that I had or some of the others had, but you would agree that that was from your experience a very unusual bunch of women. FB It was unusual, of course, I knew nothing about their regard for me, I thought that John Whitehorn and I forget there was somebody elee on the Committee did the job. Jolnwas invited back, I remember or else he was serving his second term. EAR He was FB I just remember some of them of the meetings. I think I worked on that stuf~ pretty well. I tried, I was running this place at the time and I worked at i.t to go into so that I would know what we were talking about. But, it was the same way in the Navy. You know, there were so many personalities get in the way, They would get right in the way of things and· the Old Man used to send for me and say ''Frank I hate to give you these stinky jobs, but I have nobody else to send and it woq.ld be off into some interesting things, My whole point of talking this way is 1 the world was just getting through with a big fire and was trying to settle down. I was lecturing to Insurance Companies who wanted to rate up everybody who had a neurosis in the service and I spoke to them three or four times, I thought they were a cheap bunch but said these are the people that you are tending to now that you are insuring now. These folks will not be any kind of a hazard, somebody who comes out with an anxiety neurosis out of the Navy means he was normal. Guys gettings boats shot from under them and shot out of the air, you know. EAR Let's talk a minu.t.~ or two about the Council because again I think your perspective you started to say that you did a lot of homework and I know everyone felt the need to do that and incidentally, I think when Mike was on the Council, one of his real strengths was the fact that he done his homework and that he was a knowledgable as any of the professional people on the group. You couldn't snow him about anything. Then, of course, he had the irish gift of gab to begin with so that you 23. EAR(continued) often listened to him and you could almost feel him feeding on his own words, he would kind of reach a crescendo as he talked because h~ was so able to take comm.and of what he was trying to say, but think back in terms of the fours years that you were on the Council"'."· March, 1958 through early 1962 and does anything come to mind in the way of :,-.·:t., the sorts of things you had to do before, or during or after the Council meetings or any particular incidents that are vivid in your memory that you think are worth commenting about, FB There was. a little fellow named Magg, who was a delight as far as I was concerned. We made friendships then -::-- I haven l.t seen him since until the last time that we meL when they formed this new corporation which didn't last very long. I saw Mr . Magg there and we examined the pictures together and talked about things but I was very much attached to him,. There was a psychologist - Don Marks had been on. I had been in Queen's Square in England with Don, and Don knew as much neurology as any neurologist in the place. I was an admirer of Donls and I sort of lost track of him afterwardsq I don't know what happened to him.I! EAR He died. He was up at MIT. He died about four or five years ago. FB He sort of passed out of the picture in general,. I think, but Magg st:i::-ikes me, there was another man whom I use to arguewith who is a famous pathologist, I think, from California. Then there was a famous newspaper~ man from St. Louis I got acquainted with but he quit .. EAR Yes, Marcus Childs FB .I liked him and used to deal with him. If I kne:til the names of some of the others EAR I had the book, but I didn't bring it with me. Was John Benjamin on at the same time as you. FB John Benjamin was on, and I loved John. John had me talk to his place in Denver. I remember I spoke on psychiatry and english literature 24. / ~B(continued) went back to show some of the diseases of some of things we were~ dealing with now and how the historians and the literatures knew about them before the medical profession knew anything about them, John was on. EAR J Julius Com'rew? FB He was the guy I was telling you about that I used to argue with about psychiatry. I was greatly taken by those two men, Benjam,in and Cornrow. Cornrow came off, I think and Marcus Childs quit. Was there a lady come on - did Mrs. Rose come on then? EAR Mrs. Rose was on, yes from Philadelphia. FB No, Cincinnati, I think. This wasa-.big woman, I think it was Cleveland, she had several manic attacks afterwards. Of course, Doug Bond took care of her. Her husband was an Assistant Secretary EAR Her last name was Rose. Did she leave before or after you d:i;d 7 Do you recall 'I FB She left after I did~ EAR I have to tell you something that you didn •t hear because this is -­ classic little story and I have told it many times. The day that was her last Council meeting as Bob did every ..time when they had their last Council meeting, he thanked everybody who was going off the Council profusely for their participation and she had been really very quiet at the Council meetings and so he said to her, Mrs. Rose, we really did appreciate very much having you on the Council. I want to thank you very much for your participation. I know you did not say as much as you might have wanted to - perhaps being over awed by all these professionals but I wonder if you have anything you want to sa.y right now before you 0 leave. She said Dr. Felix, yes, there is one thing I have been meaning to ask for some time. She said what is the difference between a psychiatrist and psychologis·t? Well, the place got deathly quiet 25. EAR(<:!ontinued) no one da:r;ed say an;ythi,ng or it would have been a total uproar - people would have just laughed off the chair. And, so Bob handled it beautifully as he always did. He didn't move a muscle~ didn'-t blink an eye and he just proceeded to tell her ''well, you know the psychiatrist is the one who has the M.D, and had somewhat different training, a psychologist has the Ph.D., I hope that answers your question and she said "yes, thank you very much,•; and she went out and that was the end of Mrs. Rose, but it was a classic little incident that Bob, as he. always did - every time something came up at the Council as you will recall where someone got into an argum,ent, he would say "Now, this i,s what the Council is all about~ this is the sort of thing I want to happen - always trying to get resolved some way but he handled it beatuifully FB I remember testif.ying one day and usually aside from the people right next to John Fogarty, nobody ~'. Si~kedc:·. -~ questions but this one guy did. He was down the end,Michigan and he said "after I testified my heart out for an hour, -he said yes, he had a question "Doctor, what is mental disease?'' so I said Mr. Congressman, would you like to discuss any partic~ ular part of functional mental diseases or organic mental diseases or can you start,... "No, just everything in general, so I started through them and I watched John Fogarty and then he asked about the treatment. Well, fortunately, this could be done for this type of person and so on these other things we are after Congress for help so that we can find and so on and as we went out, John said, you didn't give him the right answer. Oh, I said I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, why? Well, he said he is a chiropractOF, and he wanted you to say that their vertebra:~'t-1as>ouc·· of place. Well, there a lot of things like that and another day I had testified and was on my way out the door and he called "Doctor, one moment what is your opinion of the Bureau of the Budget? and I said Mr. Chairman my opinion of the Bureau of the Budget is like their opinion of me, both 26. FB(conti,nued) al;'e un]?rintable and I went out and that was the only thing that got in the newspaper that night, the only thing. You know, you just had to watch your step, but it was great being part of it.,.. I hadn't thought of it - but you awaken many thoughts in my mind about this, The men they all seem to rally round up there" I think some of Ph;il Sapirls presenta'7 tions were classics. He knew what was what .,.. he was quiet .,.. he wasn t,t swayed by any particular kind of oratory and I thought he was great, There were several others of the staff. You were just coming in EAR Right FB But I had the greatest respect for them .,... ;for the sta:ef, as I had the greatest respect for the staff of the Hoover Commission. The work that you people did that wasn't visible at the time l?ut which came up from presented it indicated that you had been at it all day and all night and Saturday•· s and Sunday's and my regard was very high for them for there and for that Hoover Commission bunch and I don't think we could have worked, of course, without them. I was sorry I was so late getting on because, as I say, we were just a little bit at odds until out of clear sky one day in the newspapers that night came this statement. I don"t know whether you remember the time, but it had it not been for the National Institute of Mental Health and the Veterans Administration doing the training man and helping with research, the whole situation would be in absolute chaos, Well, they were meeting that afternoon when this thing broke in the paper so I became a friend down there.,.. I had regarded them highly anyway, I liked Vesty_ Vesty came~up here to see me because we had no residents at the time - my predecessor was an entrepreneur, he took a third rate sanitarium in 1930 and in ten years he had it parlayed where everybody knew about it. People weren't sure of him,.-:--, weren,tt sure of the integrity, they weren't sure of the training, weren't sure of the 27. FB(continued) therapy. He didn't have enough men around him, you know, and he was off in the wild blue yonder. He died of a broken heartw He saw John Cotten before he flew to London where he died. The last thing on his mind was the defeat for the Presidency by George Stevenson~ So he never got over it. EAR You mention Vesty, and I wa::Jtt'_to really ask you about him. Of course, when you got on the Council, he had just one more year and then he died, so that you didnt see very much of him at that time, but you had known him before FB Yes, I had for years, knew him when the thing was making up and of course, would see him at various things and I had a great regard and an affection for this quiet, somewhat sleepy, guy who when you sat and talked to him it was obvious that he knew what was going on and he knew what was needed, and his ideas were forward in the training of men. I know that I felt that I would learn something from him at various times. EAR Yes, he was a remarkable man. He hired me and that is why I have a special regard for him, but he was really a thorough going gentleman of the old school. FB That's right. There is another fellow and you mentioned his name since then and asked me EAR Richard Williams FB Williams, I thought was another quiet, no noise, but produced... Well~ a number of these men I was in great admiration of them and I remember some places I was quizzed about these people and said right out what I thought that it was a first class bunch and I think the glue which held it together is done much better in my discussion of Bob Felix. They 28. FB(continued) needed an extrovert,- they needed somebody who could come in and make a show and pound his fists at the time. Today, it is liable to be~orn and he would get no where. EAR Absolutely. FB But, he was the man for the time and the right place and with the right stuff. EAR I said · to him, you have used the exact word, when we finish the three days and I say Vesty hired me, but actually Vesty hired me and then in those days when everything was still very personal and it was a small enough family, I went to see Bob, even though I wasn't that high up when I first got there, I was lucky enough to move up the ranks, but I went in to see Bob anyway and he was Just absolutely delightful, He said one thing, which he told a lot of people afterwards, and I am going to te.11 this to you because it will remind you of some other things you may want to say. He said "very pleased to have you come and and a lot of other very pleasant words but I just want to tell you one thing about joing the NIMH. He said ''now your coming into the extramural program and your going to be in the training program and you are going to go around and meet with people at the various Universities-.and they are going to respond to you because you are coming there with a couple of bags of money. I want you to remember that so far as the NIMH is concerned, when we support of program we are supporting their program, not our program. We are not running their program for them. If it is a bad program, we'll cut it off, but we are supporting what they want to do. We want to maintain and support their academic :inde'":" pendence and it's terribly important for you to recognize thiS because you are going to be seduced as you go around and they are going to say to you ''what do you think we- should do.'' Don't tell them. 29. FB Well, you know there was another man? too. He wasn't on the Committee while I was there but he was on the Hoover Com.mission, That was Allan Gray., !le WqS a.n incredible man. He sent me to Europe or he made me a Fellow Rockefeller Fellow, the Fellow not a - there was something he objected to at this stage of the game, but at any rate, I remembered everything he said to me and could repeat it as he told me that nobody would watch me, nobody would tell me what to do or where to go. He said there was a man just came back from Europe on a Fellows and In,ternal, Medicine, as far as I can tell, all he learned was an appreciation of Bavarian beer. Now, if there is a couple of those, then we will withdraw the fellowship and this is the same thing that Bob was saying we will withdraw it. EAR How about Ray Feldman, did you have much to do with him~ FB Yes, I liked Ray! Ray was bouncy. He had to do with the grants, too for a place like this and Ray was sort of smart in some ways, you know, and he took everything in - was kind about it, but he knew what was going on. Yes, I appreciated Ray and liked him and had fun with him. Used to joke with him. I thought he was first~ class. He was a little sharper in dealing with people than was Vesty and you weren't as comfortable with Ray, but later, of course, I got to know him in a dif~. ferent setting. I w.as very comfortable with him, he was interesting and you knew he knew what was going on and he would stand for no horse manure around, you know. And, I think they were of a kind in this way, they didn't blurt out when they saw it, they just took it back with them and it went into ehefr what they were doing. EAR Now, you mentinRed Joe Bobbitt some time ago and I guess I should tell you if you don't already know it that one of the··:reasons that people were not as endeared with Stan Yolles as they were with Bob Felix, was·because in their eyes and in the eyes of Phil Sapir and Gene Brandt and a few others, Stan Yolles had eased Joe Bobbitt out of the picture, so to speak and Joe Bobbitt, of course, began in the early days with Bob Felix as his sidekick. They came from New London together. 30. FB And, I think expected he might supplant him, EAR He was Assistant Director for a while and Bob has told me that he never had any intention of making Joe Bobbitt the Director of NIMH. In fact~ he never had any intention of making Vesty Director of NI'.MH .. He was looking for a younger man~ at one time we thought it might be Allan Miller and then it turned out to be Stan Yolles. And, so when Stan took over because of the manner in which he functioned and because he wasn't corny the way Bob was and because he seemed to have pushed Joe Bobbitt out and that is a very complicated story, but anyway, the people who were really very very close to and very supportive of Joe Bobbitt were upset with Stan and couldn't stand it and were upset with him because he wasn't Bob Felix, but you didn't have that much to do with Joe Bobbitt, did you? FB Yes, I had to do with him on that Committee that was to lay out the ground rules. After the fellow who had the fit was taken off and I don't know why but we objected and he was given another job. Joe Bobbitt came on but Joe became a member of the Committee - we got no whereo He had too much background and he kept at it and, of course, some nights I was alone arguing for some things and I think maybe that Howard Rome, who I raised as a boy":"" boyish picture over there":'" I mean he was a resident at 44th and Market when I was Clinical Director, then he wrote me after in the Navy they were going to retire him-or put him in an induction station when he was invalided back from the South Pacific, I took him in my office, then I took him out to the Mayo Clinic when he said,"Frank you are not going to the Mayo Clinic but I seduced him. I took him out and let him make Rounds with the internist one morning and he saw seventeen cases of Addison'' s disease, he didn't think that there were that many in the country but he"s ended up as President of the World Psychiatric so he did alri,ght but there was an excitement to it down there, there was an excitement with the group. I liked the group very much and I liked rrean Brandt in her quiet way she and George 31. FB(continued) ~au!'e!' asked J)1e to write the forewqrd to their book and I. liked the various members of the staff. I thought they were hard working, knowledgeable. In other words, some were a little bit standoffish with us, I think some resented outsid-ers coming in and doing things but :r: don't retain that I just feel that that might have been something':,; but my whole experience was a very pleasant and delightful one, I thought they were great and said so on Mr. Cooper's Connnittee when I was on with Howard Rusk - then I was on a Comm.itte with Howard Rusk for five years to advise Eisenhower on the drafting of Doctors' and that was quite a Connnittee too because that had Mike DeBecky and Pete Churchill and Allan Gray and a few men like that~ - We would meet at;, night "'· it was first class - I wasn't as appreciative as I should have been because I was trying to beat this place into shape;:'and it needed a beating. It had no head for a year. EAR One name that we didn't mention, I think that Eli Ginsberg·was on the Council with you. Was that not so? FB Eli came toward the end and I appreciated his intellect, his knowledge, his ability to talk and the background that he had, ye~ and we got to be good friends, rather good friends. I liked him. EAR He was a very unusual Council member. FB He was and is still I think. EAR I mean a very unusual man in general, but even so on the Council because he had such a breadth of scholarship that there was almost nothing that came up that he didn't have something he could talk about and you should know it was· often a kind of semi-snide staff comment that everytime something came. up, Eli Ginsberg would say:.:. he had either just written a book about that or he was about to write a book about it. In fact I remember one Council meeting where on three separate occasions, he 32: EAR(continued) prefaced his comments with the remark that he was writing a book or had just written a book about that. FB I appreciated his intellect and John Benjamin in his quiet way. John and I got to be very good friends, as I say we would go off and walk together and then, of course, I invited me there to talk to the Faculty. EAR vJhen you came on John Whitehorn was just going off. FB I guess, I think so. Yes. That was his second term. EAR Yes, that was his second term, and you know also Mike had two tenns. FB I think there was some resentment among some of the staff that Mike was being brought back. EAR There was but I think he played an extraordinary important role. I think part of the resentment was due to the fact that he so clearly came with a laundry list of things that had been handed to him by people on the outside that he had to take care of and the conversation would go along and then he would bring up this point about something. That's a question I want to·ask you. To what extent from your own personal experience and from your knowledge of other Council members do you feel that the Council members came there with some degree of an outside agenda? FB Well, I think I don't remember that they did - I think they were sort of aware of the fact that if they did it would become apparent. I thought they were good enough even if the things that came up that they might be interested in· that they got out ~- that: impressed me ---::' no~ I don't remember anybody with a bone to pick or anybody with something that he was going to feather some nest with~ I know that they were delighted when it passed and they were out of the room but I don '·t 33. EAR Oh no, I am sorry - don't misunderstand me. I don't mean in terms of their own personal circumstances FB That somebody had told them EAR And Mike did do,this it was very clear. Now the o"ther Council members were strong-minded enough not to be swayed unless they felt it was worth being swayed, but he did it and the other person who did it in a somewhat different way intending to be much more statesman~like is someone that came on after you left and that is Jolly West. Now Jolly West came on board feeling really that he was going to salvage American psychiatry. FB Did Mike Mansfield appoint him. EAR No it was the man from Oklahoma - I have forgotten who it was.• FB Isn't Mike from there? EAR Is Mike from Oklahoma I think you are right" FB Well, I remember that I knew that Jolly was fixin to get on and, I renrember the time that the Senator came with him when he testified before the Senator came and introduced him and I saw he was on his way - it was an interesting thing I knew about him, I didn't know him but he owed the Air Force or the ARmy four years. Oklahoma wanted him as a Professor. I was on this Committee with Allan and Stuart Wolfe, the Dean out there, and a half a dozen other people got after me to get Jolly out of serving those extra three - he had served one, because they wanted him to be Professor of Psychiatry. Now that was a laundry list with me because theJ:re were very few Professors of Psychiatry around and I didn't know Jolly West but evepybody talked highly of him and then you know the rest of the story, but Stuart Wolfe, a quiet,capable gentleman, he was there at the time, was Professor of Medicine, and I had a high regard for Stuart :as I had for - what was the other Wolfe he worked with? EAR Harold. 34. FB Harold once got me aside down in Arkansas .,. . he said we don ''t see one another and I know of you and you know of me~ he said I want to talk to you sometime He said I have heard that you have a spiritual background and I need to talk to you about something. I think Harold at the time felt that he wasn't well I .just know this was in Arkansas but I don ''t know how soon after he died but he wanted to talk to me and I didn't think anything like that was hidden from people but he picked me out and that is what he wanted to talk about,. I got a regard for Stuart Wolfe at the time and have kept that and I' hear from him, occasionally but he phoned me at home to do all I could to get this guy out and it became a _ _ _ _ _ but I tried to help get him, out and I think maybe did. What year was Hiss on trial, do you remell\ber? I was Secretary of the Board still, I will tell you why I will tell you"'."'-. all of these things were swirling around me and I was at the Mayo Cl:Lnic so it must have been in the late 40's. EAR Yes, it was 49, I think FB: One Sunday afternoon I came home and my wife said '1Frank, there is a man called you from New York who has the most beautiful voice I have ever heard." I called him back and the man said to me ''Doctor, I hope your well. I am Tom Murphy, I am a prosecutor~' It was in the papers. "I said yes I know, he said "'the1;e is a man, a psychiatrist, and I would like to ask you how good a psychiatrist is he? Who am I talking about, you know, he died from Harvard, wrote the book ''The Doctor's Job" - Carl Binger and Carl testified for Hiss, you see, and he testified that he thought there was something the matter with him because he was watching the ceiling and so I said "Doctor, did you know that during your testimony 21 times you were looking at the ceiling, but at any rate what kind of a Doctor is he? I said, "well, he is a first class man, he wrote ''The Doctor's Job''. He said I know all about that. What kind of a man is he? I said, now Mr. Murphy, I 35. FB can't talk to you about those things. He said nis he a diplomat and I said "yes" ''How did he get that,. Doctor" I said }fr .. Murphy J;:h.~'lfe is a man lives in your town who is the President of the Association, his name is Huston Merritt and you call Dr. Merritt and ask him what the secretary can tell him - he is the President. So he called me back very soon and said "Doctor, I talked to Dr. Merritt, very nice, he wishes you a Happy New Yaar and so do I, he said "he said you could tell him anything that was public knowledge. Now he said "it is public knowledge that he didn':t take an exam, did he Doctor? I said, "well, he is a distinguished man and they allowed him to have it. I couldn't tell him that John Whitehorn was indignant that they allowed him to get a degree, John and somebody else on there and it passed like a 6 to 5 thing or something, but these things were all going on with the Board and with psychiatry, but there off the track for NIMff ~ I don•t want to get into it. EAR They are all interesting because I think that it ina sense adds perspective to your own role in many ways. I donlt want to take too much more of your time because I know FB Well, that is alright EAR because I know about one hour and a half is about as much one can take at one time. Is there anything that I haven"·t touched on now that we have talked for as long as we have that you think you might want to comment on before we close, FB How far do you go with it ~up to the present EAR No, I am going to stop at the 25th Anniversary and the present ;is just too complicated and I think that too many things are happening now including the White House Commission which has just reported out. FB Have they reported out as of today? EAR Preliminary report the day before yesterday 36. FB I understand the New York Times EAR Yes, the New York Times. What I am concerned about is to be able to tell a story that really documents the manner in which NI'MH played, I guess, without exaggeration, a preminent role in the development of mental health, psychiatry and the rest of mental health ,in those 25 years, You 1qenti;on the VA and that ''s where I got my start really in the VA - I was a VA psychologist, but I think that by the mid 50' s the VA had been overshadowed by the NIMH and ever since,, FB Well, I have no doubt that without it, without the NIMH, we would have gotten no where, Veterans Administration or not, because the NIMR paid for a lot of stuff for the Veterans I think too and I was also on that Committee i the Veterans f i.rst Advisory Committee was Chuck Mayo and General Bradley was the head and the medical man was a tough guy, who was a two.,...gtar general, whose name I forget, big fellow but I was on that Committee and saw that going but being on both there was no comparison. The other Committee, as a matter of fact, Twas the Psychiatrist on it and the '-other they were interested:'. in various things - I was also the Psychiatrist on the American Board on all the boards they had a group of all the Boards and I made speech one afternoon in which I asked that the American Psychological Association be included to have their men ffi examined by them and so on for their certificate and come under this cloak. There was a fellow named Paul Titus, an obstretician, was in charge of the thing and I got short~shrift. I had known Paul in the Navy·f too - a little fellow, bouncy. I short-shrift and I always regretted that, I felt badly because I thought that there could have been some efforts at healing at that time had we done it., I know I was Chairman of the Committee to meet with psychologists with Paul Huston and a couple of others. We got on together - we didn't accomplish anything for the Committee of the American Psychiatric but I remember that but there is no doubt that without it and just as I said to the Hoover Commission, I dont know whether we have a copy of that or not, without the NIMH, we would have been back in da.rk ages st~i.ll far behirid our people abroad. Now I went abroad~ a Rockefeller Fellowship, I 37. FB would have learned more psychiatry had I stayed at home but it took Philadelphia out of the boy and some of the boy out of Philadelphia, too~ But, it was the NIMH WHICH WAS THE start, now when it came to the 25th Anniversary I had a different feeling. There seemed to be a different group in there that was not at one with what I had dealt with, They were not at one with the group and I felt they were at sixes and sevens and it may be because it was a group of men that I didn't know. EAR Only partly, I think there is a growth in an organization as there is a growth in an individual and you reach a certain point and it is no longer as highly integrated an operation as it was originally. FB And there was more feeling about things and I ·guess I understood that because of looking for Mike in there, but I have no doubt at all in my mind. What else could we have done? We may have moved a little too fast in some spots, but several things which were done, I remember voting to finance Busseyts geriatric group, I remember the names of some of the men like Schildkraut that we had, I was a great admirer of Bert Booth. I ·thought that NIMH had a great group and, as I said, my nose was out of joint until, as. a matter of fact I was the only psychiatrist in the public eye who had not held a position for NIMH,. My fault, partially, and Bob's fault, you didn't step on Bob's toes without knowing it. It was like sort of another Mike thing, when they got to know one another they did much better. EAR One other name, Frank, Jonathan Cole. Did you have much to do with him? FB Yes, I knew Cole afterwards and at first, Jonathan did not impress me first until I sat with him on a number of occasions and talked drugs with him and then he impressed me very much. As a matter of fact, when I made up my editorial board I put Jon Cole right on. Yes, he impressed me very much. He didn't come see me when he was leaving but Oken did and some man, I think NLM NOTE: Interview tape ends abruptly here