In memoriam Leon Eisenberg and the essence of Medicine

Extract

I got in touch with Leon Eisenberg at the very end of his long and fulfilling professional life, or, to be precise, he got in touch with me. On December 12th, 2006 I received a sharp and hilarious comment on a paper I had written on the change of the name “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability” and its relation to stigma. In a friendly tone, it distilled joy of life and “bonheur”. The author recalled an old editorial at the American Journal of Psychiatry which explained that soldiers with neuropsychiatric problems were classified under a code known as ‘Section 8’ during the Second World War. “In no time at all, this classification number spread throughout the military community and became a term of derision. If you were thought to be a bit odd, you were called a ‘Section 8. Army psychiatrists concerned about the stigma changed the terminology from “Section 8” to “Simple Adult Maladjustment”. Not long after the change was made, the author of the editorial was in a base camp watching a film starring Jerry Lewis. He was astonished to hear members of the audience call out ‘Look at the ‘Sammy. After a moment he realized that “Sammy” stemmed from the initial letters “S.A.M.” of “Simple Adult Maladjustment”.