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Psychobiology, Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis: The Intersecting Careers of Adolf Meyer, Phyllis Greenacre, and Curt Richter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Andrew Scull  and
Jay Schulkin
Andrew Scull
Affiliation:
Andrew Scull, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0533, USA; e-mail: ascull@ucsd.edu Jay Schulkin, Departments of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University, School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20057–1460, USA; e-mail: jschulkin@acog.org
Jay Schulkin
Affiliation:
Andrew Scull, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0533, USA; e-mail: ascull@ucsd.edu Jay Schulkin, Departments of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University, School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20057–1460, USA; e-mail: jschulkin@acog.org
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Information
Medical History , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 5 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1T Lidz, ‘Adolf Meyer and the development of American psychiatry’, Am. J. Psychiatry, 1966, 123: 320–32.

2Cf. Michael Gelder, ‘Adolf Meyer and his influence on British psychiatry’, in G E Berrios and H Freeman (eds), 150 years of British psychiatry 1841–1991, London, Gaskell, 1991, pp. 419–35.

3Silas Weir Mitchell, ‘Address Before the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the American Medico-Psychological Association’, J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 1894, 21: 443–73.

4Meyer to Blumer, 23 Oct. 1894. Meyer Papers, Series I/355, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (hereafter CAJH.

5As Meyer himself recalled, “I found the medical staff … hopelessly sunk into routine and perfectly satisfied with it … A bewildering multiplicity of cases stared me in the face. It would have been the easiest thing for me to settle into the traditions—I had to make autopsies at random on cases without any decent clinical observation, and examinations of urine and sputum of patients whom I did not know, and for physicians who merely filed the reports … whenever I tried to collect my results, I saw no safe clinical and general medical foundation to put my findings on.” Adolf Meyer, ‘Aims and plans of the Pathological Institute for the New York State Hospitals’, in Eunice E Winters (ed.), The collected papers of Adolf Meyer, 4 vols, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950–52, vol. 2, p. 93.

6Eunice E Winters, ‘Adolf Meyer's two and a half years at Kankakee’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1966, 40: 441–58.

7Lidz, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 323; Ruth Leys, ‘Meyer, Watson, and the dangers of behaviorism’, J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1984, 20: 128–49.

8Winters (ed.), op. cit., note 5 above, vol. 2, p. 28; see also Ruth Leys and Rand B Evans (eds), Defining American psychology: the correspondence between Adolf Meyer and Edward Bradford Titchner, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

9William James, Pragmatism, New York, Meridian, 1958. (Original edition 1907.)

10Gerald Grob, The state and the mentally ill: a history of the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, 1830–1920, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1966, pp. 287, 297–98.

11For Van Gieson's vision of the Pathological Institute's future, see his ‘Remarks on the scope and organization of the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals’, State Hospitals Bulletin, 1896, 1: 255–74; 407–88.

12Gerald Grob provides a valuable overview of Van Gieson's tenure and professional demise in his Mental illness and American society 1875–1940, Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 127–9.

13See the useful discussions in ibid., pp. 128–31; and Ruth Leys, ‘Adolf Meyer: a biographical note’, in Leys and Evans (eds), op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 43–6.

14Frank G Ebaugh, ‘Adolf Meyer's contribution to psychiatric education’, Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1951, 89: Supplement, pp. 64–72, p. 71.

15For a discussion, see Michael Gelder, ‘Adolf Meyer and his influence on British psychiatry’, in Berrios and Freeman (eds), op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 419–35.

16Smith Ely Jelliffe to Harry Stack Sullivan, 1 June 1937, Jelliffe Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

17For discussions of Meyer's complicated relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, see Ruth Leys, ‘Meyer's dealings with Jones: a chapter in the history of the American response to psychoanalysis’, J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1981, 17: 445–65; and Nathan G Hale, Jr, The rise and crisis of psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995, esp. pp. 168–72.

18Thomas Turner, for example, in a generally hagiographic account of the Hopkins faculty in these years, judges that “Meyer seems to have done very little research in the accepted sense after coming to Hopkins” and pronounces himself unable to discern “any direct contribution to knowledge in the field”—a damning assessment of a Hopkins professor. See Thomas B Turner, Heritage of excellence: the Johns Hopkins medical institutions, 1914–1947, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, pp. 441–4.

19Decades later, Richter reported that Robert Yerkes (who had given him the only “A” grade he earned at Harvard), had urged him to read Watson's book on Animal education, an intellectual encounter that prompted him to move to Hopkins. See C Richter, ‘It's a long way to Tipperary, the land of my genes’, in Donald A Dewsbury (ed.), Leaders in the study of animal behavior: autobiographical perspectives, Lewisburg, PA, Bucknell University Press, 1985, p. 369.

20C A Logan, ‘The altered rationale for the choice of a standard animal in experimental psychology. Henry H Donaldson, Adolf Meyer and the albino rat’, Hist. Psychol., 1999, 2: 3–24.

21On these differences, see Leys, op. cit., note 7 above.

22This was a feature of Meyer's character that Phyllis Greenacre attributed in part to his Zwinglian upbringing. Interview with Andrew Scull, New York City, 22 Dec. 1983. It is also discussed in passing in Ruth Leys, op. cit., note 17 above, p. 456, which includes a claim that “sexuality was an area of personal tension for Meyer during these years”.

23Watson to Meyer, 13 Aug. 1920; Meyer to Watson, 17 Aug. 1920; Watson to Meyer, 18 Aug. 1920, and assorted notes, Meyer Papers, Series I/3974/20, CAJH.

24Meyer to Goodnow, 29 Sept. 1920, Johns Hopkins University Archives, Series III/11.

25Meyer to Levy, 6 March, 1922, Meyer Papers, Series I/2341/1, CAJH.

26A more benign interpretation of Meyer's actions in the case is offered in Ruth Leys' paper on ‘Meyer's dealings with Jones’, pp. 455–6 (see note 17 above), where Meyer is described as having “sympathized” with Watson (though deploring his sexual misbehaviour), and it is claimed that he “hated to lose [him]”. The misrepresentations to Levy are explained away as an indication of Meyer's “ambivalence”. This interpretation strikes us as strained, given Meyer's proactive role in securing Watson's dismissal, and the long-standing intellectual disagreements between the two men. We note, too, that Leys’ discussion of Meyer's behaviour in the censoring of a paper by Jones on Freud's psychology and blocking a possible appointment for Jones at Hopkins reveals a similar pattern of double-dealing and deceit.

27Richter's appointment involved passing over an application from the far more senior and prominent Robert Yerkes, who had taught him at Harvard. See Kerry W Buckley, Mechanical man: John Broadus Watson and the beginnings of behaviorism, New York, Guilford Press, 1989; Meyer to Watson, 12 April 1921, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series I/3974/21. Perhaps Meyer thought he could more readily dominate the younger man. Significantly, Richter's appointment led to the Psychological Laboratory being renamed the Psychobiological Laboratory. For further elaboration of this point, see Jay Schulkin, Curt Richter: a life in the laboratory, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, pp. 16–19.

28Meyer to Greenacre, undated (probably late summer 1919), Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

29On the Hopkins policy prohibiting marriages between junior members of staff on pain of forced resignation, see Turner, op. cit., note 18 above, pp. 237–8. Officially, the policy was still in place at the outbreak of the Second World War.

30Greenacre to Meyer, 14 Aug. 1919, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

31Meyer to Greenacre, 1 and 24 July 1919, CAJH Series XV.

32Meyer to Greenacre, n.d., [1919]. Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

33Greenacre to Meyer, 14 August 1919, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

34Greenacre to Meyer, 8 Sept. 1919, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

35Meyer to Greenacre, no date, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

36Quoted in Regina Morantz-Sanchez, ‘Dorothy Reed Mendenhall', in John A Garraty and Mark C Carnes (eds), American national biography, New York, Oxford University Press, Online Edition, 2000.

37Greenacre to Meyer, 5 Jan. 1922, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

38Phyllis Greenacre, interview with Andrew Scull, New York City, 22 Dec. 1983. Sixty years and more after these events, Meyer's obstructionism still produced a visible emotional reaction in Greenacre. She had earlier given to Ruth Leys a fuller account of Meyer's repeated interventions to block its publication. These actions continued into the late 1930s, despite his description of it in a meeting of his staff “as the best piece of work to come out of the clinic”. Further fuelling Greenacre's sense of grievance, having said that, Meyer promptly attributed the paper to Ruth Fairbank. Ruth Leys, interview with Phyllis Greenacre, New York, 16 June 1982. (We are grateful to Dr Leys for permission to quote from her notes on this interview.)

39Meyer to Greenacre, no date [July 1919], Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

40Phyllis Greenacre, interview with Ruth Leys, New York City, 16 June 1982, from which these quotations are taken. Greenacre's memories were equally bitter when she spoke of these matters with one of us in December 1983.

41Greenacre to Meyer, 5 Jan. 1922, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

42Richter's personal closeness to Meyer is evident in his autobiographical talk about his years at Hopkins, given to medical residents in 1973–74. See ‘Reminiscences’, unpublished paper, Richter Papers, CAJH Series 1, Mss: Adolf Meyer. The frequent weekend trips to dine with the Meyers were confirmed by his son, Peter Richter, in an interview with Andrew Scull, Garrison, New York, 15 Aug. 1996.

43See, for example, the discussion in A McGehee Harvey, Adventures in medical research: a century of discovery at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

44See Paul Rozin, ‘The compleat psychobiologist’, in Elliott M Blass (ed.), The psychobiology of Curt Richter, Baltimore, York Press, 1976, pp. xv–xxviii. Relevant work by Richter includes ‘A behavioristic study of the activity of the rat’, Comparative Psychology Monographs, 1922, 1: 1–55; ‘Some observations on the self-stimulation habits of young wild animals’, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1925, 13: 724–8; ‘Animal behavior and internal drives’, Quarterly Review of Biology, 1927, 2: 307–43; ‘The electrical skin resistance’, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1928, 19: 488–508; ‘The grasping reflex in the new-born monkey’, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1931, 26: 784–90; ‘The grasp reflex of the new-born infant’, American Journal of the Diseases of Childhood, 1934, 48: 327–32; ‘Cyclic manifestations in the sleep curves of psychotic patients’, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1934, 31: 149–51; ‘Increased salt appetite in adrenalectomized rats’, American Journal of Physiology, 1936, 115: 155–61; ‘Total self-regulatory functions in animals and human beings’, Harvey Lectures, 1942–1943, series 38, pp. 63–103; ‘The use of the wild Norway rat for psychiatric research’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1949, 110: pp. 379–86; ‘Diurnal cycles of man and animals’, Science, 1958, 128: 1147–48; ‘The phenomenon of unexplained sudden death in animals and man’, in Physiological Bases of Psychiatry compiled and edited by W Horsley Gantt, Springfield, IL, Thomas, 1958, pp. 302–13 (paper read at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pavlovian Laboratory, Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital); ‘Biological clocks in medicine and psychiatry: shock-phase hypothesis’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 1960, 46: 1506–30; Biological clocks in medicine and psychiatry, Springfield, IL, Thomas, 1965.

45Greenacre to Meyer, 5 Jan. 1922, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

46Ibid.

47Greenacre to Meyer, 22 Aug. 1922, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

48Stanley McCormick had had a psychotic breakdown some months after his marriage. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was to remain confined for the rest of his life, much of the time in a family mansion in California. Meyer had first been consulted on the case in 1906. For him, and for several other psychiatrists, McCormick provided the opportunity for an almost endless stream of lucrative consultations stretching over four decades.

49Meyer to Greenacre, 24 July 1924, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

50Greenacre to Meyer, 18 July 1924, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV, emphases in the original.

51Meyer to Greenacre, 29 July 1924, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV. A notation on this document indicates that it was “not sent”. It does serve as an indicator, however, of Meyer's worries in the face of Greenacre's mounting unhappiness about her stalled career, and it seems likely that an alternate version of this document was dispatched back to Greenacre, for a key proposal made later in this draft was implemented a few weeks later.

52Ibid. For a detailed examination of the entire focal sepsis episode, see Andrew Scull, Madhouse: a tragic tale of megalomania and modern medicine, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005.

53Henry A Cotton, The defective, delinquent, and insane, Princeton University Press, 1921.

54Meyer to Greenacre, 22 July 1924, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV; Meyer to Cotton, 11 Sept. 1924, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series I/767/24; Andrew Scull, interview with Phyllis Greenacre, New York, 22 Dec.1983.

55Phyllis Greenacre, ‘Trenton State Hospital Survey, 1924–1926’, unpublished typescript, pp. 16, 20–4, emphasis in the original.

56See Schulkin, op. cit., note 27 above, pp. 101–8.

57Greenacre to Meyer, 10 Sept. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

58A Meyer to H Meyer, 27 Oct. 1927, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series IV/3/237.

59Curt Richter to his mother, Marta Richter, n.d.; 3 Feb. 1930. See also Richter to his mother, 14 June 1930. Richter Papers, CAJH Series 1, Correspondence (Family).

60Adolf Meyer, manuscript notes on Curt Richter, dated May 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

61A Meyer to H Meyer, 27 Oct. 1927, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series IV/3/239.

62A Meyer to H Meyer, 17 Nov. 1927, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series IV/3/240.

63A Meyer to H Meyer, 12 Dec. 1927, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series IV/3/240.

64Greenacre to Mrs Meyer, 3 Jan.1928; Greenacre to Meyer, 17 Jan. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

65Greenacre to Meyer, 29 Feb. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

66Meyer to Greenacre, 20 Feb. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

67Meyer to Greenacre, 15 June 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

68Greenacre's letters to Meyer included copies of some of Richter's letters to her, as she provided him with a blow by blow account of their disputes. See Greenacre to Meyer, 17 Jan. 1928; 29 Feb. 1928; 6 March 1928; 17 April 1928; 15 May 1928; 10 and 19 Sept. 1928; 2 and 25 October 1928; 3 (telegram) and 20 June 1929; 18 and 21 June 1920. Richter to Greenacre, 23 Aug. 1928 and Greenacre to Richter, 13 Sept. 1928, all in Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV. There were a number of meetings between Greenacre and Meyer about these matters, and at least one three way meeting at which Meyer sought to bring matters to a conclusion.

69Richter to Meyer, 26 Aug. 1929, Meyer Papers Series XVI.

70Turner, op. cit., note 18 above, pp. 268 (where he attributes the Chinese lecture story to Richter), pp. 441–4; Bertram N Bernheim, Story of the Johns Hopkins, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1948, ch. 13. Then there is the deafening silence about Meyer in A McGehee Harvey's Adventures in medical research, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, a lengthy hymn of praise to all the medical breakthroughs pioneered at the University.

71Phyllis Greenacre articulated this sentiment in interviews with both Andrew Scull (interview in New York City, 22 Dec. 1983) and Ruth Leys (‘Impressions of my evening with Phyllis Greenacre’, 16 June 1982), and without being aware of his mother's comments, Peter Richter made the same point in an interview with Andrew Scull, 15 Aug. 1996.

72Manuscript note about Phyllis Greenacre, undated [1928], Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

73Meyer to Greenacre, 20 Feb. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

74Greenacre to Meyer, 29 Feb. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

75Greenacre to Meyer, 17 April 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

76Meyer to Greenacre, 15 June 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

77Ibid.

78Greenacre to Meyer, 10 Sept. 1928, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

79See Fritz Wittels, Freud and his time, New York, Liveright, 1931.

80The sessions with Jacobson went very badly, and Greenacre finally terminated the analysis. Peter Richter, interview with Andrew Scull, 4 Feb. 1996.

81Greenacre to Meyer, 13 Dec. 1930, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV.

82Ibid.

83Greenacre to Meyer, 18 Sept. 1931, Meyer Papers, CAJH Series XV. When she had left Baltimore, Greenacre asserted many years later, Meyer “told her at that time that he had not treated her correctly. She felt that this was true, and that he would therefore do anything for her.” Ruth Leys, ‘Impressions of my evening with Phyllis Greenacre’, 16 June 1982.

84Greenacre commented at length about Meyer's dismay at her embrace of Freud, of whom he became increasingly critical (and jealous) in the later stages of his own career, in her interviews with Ruth Leys (16 June 1982) and Andrew Scull (22 Dec. 1983), and noted that a number of Meyer's most talented students had emulated her. For discussions of Meyer's complicated relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, see Leys, op. cit., note 17 above; and Hale, Jr, op. cit., note 17 above, esp. pp. 168–72.

85See, for example, John Frosch, ‘The New York psychoanalytical civil war’, J. Am. Psychoanal. Assoc., 1991, 39: 1037–64.

86David James Fisher, review of Douglas Kirsner, Unfree associations, American Imago, 2002, 59: 209–23, quotation on p. 213.

87Manuel Furer, quoted in Douglas Kirsner, Unfree associations: inside psychoanalytic institutes, London, Process Press, 2000, p. 27.

88See, for example, Phyllis Greenacre, Trauma, growth, and personality, New York, Norton, 1952.

89Phyllis Greenacre, Swift and Carroll, New York, International Universities Press, 1955; idem, The quest for the father: a study of the Darwin–Butler controversy as a contribution to the understanding of the creative individual, New York, International Universities Press, 1963.

90Fisher, op. cit., note 86 above, p. 212.

91Arnold A Rogow, The psychiatrists, New York, Putnam, 1970, p. 109. Greenacre was the highest ranking analyst who was not either a European, or a European refugee.

92In other contexts, Nathan Hale, Jr has spoken of Meyer's “personal failings … notably his ambivalence and paralyzing caution” (op. cit., note 17 above, p. 168); and Ruth Leys of his dislike of “conflict and contention of any kind” and “an intellectual timidity that all too often … made him incapable of acting decisively when controversial matters were at stake.” (Leys, op. cit., note 17 above, p. 451.) For her part, Phyllis Greenacre adduced his horror of airing dirty professional laundry in public, and his loyalty to the weakest of his disciples as possible spurs to silence. (Interview with Andrew Scull, 22 Dec. 1983.) All these factors may help us understand Meyer's behaviour. None of them, it goes without saying, excuses it.

93Phyllis Greenacre, Emotional growth, New York, International University Press, 1971, p. xxii.

94For a discussion of Meyer's invention of the “life chart” and its relationship to his psychiatry, see Ruth Leys, ‘Types of one: Adolf Meyer's life chart and the representation of individuality’, Representations, Spring 1991, 34: 1-28

95Adolf Meyer, ‘The scope and teaching of psychobiology’, in Alfred Lief (ed.), The commonsense psychiatry of Dr. Adolf Meyer, New York, McGraw–Hill, 1948, p. 436.

96On the Rockefeller initiative, see Donald Fleming, ‘The full time controversy’, J. Med. Educ., 1955, 30: 398–406. Harvey Cushing, the pioneering neurosurgeon, was another prominent medical academic who objected fiercely to the Rockefeller proposals.

97Adolf Meyer, 20 Nov. 1947, Meyer papers, CAJH Series VI/8, quoted in Hale, Jr, op. cit., note 17 above, pp. 167–8.

98See Philip Pauly, ‘Psychology at Hopkins: its rise and fall’, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Dec. 1979, 30: 36-41.

99As Ruth Leys notes in her paper on ‘Meyer's dealings with Jones’ (note 17 above), esp. pp. 448–50, 454–6.

100Schulkin, op. cit., note 27 above, pp. 136–7.

101C Fred Alford, Whistleblowers: broken lives and organizational power, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2001; David Rothman, Strangers at the bedside, New York, Basic Books, 1991, pp. 70–84; Robert Bell, Impure science: fraud, compromise, and political influence in scientific research, New York, Wiley, 1992.