When Sibylle Escalona, Director of Research at Menninger, decided in 1951 to leave and return to New York, she and George Klein discussed the possibility of importing Gardner and me as replacements. Klein felt that Gardner's research on the influence of affect on perception was relevant to other research on perception then being carried on at Menninger. Escalona felt that my research on child personality could build on her nonnormative studies of infants. Their discussions with the Medical Search Committee and with Dr. Will Menninger led to our move to Topeka in September, 1952.
Dr. Will was undertaking a fund-raising effort and wanted a “name” to strengthen his effort. He and Karl met with Gardner in New York, but all the details were discussed with Will; after Gardner's death, Karl told me he had felt “left out” of the plans. Evidently this feeling contributed to the strained relations between him and Gardner during our time at Menninger, but Karl's relationship with me was always friendly. In fact, when my last book on research came out in 1976 he wrote me, “We love your book and we love you.” He also told me warmly, “You were the only one who used my ideas” (disintegrative reactions to stress). I mention these gestures because so much has been made of Karl's “irascibility,” which I never experienced.
Karl was a complex, creative man, empathic with people suffering in prisons and state hospitals and determined to make the Menninger hospital an effective therapeutic setting, which it quickly became under the leadership of the Menninger brothers. A major factor in its superior work while we were there was the high calibre of staff, from psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, who included outstanding leaders from abroad; to the superb secretaries, nurses, and childcare workers; to even the cooks. The motto in the 1950s was “people before bricks.” In the 60s excellent physical facilities were added and continue to be improved today.
I, a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist pioneering dynamic studies of coping, vulnerability, and resilience in a longitudinal study of children, enjoyed a level of freedom and flexibility that would not have been available in any university setting, which is subject to bureaucratic pressures and state Regents demands. Karl Menninger had an exploring, hospitable mind. His Saturday morning colloquia, as well as his notes in the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, conveyed stimulating gems from his wide reading. He himself was not an analyst fenced in by Freudian concepts. The Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute, which trained both psychiatrists and psychologists as analysts, was conservative. During my training there, I found Ishak Ramzy's thinking fresh and inspiring. According to him, the only essential principle of psychoanalysis is its emphasis on the unconscious. “Always remember that in any hour you may hear something completely new that you have never read or encountered in any other way,” he said. But the training courses were predominantly classical Freud. I was disappointed that no attention was paid to the important work of Phyllis Greenacre, Erik Erikson, or Heinz Hartmann.
At that time, and perhaps to this day, stereotypical notions about Topeka prevailed in the East: Kansas was flat and boring; there was no culture, so it was thought. Actually eastern Kansas is lovely, rolling country. Woods and the Flint Hills shape the landscape. People from different parts of the world come to teach and to be taught. When I was there, the Fine Arts Society arranged chamber music concerts, and there was a community concert auditorium where we heard Beverly Sills very early in her career as well as other distinguished performers.
Topeka had other charms: decency and kindness and a comfortable pace of life unlike the pressure of New York and other metropolitan areas. Naturally there was no substitute for the varied groups who had been part of my life at Sarah Lawrence College: poets Stephen Spender, Horace Gregory and others; musicians William Schuman and Norman dello Joio; artists Kurt Roesch and David Smith. But there were brilliant young psychiatrists and psychologists who became close friends: Cotter Hirschberg, Povl Toussieng, Robert Wallerstein, Philip Holzman, and others. Our life was rich in friendship. While the Menninger Foundation seemed to us to be too isolated from the community around it generally, it was very responsive in times of trouble. It had come to the aid of the community in 1951, before we came, when the Kaw River flooded; and after the devastating tornado of 1966 many members of the Menninger staff spent time in relief centers distributing food and clothing and helping to find housing for those whose homes had been demolished. Karl Menninger's big heart was concerned not only with emergencies. He was eating supper with prisoners in the local jail on Christmas Eve of the last year of his life.
I was so impressed by the quality of the treatment of severely disturbed children in the Children's Service that I wrote a little book about it, Growing Up in Garden Court (Child Welfare League of America). In contrast to the children who were dealt harsh punishment in Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School, children at Menninger were guided firmly but gently to appropriate behavior, taught with ingenuity by creative teachers, allowed the privacy of rooms of their own, and encouraged to participate in creative group activities as well as play and sports. The child care workers developed caring relationships with them, which included goodnight hugs. This was an approach to develop trust and use the children's own creativeness.
The Menninger Foundation's fame has
attracted grants to support different aspects of its program in addition to research. A stimulating series of lectureships, each involving residence in Topeka for several weeks or months, was financed by the Sloan Foundation. These lectureships brought Margaret Mead, Aldous Huxley, Jean Piaget, and A.R. Luria, along with such distinguished analysts as René Spitz, for extended visits that gave us an opportunity to know them personally as well as to enjoy their contributions.
The Menninger Foundation in the 50s and 60s was a model not only for graduates of its School of Psychiatry to carry back to their home countries, or home towns in this country, but for the many visitors who came to observe its programs. This history of psychiatry at Menninger cannot completely account for the personal and professional factors that made it a leader so early, but the intense dedication of the Menningers, father and sons, was certainly basic. Being removed from the “fast track” and being relatively free of unethical behavior were important. Topeka was a decent city, and the Menninger Foundation was built on ideals.