Alumni Newsletter

April 2004, Volume 51, Number 1

Inside this issue:

• Research focuses on mentalizing
• Dr. Goldberg honored for work
• Alumns offer look into their careers
• Book examines troubled communities
• Psychotherapy text provides practical steps
  for a range of treaters
• News, notes
• In memoriam
• An extraordinary woman

Research focuses on mentalizing

Combining The Menninger Clinic’s
expertise in behavioral research
with the technical expertise at
The Brown Foundation Human
Neuroimaging Laboratory is a
powerful match. P. Read Montague,
Jr., PhD, left, heads the laboratory
and Efrain Bleiberg, MD, directs
research at The Menninger Clinic.

The issue of mentalizing has been placed at the top of collaborative research efforts at Menninger.

“By mentalizing, we manage such feelings as frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety, shame and guilt without resorting to automatic fight-or-flight responses or ways of coping that are ultimately self-destructive. Mentalizing appears to be a key human capacity underlying the ability to sustain meaningful relationships and a strong sense of identity,” said Efrain Bleiberg, MD (MSP ’79, C ’79), vice chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and a senior psychiatrist and head of research at The Menninger Clinic.

Menninger researchers and clinicians have been studying mentalizing in recent years and held a symposium in Topeka in January 2003 on the topic. That inspired a two-volume edition of the Bulletin of The Menninger Clinic to be devoted entirely to the subject of mentalizing.

Planning for a December conference on mentalizing is under way.

Menninger has strengths in behavioral sciences, and developmental and psychosocial research. Baylor as a whole has strengths in basic science research, including departments in molecular and human genetics, neuroscience, cell and molecular biology, and development biology.

In joining forces, the two institutions combine expertise in behavior with the cutting-edge technology at The Brown Foundation Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

Dr. Bleiberg and P. Read Montague, Jr., PhD, Professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Division of Neuroscience and Director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, head a research team committed to discovering prevention and cures for mental illness.

With a team of international experts, the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Baylor is accelerating the translation of what researchers are learning in the laboratory to actual prevention and treatment of mental disorders. The Menninger Clinic’s expertise from a decade of mentalizing study is joined with Baylor’s leadership in neuroscience, as well as collaborations with the Anna Freud Centre, and University College London and plans for additional collaboration with the Yale Study Center.

Menninger research has a three point approach:

• Using mentalizing as an organizing principle to examine developmental psychopathology, investigation will commence of abnormalities in attachment processes and the processing of social experience in patients with Borderline Personality Disorders;
• In order to further research in the prevention of psychosocial maladjustment and social disorder through the enhancement of wellness and mentalizing, completion is planned of a Peaceful School Protocol and testing new methods of implementing the protocol;
• Clinical interventions will be examined for “treatment-resistant” or “specialized” patient populations focusing on deficits or dysfunctions of mentalizing. The project will result in the development of a systemic treatment model for the Professionals in Crisis program of The Menninger Clinic and a manual of developmental psychodynamic systemic therapy for children with severe emotional disorders.

The strength of the researchers is world class. For example, Stuart Yudofsky, MD, Chair of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, is known worldwide for his expertise in neuropsychiatry and pharmacologic treatment of mental illness. Dr. Bleiberg and Glen Gabbard, MD (MSP ’75, MSP-M ’92), specialize in personality disorders. Peter Fonagy, PhD (MSP-A ’02), and Jon Allen, PhD (P ’76, MSP-M ’96) , directed much of the Menninger research on mentalizing.

The laboratory is dedicated exclusively to brain-behavior research. Initially, researchers will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain-scanning technology to view real-time effects of social interactions between mothers and infants. The procedure involves painless, noninvasive brain scanning to pinpoint areas of the brain that process social and emotional information. The result is a colorful picture of brain activity that researchers analyze.

With the laboratory’s hyperscanning capabilities, developed by Dr. Montague, multiple subjects, each in a separate scanner, can interact with one another while their brains are simultaneously scanned. Software uses the Internet to allow one scientist to control multiple scanners, even if they are located thousands of miles apart in different centers.

Patients at The Menninger Clinic and Baylor’s clinical services will be among the first to benefit from this research.

Equipped with two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanners, one of which is seen in the background above, real-time effects of social interactions can be recorded between individuals.	The lab is located at Baylor College of Medicine on the Texas Medical Center campus in Houston.

Dr. Goldberg honored for work

Ben Goldberg, MD (MSP ’55), professor emeritus, University of Western Ontario, was recently honored with the Order of Ontario, the province’s most prestigious official honor. The award recognized Dr. Goldberg for 43 years of teaching mentally handicapped children and adults and researching better treatments.

The citation that came with the award declared: “Throughout his career, Dr. Goldberg has specialized in treating children with autism, developmental disabilities and psychiatric problems. From 1960 to 1965, Dr. Goldberg served as the first chief of psychiatry at the Child & Parent Resource Institute in London, Ontario. He was the first director of Treatment, Training and Research from 1971 to 1988 and at the same time served as the first coordinator of Child Psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario from 1973 to 1983. He also served as the founding director of the Developmental Disabilities Program at the University of Western Ontario where he trained residents and other physicians in more effective ways to treat individuals with developmental disabilities.

“In addition, he has been a consultant for the United Nations Rehabilitation Directorate. In 1970, with Dr. Goldberg’s leadership, the Child and Parent Resource Institute in London received the American Psychiatric Association Gold Award as the most comprehensive children’s psychiatric mental health service in North America.”

The Order of  Ontario was presented by the lieutenant governor of the province on March 31st, 2004.

“My pursuit for excellence in psychiatry can be attributed to the late Dr. Karl (Menninger), the late Cotter Hirschberg, Barney Foster, Bill Smith and the excellent faculty of  the Menninger School of Psychiatry,” said Dr. Goldberg, who in recent years presented the Menninger Library with four volumes of his collected papers.

Alumns offer look into their careers
We’d like to hear from Menninger alumni. Drop us a note or send us an e-mail telling us what you have been doing since leaving Menninger and your present situation. Send information to rverdon@menninger.edu or drop us a line at The Menninger Clinic, Alumni Newsletter, 2801 Gessner Drive, PO Box 809045, Houston, TX, 77280.

Here are some recent responses:

Roman Rodriguez, MD (MSP ’76; C ’78), San Francisco has started a private practice and has expanded teaching activities at UCSF-Langley Porte, after 18 years at Kaiser Permanente, the last eight as chief of psychiatry.

“This transition has been tremendously rewarding, Dr. Rodriguez said, “and I especially enjoy my work with the residents and fellows.”

Othón Tirado, MD, MS (MSP ’66) has become a professor of psychology at the University Iberoamericana and joined the medical staff of the New University Hospital, named Angeles de Interlomas. He is also giving time to the neglected population of the Escandon Hospital, which is operated by the Sisters of Charity. Included in his time is teaching interns and residents from the universities of La Salle, Anahuac and Panamericana.

“I am very happy to write you,” Dr. Tirado said in a note. “I hope all your new plans come along well. A long time ago, I had a chat with Dr. Karl Menninger and we talked about the need to place Menninger close to a university in a near future. I am sure he would be happy to know what happened.”

Mahasen T. DeSilva, MD (MSP ’72, C ’74), has joined Behavioral Health Services at Stormont-Vail West, Topeka, Kansas, as staff psychiatrist specializing in child psychiatry. Dr. DeSilva received his medical degree from Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1969. He is board certified in child and adult psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. DeSilva has more than 30 years of experience working with behavioral health issues.

Book examines troubled communities
Hope Program Medical Director Stuart Twemlow, MD (MSP ’70), has co-edited Analyst in the Trenches: Streets, Schools, War Zones. The book is a collection of clinical examinations of “disturbed communities” from the book’s contributors who function as “community psychoanalysts.”

The case examples in the book demonstrate innovations by analysts. According to the publisher, The Analytic Press, Inc., Hillsdale, New Jersey: “As community consultants and agents of social change, the contributors rely more on active engagement than interpretation, but they retain a psychodynamic orientation to the issues they confront. Within this interventionist, group-focused approach, analytically oriented clinicians function as team members more intent on changing how a group functions than in interpreting its underlying dynamics.”

Dr. Twemlow, who has done extensive work examining community violence, is director of the Peaceful Schools Project, a Menninger research project aimed at developing school interventions to reduce bullying and other acts of coercion and establish and more productive learning atmosphere. The book includes a chapter on the research.

Also contributing a chapter is Peter Fonagy, PhD, Menninger’s director of the Child & Family Program.

A chapter on the effects of community violence on children was contributed by Howard Osofsky, MD (MSP ’76) and Joy Osofsky, PhD (P ’76).

Sallye M. Wilkinson, PhD (P ’88, PA ’90) co-edited the book. She teaches at the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. Also contributing as co-editor was Bruce Sklarew, MD, Principal Investigator, School-Based Mourning Project, Wendt Center for Loss and Healing, Washington, D.C.

Marvin Margolis, MD, PhD, past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, said in a book review that the editors “deserve our highest praise for this ground-breaking publishing event.”

“Drawing on psychoanalytic concepts but not constrained by them, the contributors to this timely volume present innovative programs and practices developed to respond to human suffering in our era’s most violent, traumatic situations, from war and forced migration to crime and homelessness,” said Neil Altman, PhD, Editor, Psychoanalytic Dialogue. “The reader will be inspired by the courage, creativity and sophistication of clinicians who are socially engaged citizens. A must-read for those who want to know how psychoanalysis can be mobilized to respond to the crying needs of people around the world and right outside our doors.”

Psychotherapy text provides practical steps for a range of treaters
Glen O. Gabbard, MD (MSP ’75, MSP-M ’92), has written a new book, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Basic Text. The book provides a review of basic psychodynamic principles, discusses how to assess patients, write a formulation and think about indications and contraindications for long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.

“Though written with the psychiatric resident in mind,” according to the publisher, American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., “this remarkably practical text will appeal to a broad audience of trainees in fields such as psychology, social work, counseling, and nursing. It will also be welcomed by educators and students alike as an invaluable teaching tool that can be ‘put to work’ right away as a powerful adjunct to supervision, classroom teaching and clinical experience with a variety of patients.”

Dr. David Goldberg, of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training, has dubbed it an “instant classic.”

Dr. Gabbard, who has published 17 books and over 200 papers, is Brown Foundation Chair of Psychoanalysis and professor of psychiatry, director of Psychotherapy Education and director of the Baylor Psychiatry Clinic at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine. He is also training and supervising analyst at the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in Houston, Texas. Dr. Gabbard is joint editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

News, notes

Staff members write paper to redefine difficult-to-treat patient
The contemporary Menninger approach and views on the patient population appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of the journal, Psychiatry. Richard Munich, MD (MSP-A ’01) , and Jon Allen, PhD (P ’76, MSP-M ’96) , co-wrote Psychiatric and Sociotherapeutic Perspectives on the Difficult-to-Treat Patient. The paper reviews the literature about difficult-to-treat patients and proposes three categories that aid managing the patient population in the specialty hospital, as well as staffing. They also suggest that the changes The Menninger Clinic has made since 2001 in the structure of the treatment have helped patients use rather than resist treatment and aid on- and off-floor staff collaboration. They describe the centerpiece of the new approach as inclusion of the patient as an actual member of the treatment team.

Difficult-to-treat patients can be categorized at three levels.

• Acute–the group of most immediate concern to nursing staff. The patients require increased attention and sense of urgency. Often, patient and staff safety is paramount.
• Severe–These patients often resort to non-lethal self-mutilization; they are negative, hostile, provocative and demanding; they appear often to be in a state of conscious resistance to treatment efforts; and…often mobilize considerable anger in–and conflict between–staff members. Patients who are chronically suicidal, depressed and low functioning fit this category.
• Complex–These patients place the most stress on off-unit therapy and administrative staff. They typically have an Axis I diagnosis, including dual diagnoses. Patients who are truly resistant to treatment and have impaired capacity for healthy relationships are complex patients. They don’t manage stress and emotional arousal well, lacking the inability to mentalize–to interpret the behavior of themselves or others.

For a copy of the paper, please contact The Alumni Newsletter.

Videoconferencing makes Grand Rounds available
Two-way videoconferencing delivers Grand Rounds to staff at Menninger. Staff now attend the weekly Grand Rounds presentations transmitted to the campus from Baylor College of Medicine via The Clinic’s new videoconferencing equipment. Staff at Menninger and at Baylor can view the speaker and attendees at both locations, view the PowerPoint presentation and exchange questions and answers.

PIC director nears certification for sex addiction therapy
To expand expertise in treating patients with sexual addiction, John O’Neill, LMSW-ACP, LCDC, director of Professionals in Crisis (PIC), has completed the second stage in an educational journey toward certification as a sexual addiction therapist. Patrick Carnes is the national leader in this field, training therapists such as Mr. O’Neill in the latest advancements in assessing and treating persons with sexual addiction and compulsivity. In April, he attended Carnes’ weeklong workshop.

“Between now and May, I’ll be doing 30 hours of supervised outpatient clinical work with patients,” he said. “The fourth and final stage will be the licensing process.”

Menninger treats sexual addiction when it’s a dual disorder that complicates patients’ ability to manage their behavior and illnesses.

“We are not a straight addiction treatment provider,” Mr. O’Neill said. “However, we do see sexual compulsivity now in PIC and in other programs hospital wide. There are some really exciting strides being made in the treatment of sexual compulsivity. The training has certainly given me greater insights into helping these patients.”

Menninger alumni invited to gather at famous New York landmark
Graduates of Menninger training programs along with Clinic leaders and friends are invited to attend a reception for Menninger alumni at the legendary Algonquin Hotel in midtown Manhattan, New York. (See page 6.) The May 4 get-together is from 5-7 pm. The event is in conjunction with the annual American Psychiatric Association Conference. The Algonquin’s well-known Roundtable has a colorful history, much of it surrounding literati who used the site as a gathering place. Such esteemed wordsmiths as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, George S. Kaufman, Harold Ross and Edna Ferber once were regulars there.

Dr. Karl Menninger Memorial Award given to Californian
At the New York-based winter meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in January, analysts honored Laurie Case, PhD, of Berkeley, California, as the winner of the Karl A. Menninger Memorial Award. Richard Munich, MD, chief of staff and medical director of The Menninger Clinic, introduced Dr. Case who presented her paper, Metaphor and the Emergence of Symbolic Capacities in the Psychoanalytic Encounter. Dr. Munich and Menninger Hope Program Medical Director Stuart Twemlow, MD, presented at the meeting.

Menninger social workers stitch quilt for solidarity
Quilt squares begun in Topeka by Menninger social workers were supplemented with new squares produced in Houston, an effort to encourage solidarity and promote Menninger’s long history of treatment excellence.

The squares featured words and pictures representing the organization’s storied tradition of social work as seen through the eyes of Menninger staffers.

Social work staff, both those who tranferred from Topeka and new staff, produced quilt squares together that identified core values important to them in their work.

“The hope is that we will create a transition quilt that will bridge Topeka and Houston and promote the continuity of the strong tradition of social work at Menninger,” said Constantina Boudouvas, LSCSW (PSW ’99, MFT2 ’01). The project coincided with National Social Workers Month during March.

Outpatient evaluations will be referred to Baylor
As a result of our partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, Menninger is now referring requests for outpatient evaluations to the Baylor Outpatient Clinic, directed by alumnus and former adult hospital director Glen Gabbard, MD (MSP ’75, MSP-M ’92).

The Baylor Outpatient Clinic offers the same quality of evaluators. Persons or families seeking an evaluation can be scheduled sooner and the focus of the evaluation can be customized to meet the evaluation goals.

Baylor will refer back to Menninger when individuals need hospitalization and specialty treatment. “The collaboration between the institutions is good for patients,” said Richard Yohr, director of Admissions.

“The Clinic administration is grateful for the support and excellent clinical work provided by all of (the evaluators and support staff) who have participated in providing the services at Menninger,” said Dr. Flynn O’Malley, who has served as clinical director of the Comprehensive Outpatient Evaluation Program. “Many patients and their families have been greatly helped by the work all have done.”

Clinicians here who have been working on evaluation teams did so in addition to their roles with their specialty programs. The change allows them to spend more time on the units training newer staff, assist with nursing and professional education and attend to growing patient population.

Menninger names new social work director
Constantina Boudouvas, LSCSW (PSW ’99, MFT2 ’01),
is the new director of social work at The Menninger Clinic.
Ms. Bouvoudas, who has served as behavior therapist and social worker/primary clinician on the OCD program and coordinator of social work since 2002, has been with
The Clinic since 1999 when she did a post-master’s fellowship in clinical social work. She began her new role in April and will continue her functions on the OCD program.

Article speaks to families of persons with OCD
The Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, an advocacy and research organization for consumers and clinicians headquartered in New Jersey, has published an article by Constantina Boudouvas, LSCSW, OCD Treatment Center. The article, “Families Working Within the Transition Zone,” appeared in the late fall issue of the OCD Newsletter.

Celebration set to praise good work
Family Service & Guidance Center of Topeka (FSGC) will mark its Centennial with a Reunion and Celebration of the Past, Present and Future of Mental Health in our Community. FSGC will recognize the people who have done so much good work in the Topeka community to help those with mental health concerns and celebrate the good work that continues today.

On August 7, 2004, FS&GC will celebrate the mental health professional with panel discussions, lunch and many opportunities to catch up with friends.
Events are being planned throughout the day.

For more information or if you wish to help reach other individuals who may wish to attend, please call Amy Burns at (785) 232-7902 or e-mail her at: aburns@fsgctopeka.com

In memoriam

Editor’s note: We remember alumni, faculty and friends in gratitude for the relationships we had with them and for how our lives and the lives of others were enriched by them.

Oscar Anderson
Oscar Anderson, who retired from Menninger as a supervisor after more than 30 years of service, died in Topeka, Kansas, December 3, 2003. He was 74.

Ewald Busse
Ewald Busse, PhD, an early leader in the field of geriatric psychiatry, died March 7, 2004, in Durham, North Carolina. He was 86. He retired as chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University in 1987. He received the William C. Menninger Award, the highest honor given by the American College of Physicians, for his contributions to mental health.

James Cannon Folsom, MD
James Cannon Folsom, MD, a Menninger-trained psychiatrist who was instrumental in developing innovative approaches to treating senility and mental illness, died in Santa Rosa, California, February 4, 2004, following a brief illness. He was 82. Dr. Folsom, a Menninger Trustee since 1972, was a graduate in psychiatry from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry (Class of 1952) following military service. He was instrumental in the development of “reality orientation” and “attitude therapy,” therapeutic approaches that were team based and democratic in origin, involving everyone from janitors and orderlies to nurses and doctors. He also helped forge milieu therapy with Drs. Will and Karl Menninger.

Dr. Folsom grew up in Alabama during the Great Depression, one of 10 children. His father was the last of the circuit riding Methodist ministers. Education was highly valued, and the family managed to ensure that all 10 children attended college. Dr. Folsom retired in 1990 after 34 years of federal service. He subsequently was clinical director of Greil Memorial Psychiatric Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, retiring in 1991.

In 1992, Dr. Folsom returned to Colmery-O’Neil VA Medical Center, Topeka, where he retired a second time in 1994. He had previously served as associate chief of staff for extended care and chief of the Intermediate Medicine Service at the center. Other earlier positions include director of International Center for the Disabled, New York City; director of the VA Hospital, Tuscaloosa, Alabama; deputy commissioner for hospitals, Alabama Department of Mental Health; and director, Rehabilitation Medicine Service, Department of Medicine and Surgery, VA Central Office, Washington, D.C. He was a director of the American Federation for Aging Research, chairman of the World Psychiatric Association Section on Psychiatric Rehabilitation and chairman of the advisory council of the New York Academy of Medicine Section on Geriatric Medicine.

Giardin “Gerry” S. O’Sullivan, MD
Giardin “Gerry” S. O’Sullivan, MD, who graduated from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, class of 1947, died February 20, 2004. He was 83. Dr. O’Sullivan, who friends said, “was quick with a joke and a ready smile,” attended Menninger following a tour in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. After completing his residency in psychiatry, he was a staff psychiatrist at
The Menninger Clinic from 1949 to 1951, then he established a private psychiatric practice in Birmingham, Michigan. After nearly 4o years in practice, he retired in 1991. He served as an instructor at both Wayne State University College of Medicine in Detroit and at Michigan State University.

John C. Shipper, MD
John C. Shipper, MD, who graduated from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, class of 1954, died at his retirement home in La Union, Philippines, July 4, 2003. He was 79. After training, Dr. Shipper joined the VA Hospital in Los Angeles and later accepted a position to help develop a county-wide psychiatric treatment program in North Los Angeles. He retired in his mid ’50s to the Philippines with annual trips to the U.S. to visit friends.

Fellow classmate J.R. Harte, MD (MSP ’53), said Dr. Shipper usually logged anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 miles on his annual U.S. trip, often using a vehicle that remained in Dr. Harte’s Kansas City backyard most of the year. Drs. Harte and Shipper met and were roommates in a 1,000 bed facility, a former officers quarters, while both men attended Menninger training. Friends since then, Dr. Harte attended Dr. Shipper’s funeral, which was held in the Philippines. During his retirement years, Dr. Shipper contributed his expertise at local facilities and also sponsored the schooling of five university students, providing them with tuition, books, room and board and transportation.

John Norman Sims
The Rev. John Norman Sims, PhD, DSM, a Theological Fellow with the Religion and Psychiatry Program of the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, Class of 1963, died January 20, 2004, in Birmingham, Alabama. He was 76. Educated in sacred music, Dr. Sims served as a music professor and pastor in theological seminaries and churches. Ordained in the ministry in 1965, Dr. Sims was director of pastoral care at Baptist Medical Center Princeton for 20 years, retiring in 1991. While at Baptist Medical, Dr. Sims became a registered music therapist and helped found the hospital’s hospice program. He served as a music therapy chaplain in the program.

Alec Skolnick, MD
Alec Skolnick, MD, died January 6, 2004, in San Mateo, California. He was 89. Dr. Skolnick practiced psychiatry and psychoanalysis in the Bay Area for over 50 years. He was also devoted to the oversight and advocacy of public community mental health care. He graduated with the class of 1946, the first class of psychiatrists from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry. In the late 1950s, he helped found and develop California’s San Mateo County Mental Health Clinic, which served as a model for programs worldwide. In 1962, Dr. Skolnick was among the first American psychiatrists to travel extensively in the Soviet Union. There, he studied the education of infants and young children. He published his research about the “New Soviet Child” and continued research on early childhood development in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Israel. According to Dr. Skolnick’s newspaper obituary, “the only child of immigrants, Alec was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Fleeing the pogroms in Latvia, his newlywed parents had found a bargain crossing designed to attract immigrants to destinations other than New York. The passengers were offered a choice between debarking in Memphis or Dallas. His mother emphatically declared, ‘Of Dulles, we’ve had plenty. We’ll go to Memphis.’ (Dulles is the Yiddish word for poverty).”

His work was published in academic psychological journals. He was a pioneer in community psychiatry. Dr. Skolnick also served on the clinical faculty of the Stanford University Medical School.

Dr. Skolnick volunteered for military service the day after Pearl Harbor and worked as a psychiatrist in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1944-1946. He could sing as soon as he could talk, his family said, and sang opera beautifully. He pursued a lifelong passion for music, playing violin in his youth, and becoming an accomplished guitarist in his adult life. Music sustained him through his long illness.

Dr. Skolnick was a steadfast supporter of civil rights causes and member of numerous charitable, political and medical organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the New Israel Fund, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Jewish Community Federation, American Psychiatric Association and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society.

Gertrude R. Ticho, MD
Gertrude R. Ticho, MD, a supervising and training analyst in child and adult psychoanalysis at Menninger and director of the Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute from 1969 to 1974, died in Chevy Chase, MD, February 10, 2004. She was 83. Born and educated in Vienna, Austria, she married psychoanalyst Ernst Ticho, a wartime concentration camp survivor, whom she met during psychoanalytic training. They both joined the staff of The Menninger Clinic. Otto Kernberg, MD, a Menninger alumnus and past president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, told The Washington Post “her original contributions to psychoanalytic theory and technique centered on the problems of culture shock and on self-analysis. She wrote classical contributions about the understandings and misunderstandings that may evolve when analysts and their patients proceed from different cultural expectations.” After leaving Menninger, Dr. Ticho was a clinical professor for 20 years at George Washington University’s medical school, where she received a faculty award for teacher of the year in 1980. The Drs. Ticho also supervised and trained analysts at the Baltimore-Washington Psychoanalytic Society and at the Washington society. Additionally, they had a private psychoanalytic practice. She retired in 2001. Her husband died in 1996.

An extraordinary woman
Lois Barclay Murphy, PhD, a former Menninger psychologist who was a pioneer in the study of child development, died of congestive heart failure December 24, 2003. She was 101.

She joined the staff of The Menninger Foundation in 1952 with her husband, psychologist Gardner Murphy, PhD, when he became Menninger’s second director of research. Lois and Gardner Murphy were married for 53 years. He died in 1979.

Dr. Lois Murphy began teaching comparative religions at Sarah Lawrence College in 1938 as a member of the college’s founding faculty. After a brief tiff with the administration she left, then was brought back to Sarah Lawrence by popular demand of students and a change of administrators. She continued teaching while getting her doctorate from Columbia University. She remained at the college until the Murphys relocated to Topeka and to Menninger in 1952.

By then, Dr. Murphy had already established herself as a researcher.

A biography prepared by Sarah Lawrence recalls that she “played a central role in founding the Sarah Lawrence College Nursery School, acted as a chairperson of the College’s Research Committee and published several articles and monographs on child psychology. Dr. Murphy used the Nursery School as a site for much of her research on children and personality development. Leading up
to the publication of Methods for the Study of Personality in Young Children
(1941), Dr. Murphy worked with the Nursery School children to develop ground-breaking theories of free-play, the use of miniature life toys and the application of Rorschach analysis to children.”

In other research, The Coping Study used data collected on 128 infants by Menninger psychologist Sibylle Escalona and her colleagues, Dr. Lois Murphy began a longitudinal study to discover, in her words, how “normal children stay normal–how they cope with the ordinary and extraordinary stresses of growing up.”

Thirty-one preschool children were studied intensely for their reactions to turmoil and strife, death of a loved one, divorce, moving, the divorce of parents and other stressors including the experience of being in proximity to a tornado. Additionally, a multidisciplinary team followed 65 children at latency, prepuberty and adolescent levels.

The Coping Study was financed from 1953 by The Menninger Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health and others through 1969, and involved dozens of researchers whose observations appeared in numerous papers and books.

During the course of the study, findings were published and contributed to further clarifying the concept of vulnerability. According to Dr. Murphy, one book by Menninger staff reported, “that contrary to our expectation of senior high school anxiety based on the prepuberty findings, the children were in better mental health at graduation from high school.”

Along with fellow researcher Alice Moriarty, Dr. Murphy co-authored
Vulnerability, Coping and Growth in 1976. The book documented the findings of The Coping Study with comments from a variety of analysts including Anna Freud.

Dr. Murphy wrote 16 books, most of them about child psychology. She was among the first researchers to document feelings of sympathy in preschoolers and to measure feelings of vulnerability in infants and other young children.

The Murphys left Menninger in 1967 and moved to Washington, D.C.

In 1986, Dr. Murphy gave her papers to Sarah Lawrence College. According to her Sarah Lawrence biography, “Lois Barclay Murphy left an indelible mark not just at the college where she served for 22 years, but in the wider world of developmental psychology as well.”

To read more about Dr. Murphy or her collection of papers, log onto the Sarah Lawrence College Archives web site.