Menninger
The Family and the Clinic
Lawrence Friedman
504 pages, 28 photographs, 6 x 9
Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-0513-2, $15.95
 The story of the Menninger Clinic
is the story of the Menninger family. The two cannot be separated,
according to historian Lawrence Friedman, for one cannot be understood
without the other.
Friedman should know. He is the only scholar granted full,
unrestricted access to the Menninger archives and the personal
papers of founder Karl and Will Menninger. In this study of the
Menningers and their clinic, Friedman lifts the public relations
veil to reveal the story behind the public success: the reciprocal
influence of the family upon the clinic and the clinic upon the
family.
Friedman has taken extraordinary time and care in researching
this study. The resulting book is neither exposé nor hagiography.
Nor is it a narrow institutional history. It is, instead, a finely
wrought historical study based upon a decade of research in more
than a dozen archives, including the vast Menninger archive.
Menninger is the first study of a major American psychiatric
center based on full, unrestricted access to archival materials.
It also incorporates information gleaned from extensive interviews
with members of the Menninger family as well as interviews with
more than one hundred people important in the clinic's history.
Not only does Friedman examine the dynamics of the Menninger
family close up, but he also steps back for a larger view of
the Menningers' role in the history of psychiatry.
"Given the contentious history of the Menningers, Friedman's
account is remarkable for its restrained but candid editorial
tone, meticulous documentation, and avoidance of sensationalism.
. . . Despite the author's even-handed treatment of his subject,
Menninger was not well received by family members, who blamed
the book's publication for contributing to Karl Menninger's death
a few months later."--ISIS
"Dr. Friedman must also have something of the lawyer,
or at least the politician, in him. His powers of persuasion
coaxed this remarkably closed institution into baring its secrets."--Raleigh
News and Observer
"A comprehensive biography of American psychiatry's first
family. Readers receive a psychological analysis of the family's
intricate--some might say compulsive--ties to its work. . . .
A thorough, accomplished addition to the history of American
mental health treatment."--New York Times Book Review
"Throughout the book are nuggets that in part reveal
the prevailing attitudes of male doctors in the early part of
the century but also raise questions about the sensitivities
and effectiveness of the Menningers themselves leading a clinic
and dealing with other people."--New York Times
"In the critical period that immediately followed the
Second World War, the Menninger dynasty clearly had a strong
and visible hand in the design of the natio's mental health care
strategies. . . . Its directors, Karl and Will Menninger, became
arguably America's most influential psychiatrists through a combination
of public writings, governmental leverage, and prominence within
professional organizations. Based on extensive interviews, access
to heretofore (and presumably hereafter) confidential materials,
Friedman has fashioned a readable--and at times lurid--saga of
psychiatry's own 'first family.' Wife-swapping, revenge, blackmail
using information obtained in analytical sessions, it's all here.
. . . The true significance of Friedman's work lies . . . [in]
his account of . . . the culture clash between the values of
Jewish, cosmopolitan scholars and the small-town provincialism
of the Menninger Clinic brought to the surface a tension that
continues to reside within much of American psychiatry. . . .
It is through accounts such as this that the story of American
medicine will eventually merge within mainstream social and cultural
history."--Journal of American History
"A finely wrought and delicately balanced study that
adds measurably to our knowledge of an intriguing family and
to our appreciation of the inner workings of one of the most
influential mental health institutions of this century. Along
the way Friedman has managed to shed some much needed light on
a wide variety of topics, including the distinctive personalities
and intellectual interests of some of the leading figures in
twentieth-century psychiatry and psychology; the bureaucratic
imperatives of running a major psychiatric practice, hospital,
and educational program; the Byzantine politics of the American
psychiatric and psychoanalytic establishments; the role gender
plays in these politics; and the problems inherent in funding
such endeavors in an increasingly competitive era."--Reviews
in American History
"Both a significant contribution to the history of American
psychiatry and an engaging story of a remarkable, and eccentric,
family."--Buffalo News
"Friedman has succeeded in what he obviously set out
to do--produce a definitive book of record about a dedicated
family, not without flaws, and how they created and operated
an immensely influential mental health conglomerate on the edge
of the Kansas prairie."--Kansas City Star
"Fascinating for students of the history of psychiatric
treatment in the U.S."--Kirkus
LAWRENCE FRIEDMAN, Distinguished University Professor
of History at Bowling Green State University, is author of Gregarious
Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, Inventors
of the Promised Land, and The White Savage: Racial Fantasies
in the Postbellum South.
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