1893-1990

American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Karl A. Menninger was born in Topeka, Kansas, on July 22, 1893, and died there on July 18, 1990.

Raised in Topeka, the son of a general practitioner, he was educated at Harvard University Medical School before returning to Topeka to work with his brother and father in the establishment of a psychiatric clinic and a major psychiatric residency training program there, the present-day Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry. He brought many European analysts to the Menninger Clinic to escape Nazi oppression, among them Otto Fenichel, Martin Grotjahn, and Ernst Simmel. He went on to become a leader in psychoanalysis, serving as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association from 1942 to 1943. He founded the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1942.

Menninger was a prolific writer. Among his books were The Human Mind (1930), which brought psychoanalytic understanding to the lay public, Man Against Himself (1938), in which he explored self-destructiveness (and made a compelling case for the validity of Freud's death instinct), Love Against Hate (1992), which examined the human capacity to overcome self-destructiveness, and his magnum opus, The Vital Balance (1963). He was also intensely interested in the penal system, and in his book The Crime of Punishment, he suggested that many convicted criminals needed treatment rather than punishment (1968). His volume, Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique, was one of the few books to examine the theoretical underpinnings for the analyst's interventions.

Menninger spent his life as a champion of the under-dog. He was a crusader for a variety of causes, including the American Indian, nuclear nonproliferation, neglected and abused children, and penal reform. In 1981 he received the Medal of Freedom, the United States's highest civilian honor, from President Jimmy Carter.

Bibliography

Menninger, Karl A. (1930). The human mind. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

——. (1938). Man against himself. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

——. (1942). Love against hate. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

——. (1963). The vital balance: The life process in mental health and illness. New York: The Viking Press.

——. (1968). The crime of punishment. New York: The Viking Press.

—GLEN O. GABBARD

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: United States psychiatrist and son of Charles Menninger (1893-1990)
  Synonyms: Menninger, Karl Menninger

Quotes:

"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways."

"One does not fall in love; one grows into love, and love grows in him."

"Love cures people -- both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it."

"Attitudes are more important than facts."

"Self-love is not opposed to the love of other people. You cannot really love yourself and do yourself a favor without doing people a favor, and vise versa."

"What is done to children, they will do to society."

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This article is about the psychiatrist. For the mathematician, see Karl Menninger (mathematics).

Karl Augustus Menninger (July 22, 1893 - July 18, 1990) was an American psychiatrist and a member of the famous Menninger family of psychiatrists who founded the Menninger Foundation and the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

Karl Menninger was born in Topeka, Kansas. He attended Washburn University, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he graduated cum laude in 1917. He held an internship in Kansas City, worked at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, and taught at Harvard Medical School before finally returning to Topeka in 1919. Together with his father, Charles Frederick Menninger, he founded the Menninger Clinic. By 1925, he had attracted enough investors to build the Menninger Sanitarium. The Menninger Foundation was established in 1941 and quickly became a U.S. psychiatric and psychoanalytic center. After World War II, Menninger was instrumental in founding the Winter Veterans Administration Hospital, in Topeka. It became the largest psychiatric training center in the world.

During his career, Menninger wrote a number of influential books. In his first book, The Human Mind, Menninger argued that psychiatry was a science; and that the mentally ill were only slightly different than healthy individuals. In The Crime of Punishment, Menninger argued that crime was preventable through psychiatric treatment; punishment was a brutal and inefficient relic of the past. He advocated treating offenders like the mentally ill.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Jimmy Carter in 1981.

One of his grandchildren is writer Ann Gottesman.

Menninger's "mea culpa" letter To Thomas Szasz

On October 6, 1988, less than two years before his death, Karl Menninger wrote an historic letter to Thomas Szasz, the controversial libertarian psychiatrist and author of The Myth of Mental Illness and many other books, repudiating his officially expressed views on psychiatry. After reminiscing over his many years of observations of the treatment of psychiatric patients, Menninger expressed his regret that he did not come over to Szasz's positions on psychiatry. "I am sorry you and I have gotten apparently so far apart all these years", Menninger wrote and that "We might have enjoyed discussing our observations together. You tried; you wanted me to come there, I remember. I demurred. Mea culpa". The tone and style of Menninger's letter suggests he had been much closer to Szasz on the issues than one might have suspected from reading Szasz's criticisms of Menninger. In Menninger's letter he puts the terms diagnosis, patients and treatment in quotes, suggesting that he had agreed with Szasz's arguments that psychiatric diagnosis is a medical fraud, psychiatric patients are prisoners and psychiatric treatments are tortures. Menninger's letter to Szasz and Szasz's reply have since been released into the public domain and can be read in their entirety at Szasz.com.

External links

• Biography of Karl Menninger
• Bartleby article on Karl Menninger
• Scottish Rite Journal Obituary

See also

• Menninger Foundation

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