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Alumni Newsletter
September 2004, Volume 51, Number 2
Inside this issue:
Vital Balance sculpture in Houston
 Like a candle on a cake, The Vital Balance sculpture arrived in Houston from Topeka to punctuate The Menninger Clinic’s successful first year. The sculpture was transported to the Houston campus August 19, arriving from Kansas aboard a tractor-trailer. A re-dedication of the artwork to honor the Menningers is being planned.
“Last year we brought the Menninger tradition with us,” said Ian Aitken, Menninger Clinic CEO and president, “which includes a focus on our patients and excellent treatment programs. Now we celebrate with this wonderful symbol of Menninger’s past, present and future. Like everything else we’ve encountered here, The Vital Balance has been warmly received in its new home.”
Named The Vital Balance after a book of the same title by Clinic co-
founder Karl Menninger, MD, the 21-foot abstract artwork is built of copper sheets covered by a coating of nickel bronze in brush-like strokes, an effect achieved with a welding torch. The piece was created in honor of Menninger’s founding family by Kansas sculptor John Whitfield, who attempted to portray balance without symmetry and was dedicated on Dr. Karl’s 90th birthday, July 22, 1983.
 The sculpture had resided for more than 20 years in a courtyard-like setting located between Seeley Conference Center and Thornlea Commons on the Topeka campus. The art will now be visible daily to thousands of motorists who pass through the busy intersection near The Clinic’s 14-acre Houston campus. In Houston, the abstract art is located in the southeast corner of the facility near the entrance.
Beds of flowers will be planted around the work and a walk will be created from The Clinic’s entrance.
While the artist interpreted Dr. Karl’s title, the book’s authors, including Martin Mayman and Paul Pruyser, wrote, “Life is more than the permutations in the DNA molecule as the Fifth Symphony is more than vibrating air. And mental illness is more than an aggregate of errors in body physics and chemistry. It is a universal experience which has a salvage function in maintaining the vital balance.”
Mr. Whitfield, the sculptor, said his interpretation meant to portray
balance without symmetry.
Though out-of-print, Dr. Karl’s 1963 book, published by Viking Press, remains available through various internet book shops.
Mentalization conference scheduled for December
Pioneering research into mentalization, a critical underpinning for the development of desires, feelings and beliefs, will be the focus of a two-day Menninger conference December 10-11, featuring the foremost mentalization experts in world.
The Houston workshop comes after two previous mentalization workshops sponsored by Menninger. Titled “Mentalization, the State of the Art: From Basic Science to Clinical Applications,” the conference will offer new directions for developing preventive strategies for psychiatric disorders and also for guiding mental health interventions.
Mentalizing is the understanding we have of our mental states and the mental states of others. This ability normally develops in childhood as an infant interacts with caregivers.
Mentalizing is a key to a balanced emotional life based on a secure foundation of safe attachments or positive emotional bonds. What is important to understand about this concept is that children’s sense of their inner world forms from how they experience others experiencing and responding to them.
We learn to mentalize through sensing that our thoughts and feelings are being thought about or mentalized by a caregiver in a secure and safe relationship.
Researchers believe that the capacity for mentalizing is a significant development in human life that’s necessary for a healthy emotional life and is a central aspect of resilience to adversity and vulnerability to psychiatric disorders and psychosocial maladjustment.
The Menninger Clinic’s partnership with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital has provided an opportunity to enhance dramatically the research capacity of the Child & Family Program, Menninger’s research entity directed by Peter Fonagy, PhD, an acknowledged international expert in child development.
Under Dr. Fonagy’s leadership, an international consortium was developed to include the Yale Child Study Center, the Anna Freud Centre and University College London, as well as Menninger, Methodist and Baylor. Baylor’s Human Neuroimaging Laboratory employs functional neuroimaging to study brain-related impairments in mentalizing capacity in relation to psychiatric disorders.
This two-day workshop is designed as a comprehensive overview of theory and research on mentalizing capacity as well as including the most up-to-date developments in applying these concepts to patient care.
The workshop will include presentations on neuroimaging of attachment and mentalizing and on the impact of traumatic brain injury on mentalizing capacity in children. A focus on prevention strategies will include subjects ranging from enhancing mother-infant interactions to violence prevention in schools.
Presentations covering clinical interventions will include child and family therapy, individual psychotherapy with adults, treatment of borderline personality disorder, applications of mentalizing to Dialectical Behavior Therapy and psychoeducational approaches to enhancing mentalizing capacity.
The Clinic was the site of two previous symposia, which assembled an international group of experts to chart the course of future research and to enhance applications to clinical practice. Scholarly articles from both symposia were published in The Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic.
Organizers of the Houston conference plan to publish the proceedings in book form, making the knowledge available worldwide.
To obtain more information or to register: Call Pat McElliott at 800-351-9058, ext. 5506 or log onto menningerclinic.com for a complete schedule and conference details.
Menninger clinicians work on positive psychology
While there are limits to the power of positive thinking, it is nonetheless worthwhile to cultivate a broad range of positive experiences, says senior Menninger staff psychologist Lisa Lewis, PhD.
Positive psychology is being studied by Dr. Lewis and her colleagues–Drs. Jon Allen, Thröstur Björgvinsson, Toby Haslam-Hopwood, Dan Hoover, Mary McParland, Flynn O’Malley, April Stein, Victoria Van Wie, Theresa Fassini and Deborah Ebner.
“Our goal is to develop clinical interventions that will promote positive experience for our patients.”
Research shows that the simple act of smiling and allowing the smile to reach your eyes as well as your lips produces activity in the brain indicative of enjoyment, she says. More important, smiling can be a way to increase positive experience.
Researchers have found that positive experiences and emotions quell the cardiovascular stress associated with negative emotions such as fear and sadness and spark broader thinking and creativity.
People with positive experiences and emotions tend to live longer than those who report more negative feelings and emotions, the research shows.
Performance coach goes to the movies
Phil Towle, MA (PSW ’66) has been experiencing the heart of rock ’n’ roll lately. He is a psychotherapist who has become a performance enhancement coach for a variety of professional athletes, corporate executives and rock stars, including the heavy-metal music group Metallica.
Mr. Towle’s successes have been outlined in newsprint in separate stories that have appeared in The L.A. Times and The Kansas City Star. Part of the interest comes as Metallica’s rock-umentary, Some Kind of Monster, was released to theaters this summer. The film shows Mr. Towle’s intimate interactions with the combative and dysfunctional members of the mega-star band, which he coached for more than two years.
The result, band members say, was a dissection of motives, a delving into differences, an exposing of vulnerabilities and eventually a better, more cohesive and unified group for its members, some of whom have performed together for more than 20 years.
Mr. Towle, 65, is a former Menninger psychotherapist who now lives in Northern California. When he was still living in Kansas, Mr. Towle was providing enhancement coaching for various members of the St. Louis Rams football team. That connection led him to being approached by a Sony Records executive to help one of its bands, Rage Against the Machine, iron out some differences. That band’s management also managed Metallica, whose members became Mr. Towle’s highest profile clients to date.
The L.A. Times’ article described Mr. Towle as “your spiritual paramedic, your exorcist, the sensitive dad you never had.”
In any case, Mr. Towle told The Times he helps people “unlock their self-imposed obstacles” in order for them to reach their full potential.
Alums co-author trauma guide
 Restoring Hope and Trust, An Illustrated Guide to Mastering Trauma, by Lisa Lewis, PhD (P ’69), Kay Kelly, MSW, LSCSW (PSW ’87, PPT ’92) and Jon G. Allen, PhD (P ’76, MSP-M ’96), is available from Sidran Press.
This guide is based on a 10-session course the trio of authors developed for The Menninger Clinic. The clinicians work from the assumption that past trauma does not remain in the past, but spills over into the present, taking the form of intrusive re-experiences, associated neurophysiological changes, adverse effects on current identity and depressive mood changes, according to the publisher.
Written for people struggling to contain and master the spillover of past trauma into their current lives, the guide provides answers and support to those who love them and want to understand them. It can also be used by professionals who want to conduct psychoeducational trauma groups.
“Restoring Hope and Trust is by far the best written resource available for clients suffering from complex PTSD,” said James Chu, MD, chief of Hospital Clinical Services, McLean Hospital; associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. “Most of the authoritative texts in this area are written for therapists and other professionals. As a result, we often have had little to offer to clients seeking to learn more about their difficulties. This book fills that void
with state-of-the-art information, exercises and thoughtful suggestions.
Restoring Hope and Trust is best used in the context of an ongoing treatment and will surely offer welcome support to both clients and their therapists.”
The book can be obtained in bookstores after October 31 or via the Web site of the Baltimore, MD-based publisher Sidran Institute Press at www.sidran.org.
Kay Kelly is now associated with the Heritage Mental Health Clinic in Topeka; Drs.Lewis and Allen are senior psychologists with The Menninger Clinic. Dr. Allen is the author of the best-selling Coping With Trauma, Second Edition. This forthcoming book is available at www.appi.org.
Menninger ranked among top best hospitals in nation
The Menninger Clinic ranked as one of the top six psychiatric hospitals in the “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report in July. This is the 14th consecutive year that Menninger has been ranked among the best psychiatric hospitals. The ranking is especially notable since it comes near the one-year anniversary of The Clinic’s relocation to Houston from Topeka.
The annual survey asks psychiatrists across the nation to list up to five of the top psychiatric hospitals in the country. “This exceptional ranking is proof that working with great people you can move a superb facility and successfully recreate it in another place,” said Ian Aitken, president and CEO of The Menninger Clinic.
Top Ten 2004 rankings
Massachusetts General Hospital
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass.
UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital
The Menninger Clinic, Houston
Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital
Stanford Hospital and Clinics
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
News, notes
Bobsled record holder won’t be challenged
Ralph Crawshaw, MD (MSP ’48), succeeded in attaining the unofficial title of oldest recorded Olympic bobsled rider, Dr. Crawshaw writes from his home in Portland, Oregon. “This was noted by our team driver, Stephen Bosch, who has driven bobsled in the last three winter Olympics. We ran the Utah Olympic Park run of 0.8 miles with a drop equivalent to that from a 40-story building in 57.05 seconds. This to the tune of Four Gs in the curves.” Dr. Crawshaw, who was 82 years old at the time of his achievement, said, “I do not plan to contest any future challenges to my title.”
Psychodynamic study group participants are sought
Donald J. Curran, DO (MSP ’72), is now in the practice of general psychiatry and geriatric medicine at the Verde Valley Medical Center in Cottonwood, Arizona. Having recently completed a fellowship in sleep medicine, he also offers a comprehensive sleep and wake disorders consultation service. He is interested in beginning a psychodynamic study group in northern Arizona. If anyone is interested in making a presentation or participating in a colloquium, contact Dr. Curran at sleepdocdon@yahoo.com
Reunion in Chicago unites trio of Menninger alums
Joseph Jensen, MD (MSP ’52) Denver, Colorado, writes to tell of a reunion with longtime classmates.
“Three psychiatric residents who converged on Topeka in July 1952 met 52 years later in Chicago at an Elderhostel. They were Al Kraft, Morrie Weiss and Joe Jensen. We practiced in Albany, N.Y., Detroit, Michigan and Denver. Only Morrie continues to practice half time.
“We reminisced about the good old days when insurance companies still allowed us to practice psychotherapy. We are fortunate in that all three of us continue to enjoy long marriages to Sema, Fae and Pat.
“Alan Kraft told a story that is worth retelling. He attended the funeral service for Jim Bell two years ago. He was a Menninger Alum one year behind us. I have fond memories of him in Topeka and at many subsequent APA meetings.
“A large crowd attended his funeral. Jim was a Brigadier General in the Army Reserves and each summer spent some time at West Point. (He may well be the only alum to reach that rank since Dr. Will had that rank in WW II). Jim’s work was with delinquent boys and at his funeral many of them gave testimonies as to how Jim had helped turn their lives around.
“We parted in Chicago, glad to have had a chance to share many stories and having had a great experience exploring Chicago with Elderhostel and enjoying many great restaurants.”
Promotion to university professor announced
Martin M. Klapheke, MD (MSP-A ’91), has been promoted to professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, where he is director of transplantation psychiatry and director of psychotherapy training in the Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. He is a former director of the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry & Mental Health Sciences.
Book wrestles with issues of spiritual faith and healing
The Rev. John (Jack) R. Hall, BD (PC ’65), has published his second book, Wrestling With Your Angel, The Discovery of Your Sacred Self. Rev. Hall said his book is about the importance of wrestling, that is, tussling with “experiences in the past as well as the present and sometimes with choices to be made in the future.” Rev. Hall urges clients to resist becoming victimized by trauma. Rather, he says, “there is a way to discover a new identity and that is to wrestle until your true Sacred Self emerges.” Rev. Hall, who lives in Tualatin, Oregon, is 73 and continues to supervise a therapist for the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and counsels three patients. His book is published by PublishAmerica.
Dr. Levinson receives honorary doctorate for contributions
Harry Levinson, PhD (PD’46, MSP-M ’90), Delray Beach, Florida, has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. The award recognizes Dr. Levinson for “having paved the way for the profession of psychology to take a place in the boardroom, on the manufacturing floor, at the dining table of family business and in the global marketplace.” He was commended for “…having dedicated his life to the profession of psychology as a clinician, teacher, model builder, theoretician, innovator, storyteller, incisive thinker and builder of bridges.” Dr. Levinson may be reached at: handmlevinson@earthlink.net
Social worker receives doctorate
Myra G. Schneider, LCSW, who was in the Psychiatric Social Work Program, class of 1980, has recently obtained her doctorate. While at Menninger, Dr. Schneider also attended advanced marriage and family therapy training in both Topeka and Kansas City. She resides in Tampa, Florida.
van der Waldes recall Drs. Karl and Will
Peter H. van der Walde, MD (MSP ’60), is interested in hearing from classmates. Since his retirement in 1998, he has often focused on his training and the unique opportunities he shared with others, writes his wife, Roberta. “Both Dr. Karl and Dr. Will were important teachers and mentors,” she writes, “and we both have fond memories of those years.” The van der Waldes live in Scottsdale, Arizona. They may be reached at: Blvdw@aol.com
Former Menninger nurse joins Oregon mental health center
Michelle Voegels, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, recently joined Merle West Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Her practice covers adolescent, adult and geriatric mental health issues. A registered nurse, she worked at Menninger for about seven years while participating in both graduate and post-graduate training and clinical supervision as an advance practice nurse performing medication management, individual and group therapies. At Menninger, she started out as a staff nurse and was promoted to charge nurse. Her husband, Alfred, is an architect at Pedersen & Voegels Architects.
No common ‘face’ for drug abusers, says columnist
A personal column written by Adolescent Therapy Program psychiatrist Norma Clarke, MD (C ’88), is scheduled to appear in the October issue of Counselor: The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, according to the publication’s editor. The magazine has 21,000 worldwide readers, most of whom are drug and alcohol treatment professionals. Dr. Clarke’s column draws on her experience as an emergency room physician in an inner city hospital where she treated large numbers of drug-related illnesses. She discusses the reality of drug abuse and maintains that despite any preconceived notions concerning the face of drug abusers, there is no stereotype. Drug users, she says, may come from any demographic throughout American culture.
Faculty members receive new endowed positions
Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has announced the appointment of four faculty members to endowed positions. New endowed positions include:
- Jon Allen, PhD (P’76, MSP-M-’96), Helen Malsin Palley Chair in Mental Health Research
- Efrain Bleiberg, MD (MSP ’77, C ’79), Alicia Townsend Chair in Psychiatry and Developmental Pathology
- Dr. James Lomax, MD, Karl Menninger Chair for Psychiatric Education
- Dr. Richard Munich, MD (MSP-A ’01), Bessie Walker Callaway Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Education
Familiar Menninger alum publishes another popular book
Best-selling author Harriet Lerner, PhD (P ’72, MSP-M’94), a former clinical psychologist at The Menninger Clinic, has published another book, Fear and Other Uninvited Guests, with the subtitle: Tackling the Anxiety, Fear and Shame that Keeps Us from Optimal Living and Loving. Dr. Lerner’s trademark humor and down-to-Earth approach has made her accessible to readers interested in learning more about relationships and human behaviors. Published by HarperCollins, the book is Dr. Lerner’s ninth. She is a past recipient of the I. Arthur Marshall Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Clinicians present during library dedication of Menninger books
Nearly 30,000 publications from The Menninger Foundation’s Library of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis were dedicated May 18 by the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library. The gift includes the Clinical Library, the historical and rare book collections and complete runs of the Menninger publications. Nearly 18,000 clinical monographs, 6,000 journal volumes and more than 3,000 rare books and journals were transferred. The Clinical Library is a wide-ranging collection pertaining to psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis in adults and children. The publications by and commentaries about Sigmund Freud are extensive.
The rare book collection includes a large number of early journals on psychoanalysis, hundreds of German psychiatric texts and special reports from many American asylums. In addition to psychiatric materials, there are many texts related to the broader field of medicine. One of these volumes is a 1783 German edition of Andreas Vesalius’s anatomy with reproductions of the illustrations from the original.
The dedication included presentations by Walter Menninger, MD, on A Psychiatric Perspective of Medical History and by Richard Munich, MD, on The Clinical Services at The Menninger Clinic. Dr. Walt is chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Menninger-Baylor College of Medicine-The Methodist Hospital Foundation; Dr. Munich is chief of staff and medical director, The Menninger Clinic, and vice chair, Clinical Services, Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine.
Former counselor returns from Bosnia military tour
The Rev. Ron Cobb, a former addictions recovery counselor at Menninger, has returned from military service in Bosnia and has published a book about his experience. In Memories of Bosnia: The 35th Division’s SFOR 13 NATO Peacekeeping Mission, he details his time of service while revealing how common hopes and fears unite humanity despite religious differences. As part of the Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rev. Cobb relied on his comrades for technical and emotional support in a turbulent area that was “just waking up from the terror of genocide.” His service there deepened his respect for the people of the land and their strength, conviction and courage. In a collection of vignettes, Rev. Cobb shares his thoughts on the work done by the 35th Infantry Division and the people it sought to help. He also explores Bosnia’s precarious history and current problems while describing the incredible beauty of this rugged, mountainous land.
Memories of Bosnia reveals stories not yet told by the media. A member of the National Guard, Rev. Cobb was working at Menninger when he was called to active duty in Bosnia. His book is published by AuthorHouse. The publisher’s Web site is www.authorhouse.com
APA recruiting video includes Dr. Karl’s impact on field
Karl Menninger, MD, will be noted in an upcoming video by the American Psychiatric Association. The video, which will be used to recruit medical students into the field of psychiatry, is being produced by the Emmy-award winning video maker Durrin Productions of Washington, DC. Several psychiatrists appear in the video. One, Mary Roessel, MD, a Native American psychiatrist, mentions Dr. Karl as her role model and a friend of her grandfather, who was a Navajo medicine man, according to Durrin productions. Dr. Karl’s many passions in life included the cause of Native Americans.
Author Cronkite addresses Menninger Board of Visitors
The first meeting of the Board of Visitors of the Menninger-Baylor College of Medicine-Methodist Foundation was held in May. Keynote speaker Kathy Cronkite said a national magazine story about broadcaster Mike Wallace’s depression inspired her to speak out publicly about her own depression despite her fears it might harm her career as a talk show host. As a result, Ms. Cronkite got some needed help. Thereafter, she published On the Edge of Darkness: Conversations About Conquering Depression, which relates personal stories from various famous personalities. “I wrote the book to offer help and hope,” she told Board members, “and to combat dangerous myths and the stigma associated with mental illness. It’s never okay for someone to be depressed, whether they are 15, 50 or 100 years old. Fifteen percent of people with depression will die, and we can’t let that happen.”
Wolfe gives Menninger Lecture
Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, among other books, gave the William C. Menninger Memorial Lecture at the 2004 APA Convocation of Fellows. No transcript was made of his presentation.
Psychiatry, broadcasting and pigskin
Most of the week, Richard S. Winer, MD (MSP ’80), is either at home in Atlanta with wife Wendy as he has been for these past 20 years or he is at his private practice in Roswell, Georgia. He spends some time lecturing around the country on topics like ADHD or depression. But weekends are a different matter.
He has been working at National Football League and college football games as a statistician providing announcers up-to-the-minute analysis on individual and team performances.
He has worked games for the St. Louis Rams Radio Network and often works for Westwood One CBS Radio. He has participated in the last five Super Bowls, including Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston last February.
Dr. Winer has been taking game statistics since high school, when he also did play-by-play. He continued through college and during his residency training in Topeka when he worked Kansas City Chiefs games. He considered the weekend diversion a form of personal “therapy” then and believes as much today.
Yet, free tickets and good seats are not always as rosy as they may appear. While it’s comforting to get away from the office while at the game, that’s not always possible. Sometimes the office comes to the game.
“It is amazing how often people in the press box ask psychiatric questions once they find out about my practice,” Dr. Winer said.
Press box brethren who know him as a psychiatrist constantly query him about the behavior of their kids, their own states of mind, ask him to provide a second opinion concerning psychiatric treatment for a loved one and inquiries about what might be behind some of the behaviors on the playing field. He is queried even during live broadcasts, which makes him an unofficial “silent sidekick” for the game announcers and their listeners, who are well aware there is a psychiatrist in the press box.
For example, during the start of the 2002 season, the Rams lost their first five games. Toward the end of the fifth game, Steve Savard, the Rams play-by-play man, commented on the air that they were going to ask Dr. Winer “to write anti-depressant prescriptions for everyone in the booth because things had become so depressing!” he said.
The games are great fun to work, and Dr. Winer enjoys the travel around the country following the team. Asked how statistics and psychiatry converge, if at all, he said they both require a measure of analysis and exposition.
“In many respects, keeping statistics is like someone assisting in surgery. You have to anticipate what’s needed.”
Sometimes the reaction to Dr. Winer’s sideline is memorable. When he first met Bengals player-turned-broadcaster Bob Trumpy, the football legend commented: “Has it gotten that bad in medicine that you have to do this?” Subsequently, the two men struck up a relationship and Mr. Trumpy shared with Dr. Winer his personal struggle with ADHD, a condition diagnosed at the ripe age of 37. With permission, Dr. Winer has incorporated Mr. Trumpy’s success story into presentations he gives on ADHD around the country.
While other broadcast operations have armies of statisticians available to keep track of games, Dr. Winer is a solo act. He generally passes information to broadcasters via sticky notes and he does not use a computer to track stats. As he has done all of his life, he tracks the numbers–red for one team, black for the other–in pen and on plain paper.
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.
Dean Collins, MD
Dean Collins, MD, who graduated from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, class of 1958, died August 6, 2004, while vacationing in Colorado. He was 76. At the time of his death, he was attending opera in the mountains with his wife, Elisabeth.
After being accepted to Menninger in 1958, Dr. Collins graduated from the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry & Mental Health Sciences and became a staff psychiatrist. Over the next 40 years he became an expert in the treatment of patients with very serious mental illnesses. He shared his expertise as teacher and supervisor for hundreds of psychiatric residents and served at different times as director of education and director of psychiatry. As a senior staff psychiatrist he was named Herbert C. Modlin Professor in recognition of outstanding clinical and teaching skills.
Among his publications, he co-authored, with Menninger psychologist Jon Allen, PhD, Contemporary Treatment of Psychosis: Healing Relationships in the “Decade of the Brain,” published by Jason Aronson Publishers. Dr. Collins organized the Psychocultural Series at Menninger in Topeka and showed foreign films, leading the often lively discussions that followed.
He was a generous supporter of Menninger’s work and was especially interested in Menninger’s educational programs. He created the Dean T. Collins Fund to advance education at Menninger.
Francisco Gomez, MD
Francisco (Pacho) Gomez, MD (MSP ’49), Shawnee Mission, Kansas, died May 30, 2004, in Topeka. He was 88. A native of Colombia, South America, he arrived in Topeka in 1948 to pursue psychoanalytic training. He remained on staff at Menninger for 25 years and then completed the remainder of his career in the Kansas City area. His family described him as “a consummate professional who truly loved his chosen profession.” He was described as a scholar, linguist, historian and a lover of art, music, dogs, mountains and trees. Magola, his wife of more than 50 years, preceded him in death.
Pauline Rose Levy
Pauline Rose Levy, a psychiatric nurse at Menninger until her retirement in 1985, died March 26, 2004, in Smith Falls, Ontario. She was 84. She trained at Nova Scotia Hospital before moving to Topeka to work for Menninger.
B.K. Ramanujam, MD
B.K. Ramanujam, MD (MSP ’58), West Melbourne, Florida, died February 29, 2004. He was 77. In addition to training at Menninger, he also trained at the Royal College of Physicians in England. Dr. Ramanujam served as clinical director of the B.M. Institute of Mental Health in Ahmedabad from 1965 to 1979.
His career ranged from a private practice in New York to periods with VA hospitals in Chicago and California. He contributed his talents to understanding psychopathology and psychotherapy in developing countries and was a sought-after speaker there. He was recognized as an international expert with a unique dimension of understanding and scholarship in transcultural child and adolescent psychiatry. Well-known for his work in mental retardation, as well as an understanding of the Indian psyche, Dr. Ramanujam was working on a book at the time of his death.
His daughter, Veena Sundararaman recalls that “my father and mother entertained Karl Menninger often, and also other guests of The Clinic including Margaret Mead and Aldous Huxley. My parents had very fond memories of their stay in Kansas, being one of the early Indian couples to arrive there.”
Robert M. Zirpoli, MD
Robert M. Zirpoli, MD (MSP ’46), died April 30, 2004, in Watervliet, Michigan. He was 85. Born in Long Island, NY, he was the oldest of five children and was sent to medical school using insurance policy funds the family received following the death of his father. He met his wife, Gracemary, while they were both students at Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine, then in Chicago.
While he was serving in the Army as a medical doctor, he decided to train in psychiatry at Menninger. He was drawn to psychiatry, his family said, because of his personable nature. He practiced in the Chicago area and helped start outpatient psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in 1962. He served as director of the adult and child guidance center until retiring in 1999. Mrs. Zirpoli indicated Dr. Zirpoli “often spoke of Dr. Karl and his deep admiration for him.”
'A void that can't be filled'
 A former Menninger director of research training, former staff member and Menninger Trustee since 1979, Philip S. Holzman PhD (PD ’46, MSP-H ’63, MSP-M ’87), died June 1, 2004. He was 82.
Dr. Holzman founded and directed McLean Hospital’s Psychology Research Laboratory and became one of the world’s pre-eminent scientists in schizophrenia research.
He was the Esther and Sidney R. Rabb Professor of Psychology Emeritus and professor of psychology emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1943 from the College of the City of New York, he trained at The Menninger Foundation School of Clinical Psychology and the Winter Veterans Administration Hospital in Topeka, as well as at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. From 1946 to 1968 he was on the staff of the Menninger Foundation, where he also served as director of research training.
While in Topeka, Dr. Holzman cofounded the Fine Arts Society, which arranged chamber music concerts for which he penned the program notes. Later in life he started taking cello lessons and eventually played in chamber music groups, said one of his sons, Carl Holzman.
Among his published works is Theory of Psychoanalystic Technique, which he co-authored with Karl Menninger, MD. He was also a current consulting editor of The Bulletin of The Menninger Clinic.
He was a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago from 1968 until joining the Harvard faculty in 1977.
Dr. Holzman began his career at McLean in 1977, focusing on the investigation of psychotic illnesses, particularly schizophrenia. He was an acknowledged master of the art of psychological experimentation.
In a speech to Menninger graduates in 1987 following his acceptance of the I. Arthur Marshall Distinguished Alumnus Award, Dr. Holzman declared that passionately inquisitive mental health professionals held the keys to improving treatment of mental illnesses.
Drawing on his time at Menninger, Dr. Holzman said: “Vigorous idealism, productive fertility and imagination crowned those days...In that atmosphere we learned to work collaboratively, to value the special perspectives of other disciplines and to broaden the scope of our own work. We learned that the puzzles of behavior are so complex that no one discipline alone will be privileged to solve them.”
Dr. Holzman’s landmark studies of oculomotor function documented the presence of abnormal smooth pursuit eye movements in individuals with schizophrenia and their clinically unaffected relatives. He appreciated early the value of studying unaffected family members and discovered that both eye tracking dysfunction and thought disorder occurred frequently in the relatives of individuals with schizophrenia.
With these discoveries, he founded an entire field of study central to the pathophysiology and genetic liability for schizophrenia. Dr. Holzman’s vision and ingenuity have left an indelible imprint on research in psychopathology and have stretched the power of psychology paradigms.
This discovery changed the way scientists study schizophrenia, said Dr. Bruce Cohen, president and psychiatrist in chief at McLean Hospital, because it established the disease as a brain disorder.
“He’ll leave a void that can’t be filled for so many reasons,” Dr. Cohen said. “I don’t think you can come close to finding anyone in the field who had the breadth of view of the illness that Phil had.”
While Dr. Holzman is known throughout the world as a preeminent scientist, he was a humble man, said Dr. Jerome Kagan, who became a friend and academic colleague during their tenure at Harvard University.
Dr. Holzman is survived by Ann Holzman, his wife of 58 years. The couple resided in Cambridge, Mass. A memorial service for the scientific community is planned for this fall.
(Information compiled from Menninger sources, The Harvard University Gazette, The Boston Globe and The New York Times was used in this story. Photograph courtesy of The Harvard University Gazette.)
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