LABORATORY AND BRANCH RESEARCH REVIEWS 81Child Research Branch, NIMH
The Child Research Branch was the first branch created within the
NIMH clinical program, a branch organized around one man: Fritz
Redl.^1 Redl had a Ph.D. in philosophy and was a graduate of the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Institute. He had been a student of the established psy
choanalyst August Aichhorn in Vienna, who was the author of Wayward
Youth, and a close friend and colleague of Erik Erikson. Redl had
worked extensively and published two highly regarded books, Children
Who Hate and Controls From Within, on the destructiveness and
disorganization of hyperaggressive and pre-delinquent children with
deficient behavioral controls.^2
Fritz Redl, Ph.D.
Courtesy of the National Institute
of Mental Health
The first clinical NIMH ward at the NIH Clinical Center opened
in August 1953 and was devoted to such emotionally disturbed and
destructive children. The branch focused its clinical care and research
activities around three components: individual psychotherapy, milieu
therapy, and remedial education in school.^3 Such a combined approach
was unique at the time, allowing for a rare opportunity to integrate these