126 FARRERAS
Shakow’s acceptance in 1953 was delayed for a year while he recovered
from a heart attack. In the meantime, Richard Bell, a psychologist al
ready in the PHS, acted as chief, organizing the laboratory and hiring
psychologists until Shakow arrived. The Laboratory of Psychology
quickly became the NIMH’s largest laboratory.^3
The first members of the laboratory arrived on the scene in October
of 1953. Because some of the hiring of new intramural scientists occur
red prior to the completion of the NIH Clinical Center, these scientists
were temporarily located in Building T-6.^4
The laboratory consisted of six sections–Aging, Animal Behavior,
and Perception and Learning (within the basic division), and Devel
opmental Psychology, Personality and its Deviations, and the Section of
the Chief (within the clinical division)–reflecting the breadth of the
field of psychology and the NIMH’s expansive mission.^5 In addition
to Building T-6, these sections were also located in the Clinical Center,
once it opened, as well as in Building 13 and Building T-9–which later
became Building 9–where the Section on Animal Behavior housed
its animals.
The Section on Aging had actually been created prior to the estab
lishment of the laboratory.^6 Its chief, James E. Birren, had been a
member of Nathan Shock’s Gerontology Unit within the NHI at the
Baltimore City Hospitals. The heavy medical orientation led Birren
to approach the NIMH about creating a more behaviorally oriented
section. As the Clinical Center was not yet ready to open, he was
temporarily assigned to the University of Chicago for three years. When
he returned to Bethesda in the summer of 1953, he had recruited an
unusually multidisciplinary team–physiologists, neuroanatomists, and
psychologists–to work with him in the Section on Aging. The overall
purpose of the section was “to identify the primary factors leading to
decline in the function and structure of the nervous system with ad
vancing age.”^7