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laboratory or branch; second, in how they exercised their power and
responsibility for “clearing” manuscripts for publication; and third, in
how much freedom their scientists had to choose their own research
projects. Since I am far from knowledgeable about the actual practices
in other laboratories and branches at that time, I shall only describe
the one I know best, Socio-Environmental Studies.
Clausen’s policies changed decisively during the decade of the 1950s.
At first, he was, or so it seemed to his scientific staff, preoccupied with
proving the value of social science to the NIMH and to the PHS.
Mainly, this meant that research conducted in the laboratory had to be
addressed to questions close to the heart of the NIMH’s concern with
mental disorder, unless it was even closer to the heart of the PHS’s mis
sion, as in the case of one rather mundane study of who had participated
in a large-scale trial of a polio vaccine. Mainly, though, we worked on
studies of mental disorder–even though the very name of the National
Institute of Mental Health gave us license to study normal human
functioning as well. The first study undertaken in the laboratory, one
in which Clausen himself was involved in a major way, was a study of
the families of men hospitalized for schizophrenia. Several other mem
bers of the laboratory did studies of the structure and functioning of
mental hospitals–initially, and to some extent continuing even after the
construction of the NIH Clinical Center, studies of St. Elizabeths Hos
pital; later, also studies of some of the psychiatric wards in the Clinical
Center. I did research on social factors in the etiology of schizophrenia.
Most of these studies were first-rate, methodologically and substan
tively. They were particularly valuable in clearing away myths. Clausen,
Yarrow, and their collaborators dispelled sociological myths about the
processes by which people were legally committed to mental hospitals–
in those days, most often involuntarily–and cast deserved doubt on
a then-prominent theory that mental disorder results primarily from
societal reactions to, and labeling of, deviant behavior. Erving Goffman,
in a work that became famous, not only within sociology and psychiatry
but even to the lay public, reconceptualized how mental hospitals resocial
ize their inmates. In his study, St. Elizabeths was the prototype of what
he called “the mental hospital as a total institution.” Leonard Pearlin,
Erwin Linn, and other members of the laboratory did valuable studies of