Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior

34 FARRERAS

Seymour S. Kety, M.D.

Courtesy of the National Academy

of Sciences

At that time, the NINDB had recently been established, with Pearce

Bailey as its first director. The Surgeon General had designated the

NIMH to administer the NINDB’s program. Felix had known Bailey

from the VA and they quickly pooled their resources so that both insti­

tutes would have a large, joint basic research program under Kety’s

leadership. There were several reasons behind this tactical decision. It

was difficult to separate basic research in neurological disease and men­

tal illness at the time, and Kety believed that “progress in the diagnosis

and treatment of nervous and mental diseases rest[ed] firmly upon a

basic understanding of the [structure and function] of the nervous sys­

tem through the biological and behavioral sciences.”^6 His 1956 Annual

Report highlighted this belief:

There is a danger in the overemphasis of the purely bio­

logical aspects of illness, especially psychiatric illness... These

illnesses represent an interaction between experiential and

environmental factors upon a constitutional, biological

substrate, and a research program which emphasizes one

of these approaches to the detriment of the other is not

likely fully to exploit the potentialities of science in the

understanding of disease.^7