Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior

72 FARRERAS

By 1955-1956, the branch’s interests centered around three areas:

1) studying therapeutic communities of adult schizophrenic patients;

2) involving parents in the group treatment of schizophrenic patients

and comparing the families of schizophrenic patients with those of

normal control subjects; and 3) studying how various types of chronic

illness had an impact on personality.^7

Finally, by December 1957, Cohen was able to recruit David A.

Hamburg to head the branch. Cohen had been following Hamburg’s

career from the early days when Hamburg worked with David Rioch at

the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Washington,

D.C., and later with Roy Grinker at the Michael Reese Hospital in

Chicago,^8 to his fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the

Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.^9

David A. Hamburg, M.D.

Courtesy of the National Institute

of Mental Health

With Hamburg at the helm, the branch doubled in size and new

research directions were charted. The branch adopted an increased

collaborative approach, working alongside psychologists, sociologists,

and physiologists from other branches. Two sections were created in

1958–Psychosomatic Medicine and Personality Development–that

focused on stress and adaptation.^10 In collaboration with the WRAIR, the

Section on Psychosomatic Medicine conducted research on autonomic

and endocrine changes associated with psychological stress, specifically

relating “fluctuations in emotional states to fluctuations in plasma and

urinary levels of hydrocortisone, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.”^11