HAMBURG 255work and its effect throughout the world. And there is today a distinct
field of sleep medicine, thanks to such pioneers as Dement, Snyder, and
Feinberg. One of the great opportunities in the first decade of the
twenty-first century lies in the integration of sleep medicine into pri
mary health care. Another is the education of the general public about
the serious risks of major sleep deprivation (e.g., truck accidents).
The American Sleep Foundation is pursuing this opportunity.
I want to close with a brief word about interdisciplinary collaboration
and progress in psychiatric research. Many scientists and clinicians have
noted the value of the interdisciplinary climate that we had at the NIH
in the 1950s, and this valuable climate has continued in a powerful way
to the present time.
One of the main thrusts, not only in the Adult Psychiatry Branch
but in the entire NIMH intramural program, was to promote contact,
lively exchange, and mutual assistance among the various scientists
concerned with psychiatric problems. Certainly Kety and Cohen, as the
two administrative leaders who also were scientific leaders, encouraged
that kind of interplay. Psychiatry’s scientific position is at the interface
between biological and behavioral sciences. No sharp line of separation
may be drawn. Psychiatrists have learned from poignant experience that
the human problems they face are too complex to be understood in
any narrow, doctrinaire way. By and large, we have emerged from that
phase of the field’s history. The tools of no single discipline will suffice.
The present mood of the field is one that searches for new opportuni
ties, welcomes diversity, and turns away from dogmatism. I believe
that much of this spirit arose in the 1950s, particularly in the NIMH
intramural program, and has had stimulating effects throughout the
nation and beyond.
This work continues to link behavioral inquiry with the neuro
sciences, and there are now far-reaching ramifications in both basic
science and clinical investigation. The field of stress research illustrates
how advances in neurobiology stimulate the scientific study of behav
ior in its own right, an urgently needed enterprise in the modern world.
Consider, for example, the stress-related field of aggression and violence
in which I have been so deeply involved in the past two decades.