KOHN 261He hired a wide range of talented people, many of whom might not
have done as well in securing university employment–including women
in that sexist age (a notable example being Marian Yarrow), young men
subject to the draft (such as me), and an occasional oddball who was
either a genius or a wild man. The outstanding example of the latter cate
gory was Erving Goffman, who was to become one of the most promi
nent sociologists of the latter half of the twentieth century. Clausen
hired sociologists, developmental and clinical psychologists, anthro
pologists, a couple of social workers, even a population geneticist. We
honed our research and analytical skills from intensive, continuing dis
cussion. I would add that I especially honed my skills in research design
from discussions with Clausen himself.
Research Programs of the Laboratory of
Socio-Environmental Studies
The very term, research programs, brings to mind an image of experienc
ed elders laying out a program of research for their juniors to implement.
If Seymour S. Kety and Robert A. Cohen had any such vision in mind,
they kept it well hidden from me and the other young scientists at the
NIMH. Their expressed philosophy, which they exemplified in their
every action, was to recruit the best scientists they could find in any and
every scientific discipline that might contribute to our understanding of
human behavior, and to give them all the encouragement and support
that they could. By their choice of laboratory chiefs, they, of course, had
considerable influence on the directions that research in the several
laboratories and branches would take, but their choices seemed to be
influenced more by the quality of the research their appointees had
done and were likely to support in their laboratories than by a particular
research agenda.
Within particular laboratories and branches, of course, it could be
and often was quite another matter. Some chiefs seemed to think they
owned their laboratory or branch, and that all the scientists in that unit
worked for them; others seemed to think their scientists autonomous.
The difference showed, even then, in numerous ways: first, in whether
the chiefs claimed co-authorship on all of the papers written in their