KOHN 263the institutional dynamics of mental hospitals, particularly as such hos
pitals were affected by the introduction of psychotropic drugs. Clausen
and I dispatched a myth beloved by our sociological brethren that
social isolation causes schizophrenia. We also recast psychiatric under
standing of the possible role of parent-child relationships in the etiology
of schizophrenia, by showing that families whose offspring became
schizophrenic were not so different from normal families of their
socioeconomic level as prior studies had mistakenly concluded. In fact,
they were typical of families of the lower socioeconomic strata from
which schizophrenics disproportionately come. These studies were valu
able in clearing away misconceptions and for reconceptualizing im
portant theoretical issues. But most of them were not, in my judgment,
of fundamental importance for our understanding of human behavior.
Well before the end of the decade, however, Clausen seemed to grow
confident that our work need not be limited to the study of mental dis
order, but could encompass much broader and more fundamental issues
of social psychology, which was what his staff wanted to do. By the end
of the 1950s, the Laboratory of Socio-Environmental Studies was clearly
in transition from a singular focus on the study of social factors in the
etiology and treatment of mental disorder, to a far-reaching program
of fundamental research on social structure, culture, and personality.
To give an accurate picture of this transformation of the laboratory’s
program, I have to describe not only what was being done by the end of
the 1950s, but also where the investigators were headed in their research.
(For this part of my comments, I leave out the developmental psycholo
gists–at that time: Roger Burton, John Campbell, and Marian Yarrow.
After the decade of the 1950s, they became a laboratory of their own,
under the distinguished leadership of Marian Yarrow.) William Caudill
was then a new arrival, best known for his participant-observation study
of a mental hospital, but he and Carmi Schooler were soon to under
take their incisive studies of culture, childhood socialization, and
personality in Japan and the United States. Leonard Pearlin was at that
time doing a study of the nursing staff at St. Elizabeths Hospital, with
his cross-national research on the family not yet underway, and his
pioneering research, with Schooler, on stress and coping not yet en
visaged. Morris Rosenberg was then beginning the research on the