264 KOHN
self-concept that made him the leading figure in this field. Schooler,
who in ensuing years was central to nearly all of the core studies of the
laboratory, was then solely engaged in experimental studies of chronic
schizophrenics at St. Elizabeths Hospital. And I was completing my
small-scale, exploratory study of social class and parent-child relation
ships in Washington, D. C., the forerunner of what would become Carmi
Schooler’s and my long-term and far-reaching studies of social structure,
job conditions, and personality in the United States, Poland, and Japan.
The research that would define the laboratory for decades to come was
only just getting underway, and the evidence of its quality was not yet
firmly in place, but the investigators were all on board and thirsting to
do fundamental research.
How did the directors of the intramural research program react to
this radical shift of emphasis? So far as I was able to tell, they responded
positively to every research project that anyone in the laboratory ever
undertook, provided only that it was high-quality research, as it generally
was. It was not Kety and Cohen who dictated that we had to limit our re
search to mental disorder, or who thought that every ward in the Clinical
Center needed to have a social scientist as resident participant-observer.
When I argued, as a typical example, that to understand the role of the
family in the etiology of schizophrenia, I had to move beyond compari
sons of families that produced schizophrenic offspring with families of
similar socioeconomic status that did not, to research on social class and
family relationships in the population generally, they properly question
ed the rationale of my research design, but not the appropriateness of my
studying the normal population.
This may be as appropriate a place as any to describe the division of
the laboratory into its basic and clinical components. From my vantage
point, which in this regard was very limited, the division was merely a
convenient administrative and fiscal device, and in no way a constraint
on our research activities. I do not remember just when it was that the
laboratory first had sections, some of which were designated “basic” and
others “clinical.” Whenever it was, the studies of the mental hospital were
called clinical. Studies done outside of any hospital setting, even studies
of former patients living in the community, were called basic. So far as I
know, no one in the laboratory was ever prevented from doing research