Oral Histories

Interview of Ivan N. Mensh

UCLA professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences. Psychologist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Subtitle:
UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital: Ivan N. Mensh
Series:
UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital
Topic:
Science, Medicine, and Technology
UCLA and University of California History
UCLA Research Centers and Programs
Biographical Note:
UCLA professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences. Psychologist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Interviewer:
Balter, Michael S.
Interviewee:
Mensh, Ivan N.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Length:
4.75 hrs.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
Series Statement:
This series was made possible by support from the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital and documents the history of that institution.
Abstract:
Mensh's family background; schools and universities attended; financing his college education; family's emphasis on education; working for a wholesale drug company; Mensh works as a psychiatric aide at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C.; transferred to the experimental ward of St. Elizabeth's women's buildings; interviews patients at venereal disease clinics to improve patient education; joins the navy; is transferred to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; psychology program and faculty at Northwestern University; completes his dissertation under Edward Lester Clark; works at Washington University; relationship between psychology and medicine at Washington University; Mensh begins to do psychotherapy; Mensh's own research; serves on numerous boards and committees to UCLA; conflict between Norman Q. Brill and Donald B. Lindsley; Mensh disagrees with Brill on his position and duties; Dean Stafford L. Warren's role in Mensh's decision to come to UCLA; Brill's personality; Mensh and Brill disagree over who should be allowed to practice psychotherapy; Marion Davies offers her home to house the Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI); building the new NPI building; NPI faculty and programs when Mensh arrived; conflict between psychoanalytically-oriented and nonpsychoanalytically-oriented faculty; Alexander C. Rosen; Brill's desire to have a psychology training program at NPI; relationship between UCLA and the Veterans Administration Medical Center, West Los Angeles; more on why Mensh decided to come to UCLA; Marion Davies; incidents with patients at NPI in the 1950s; studies of LSD at UCLA; Philip R. A. May; controversy over the relationship between the Brain Research Institute and NPI; Brill's contribution to NPI; events leading up to Brill's dismissal as director of NPI; George Tarjan's effectiveness as an administrator; Dean Sherman M. Mellinkoff; Louis Jolyon West is appointed director of NPI; question whether Tarjan or Henry H. Work was ever offered the job of director; Mental Retardation and Child Psychiatry program; restrictions on NPI faculty earning outside income; NPI is transferred from the California Department of Mental Hygiene (DMH) to UCLA; constraints on NPI when it was under the DMH; Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute decides not to become part of University of California, San Francisco; the transition from DMH to UCLA; the problem of faculty doing research rather than teaching; West as director of NPI; the founding of the preventive psychiatry program; the future of institutes; the future of NPI.