Oral Histories

Interview of Daniel X. Freedman

UCLA professor of psychiatry and pharmacology. Vice chairman of psychiatry at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Subtitle:
Psychiatry and Pharmacology
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 pharmacology. Vice chairman of psychiatry at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Interviewer:
Novak, Steven J.
Interviewee:
Freedman, Daniel X.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
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:
Childhood in Crawfordsville, Indiana; attends Harvard University; administers neurological and psychological tests in the United States Army Medical Corps; learns electroencephalography; colleagues in the Medical Corps; assigned to Northington General Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama; Fredrick C. Redlich; the impact of World War II on American psychiatry; origin of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Psychopharmacology Service Center; accepted at Yale University School of Medicine; anti-Semitism at Yale; student movements of the 1940s; early interest in brain chemistry; Yale internship in pediatrics; supports Adlai E. Stevenson in 1952; residency in psychiatry at Yale; Yale Psychiatric Institute; analytic training at Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute; doubts about the dogmatism of psychoanalysis; Freedman's style as a therapist; Nicholas Giarman; receives NIMH career investigator grant; the twentieth-century revolution in pharmacology; tests apomorphine on dogs; studies the allergic reactions of schizophrenics; studies immune reactions in guinea pigs; searching for brain receptor sites; origins of psychoimmunology; Freedman's research on LSD; Freedman's research on families of schizophrenics; tries chlorpromazine on patients; Seymour S. Kety; searching for neurotransmitters; returns to Yale and sets up its first psychopharmacology lab; reservations about the community mental health movement; trying to build biological psychiatry at Yale; collaborates with Redlich in writing The Theory and Practice of Psychiatry; Roy R. Grinker Sr.; Norton W. Simon and Jennifer Jones Simon; Sandoz Pharmaceuticals promotes research on LSD; drug research by the military and the United States Public Health Service; founding the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; serves on the American Psychiatric Association's Commission on Drug Abuse; the fight to protect medical drug research from excessive federal regulation; serves on the Drug Abuse Council; Jerome H. Jaffe; the Richard M. Nixon administration's fear that Vietnam War veterans would spread drug abuse in the United States; appointed chief editor of the Archives of General Psychiatry; noteworthy contributors to the journal; the review process at the journal; providing a venue for pioneering studies in psychiatric epidemiology; Freedman becomes chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago; people whom he recruited to the department; Jarl E. Dyrud; James E. Carter, Rosalynn Smith Carter, and the President's Commission on Mental Health; fights Ronald W. Reagan administration's funding cuts; recruited by UCLA's Louis Jolyon West; the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI); the UCLA Brain Research Institute; Kenneth I. Shine; the stigma attached to psychiatry; future hopes and plans.