Stanley Cobb, the Rockefeller Foundation and the evolution of American psychiatry

Bibliographic Data

ID19445147
AuthorsS Robert Snodgrass (0000-0003-4157-6500, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume29
Issue4
Pages438-455
Publication date2018-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0957-154X • E-ISSN: 1740-2360
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0957154x18788813
PMID30044151
OpenAlexW2884056303
LanguageEN
References cited61

Stanley Cobb founded the Harvard Departments of Neurology (1925) and Psychiatry (1934) with Rockefeller Foundation funding. Cobb was an important transitional figure in both neurology and psychiatry. He and his friend Alan Gregg were the most visible parts of the Rockefeller Foundation psychiatry project, which prepared American psychiatry for the rapid growth of psychiatric research after World War II. Edward Shorter called him the founder of American biological psychiatry, but this misunderstands Cobb and the Hegelian evolution of twentieth-century American psychiatry. I review the major role of the Rockefeller Foundation in the evolution of American academic psychiatry and the disappearance of Cobb’s teaching and that of his mentor Adolf Meyer, a founding father of American academic psychiatry

CobB · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Classics · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neurology and Historical Studies · Psychology · Biological Psychiatry · Gerontology · Neurology

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