Orthopsychiatrists

Although the science of psychoanalysis was developed long before the War, it was not until the hectic '20s that psychoanalysts began to open their science to large groups instead of restricting their skilful emotional probings to a few isolated individuals. In 1924, a group of socially-minded psychiatrists and psychoanalysts* formed the American Orthopsychiatric** Association, an organization whose aim was practical activity on a large scale. Members included not only psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, but teachers, social workers, and academic psychologists and sociologists as well.

Last week at the 16th annual meeting of the Association, more than 1,000 enthusiastic Orthopsychiatrists buzzed in the ballroom of Manhattan's Commodore Hotel, discussed such varied subjects as the connection of economics and personality, hostility of Pilaga Indian children to everybody and everything, emotional qualifications of good teachers, infant pyromania, problems of old age. Cheerful social workers occupied most of the ballroom chairs, but the meeting was dominated by psychoanalysts, who gave evidence of the utility and freshness of old Sigmund Freud's ideas (see p. 41) whence they had all got theirs.

Highlights of the meeting:

> Dr. Gregory Zilboorg, prominent Manhattan psychiatrist, complained that legal technicalities deprive psychiatrists of the opportunity to study criminals. A murderer, he said, "is treated as the private property of the State, and no gaze of free inquiry may rest on his psyche." Only a psychiatrist, he said, can solve the "nuclear problem" of impulsive murder: why a murderer kills with slight provocation, and why he chooses a certain victim, often a complete stranger, at a given moment. He told of the case of the Manhattan upholsterer, John Fiorenza, who killed Mrs. Nancy Titterton in her Beekman Place apartment three years ago. Mrs. Titterton had called Fiorenza to repair a loveseat, had urged him to return it as quickly as possible. Fiorenza had a long-standing abnormal relationship to his mother which produced in his split personality powerful desires to commit cruel acts. His temporary possession of Mrs. Titterton's "loveseat" acted as a sufficiently strong stimulus for his disorganized mind to transfer to the innocent stranger his feeling for his mother. Overcome by a wave of sadism, he killed Mrs. Titterton. If Fiorenza had not been executed, said Dr. Zilboorg, "he would have presented invaluable material to the psychiatrist . . . and . . . to the courts, which will be called upon time and again to deal with many Fiorenzas."

> Psychiatrist Fred Temple Burling of Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co. told of a wealthy young woman who had "an extravagant love" for the tremendous department store. She insisted on working for the store, no matter how small the job, even though she might have had positions with more social prestige. Dr. Burling soon discovered that the girl was deeply attached to her father, and that "she had personified the organization and transferred much of her fixation on her father to it." The case "may sound preposterous," concluded Dr. Burling, "but it is . . . an attitude I find pretty frequently."

-Among the founders: Drs. Lawson Gentry Lowrey, George Salvadore Stevenson and David Mordecai Levy of Manhattan; Dr. William Healy of Boston; Dr. Karl Augustus Menninger of Topeka, Kans.

From the Greek orthos, meaning "straight."

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