MENNINGER, KARL A. (1893-1990)

American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Karl A. Menninger was born in Topeka, Kansas, on July 22, 1893, and died there on July 18, 1990.

Raised in Topeka, the son of a general practitioner, he was educated at Harvard University Medical School before returning to Topeka to work with his brother and father in the establishment of a psychiatric clinic and a major psychiatric residency training program there, the present-day Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry. He brought many European analysts to the Menninger Clinic to escape Nazi oppression, among them Otto Fenichel, Martin Grotjahn, and Ernst Simmel. He went on to become a leader in psychoanalysis, serving as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association from 1942 to 1943. He founded the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1942.

Menninger was a prolific writer. Among his books were The Human Mind (1930), which brought psychoanalytic understanding to the lay public, Man Against Himself (1938), in which he explored self-destructiveness (and made a compelling case for the validity of Freud's death instinct), Love Against Hate (1992), which examined the human capacity to overcome self-destructiveness, and his magnum opus, The Vital Balance (1963). He was also intensely interested in the penal system, and in his book The Crime of Punishment, he suggested that many convicted criminals needed treatment rather than punishment (1968). His volume, Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique, was one of the few books to examine the theoretical underpinnings for the analyst's interventions.

Menninger spent his life as a champion of the under-dog. He was a crusader for a variety of causes, including the American Indian, nuclear nonproliferation, neglected and abused children, and penal reform. In 1981 he received the Medal of Freedom, the United States's highest civilian honor, from President Jimmy Carter.

Glen O. Gabbard

See also: Abstinence/rule of abstinence; Self-mutilation in children.

Bibliography

Menninger, Karl A. (1930). The human mind. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

——. (1938). Man against himself. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

——. (1942). Love against hate. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

——. (1963). The vital balance: The life process in mental health and illness. New York: The Viking Press.

——. (1968). The crime of punishment. New York: The Viking Press.