History of Research

Menninger has a long history of research that has made inroads in a variety of areas ranging from advancing methods of assessing research data to developing applicable treatment procedures. During its 79 years, Menninger has been at the forefront of innovative advances in treatment, research and understanding mental illness.

Menninger research has involved a broad spectrum of subject matter, from exploring the potential of mind-body control to participating in nationwide drug trials that has resulted in developing more effective psychiatric medications. Today, mentalizing is a significant object of interest for researchers.

Research goes full time
In 1940, David Rapaport, PhD, became Menninger's first full-time psychologist and was head of the psychology and research departments. Along with Roy Schafer, PhD, and Merton Gill, MD, Dr. Rapaport co-authored the landmark collaborative study Diagnostic Psychological Testing, which offered a basis for assessing research data; the study, which championed applying quantitative, statistical methods to psychoanalytically oriented research, was later revised by Robert R. Holt, who also was a Menninger researcher in the 1940s. Under Dr. Rapaport, research emphasized "the study of individual differences in style of attending, perceiving, and thinking in the course of problem solving," according to Herbert E. Spohn, PhD, who became research director in 1981.

Exploring diverse knowledge
Gardner Murphy directed research from 1952 until 1967. Dr. Murphy drew on broad, eclectic interests that ranged from parapsychology to biofeedback and sought to "integrate clinical psychology with experimental, social, and personality psychology," according to his wife, fellow researcher Lois Barclay Murphy, PhD.

"At Menninger," she wrote, it was possible for him not only to reflect on problems facing the clinicians, but also to stimulate research linking diagnosis and therapy with scientific issues of perceiving, learning and remembering." 

Dr. Murphy "fostered a diverse complement of projects ranging from basic research in learning theory, perception and psychophysiology, to the more applied, systematic study of psychopathology," according to an account by Dr. Spohn, a Menninger researcher interested in schizophrenia and its social context. Dr. Spohn said,  "Dr. Murphy's insistence on the study of how our internal signal system affects our perception of external reality foreshadowed both basic biofeedback research and biofeedback treatment applications."

Psychotherapy Project
In 1954, Menninger embarked on a scientific inquiry that would last nearly 30 years.

The landmark study, called the Menninger Psychotherapy Research Project, continued until 1982. The effort remains the most extensive and detailed examination of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis that has ever been done. Using the case histories of 42 patients in treatment for significant mental disorders, Menninger investigators sought to uncover the roots of how psychoanalysis and psychotherapy work, what changes can predictably occur over the course of treatment, how those changes are brought about, and how they evolve over time, in this case, many years later. In other words, they documented, as much as humanly possible, how serious mental illness is best treated.

Half of the 42 patients underwent psychoanalysis and half were treated in supportive and expressive psychoanalytic psychotherapies.

Expressive treatment is defined as a therapy that attempts to explore and uncover the patient's unconscious wishes, fears, conflicts and defenses. In supportive treatment the therapist becomes a source of emotional support for the patient, affirming adaptive behavior. The therapist functions as a model, whose actions and behaviors offer guidance and structure.

The research was critical for several reasons, most especially for its application to clinical work. The project's case histories and therapeutic insights were instructive not merely as abstract extrapolations, but as hard evidence of the efficacy of therapies in varying situations. And best of all, clinicians could apply the findings in practice.

Many publications
As a director of research at Menninger and the project's principal investigator, it fell to Dr. Robert Wallerstein, a former director of Menninger research, to record the breadth of the study's findings in a thick volume titled, 42 Lives in Treatment-A Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.

Over its long life, the project involved numerous Menninger notables, including Drs. Lewis Robbins, Helen D. Sargent, Gardner Murphy, Irwin Rosen, Stephen Appelbaum, Leonard Horwitz, Ishak Ramzy, Lolafaye Coyne, Otto Kernberg, Lester Luborsky and Mildred Faris, just to name a few.

In one year alone, the project involved the work of five psychiatrists, four psychologists, and two social workers, as well as contributions from a large part of the staff of the Department of Adult Psychiatry.

And Dr. Wallerstein's book was not the only writing to emerge from the research.

Prior to publication of the book, Menninger psychologist Len Horwitz, PhD, published Clinical Prediction in Psychotherapy. After Dr. Wallerstein's book, a collection of Menninger staff members published Borderline Personality Disorder: Tailoring the Psychotherapy to the Patient, by Dr. Horwitz, Glen Gabbard, MD, Jon Allen, PhD, Siebolt H. Frieswyk, PhD; Donald B. Colson, PhD; Gavin Newsom, MSW, and Lolafaye Coyn, PhD.

With at least 37 Menninger professionals involved over the life of the endeavor, nearly 70 articles, monographs, and books were inspired by the project, information that continues to stimulate and provoke today.

In 1952, using data collected on 128 infants by psychologist Sibylle Escalona and her colleagues, Dr. Lois Murphy began a longitudinal study to discover, in her words, how "normal children remain normal," and how children cope with the stresses of growing up. The Coping Study was financed by the National Institute of Mental Health and others through 1969, and involved dozens of researchers whose observations appeared in numerous papers and books.

War lessons
The two decades following WWII were golden years for mental health research. The National Institute of Mental Health was established in 1949 and in addition to federal support for the training of mental health professionals, appropriations for mental health research were greatly increased. Menninger was well suited for research. Its multi-disciplinary group practice offered diverse strengths and its hospitals and outpatient operations provided a good deal of clinical data for researchers to draw upon.

Management, leaders
As a result of his experiences in dealing with the military during World War II, Dr. Will Menninger became especially aware of the important role that managers of people, be they generals or sergeants, vice presidents or foremen, have upon the mental health of those who work for them.

It was Dr. Will's theory, recalls his son, Walter Menninger, MD, that "if you're going to impact the functioning and mental health of a unit, the critical point is the leadership. You can have the best damn unit in the Army in terms of crack individuals, but put a poor leader in charge of them and they don't go anywhere."

Dr. Will and Dr. Harry Levinson conducted an extensive national survey of mental health problems in industry and what was then being done to solve or alleviate them. Subsequent studies were focused on the underlying causes of emotional stress on the job and what could be done to reduce it. As a result of the survey, Menninger began to offer weeklong seminars for executives from all parts of the country in order to give these business leaders an understanding of why human beings act as they do. Its efforts were focused on two areas-the development of an educational technique to communicate an understanding of human behavior to persons with management responsibilities and an organizational study of the effects of the work experience on mental health.

The first seminars for executives and occupational physicians were held in 1956 by Menninger's Division of Industrial Mental Health, the first such specialized function at a psychiatric institution and eventually provided evidence that the psychiatrist can be effectively used in industry.

Other research
Menninger has encouraged an atmosphere that has fostered both conventional and unconventional approaches to the research and treatment of mental illness. And though the goal is better understanding the human condition, sometimes the study of animals helps.

Dr. Murray Bowen, a Menninger psychiatrist in the 1940s-1950s, developed theories about human behavior from observing primates and mammals. He later pioneered a psychological approach to treatment called "Family Systems Theory." Dr. Bowen sought insights into the human condition by studying the family unit. His theories are still applied today.

Joseph Kovach, PhD, who arrived at Menninger in 1966 and could be seen attending his office until Menninger relocated to Texas in 2003, sought clues to human nature through his research into the brain activity and behavior of the tiny Japanese quail. His efforts were designed to better understand how genes and environment affect behavior.

His work was considered so noteworthy the National Institute of Mental Health selected him multiple times as the recipient of the coveted Career Scientist Award, a prize only a relatively few scientists ever received.

Much of the credit for fostering "a golden era of research at Menninger in a wide range of areas," said Dr. Walt Menninger, is attributed to the presence of Dr. Gardner Murphy.

It was Dr. Murphy, for instance, who attracted Elmer Green, PhD, and his biofeedback work to Menninger, an example of the wide-reaching atmosphere that existed in the search for broad answers to the dilemmas posed by the human condition.

"Much of Dr. Green's work was never adopted by the mainstream of clinical professionals," Dr. Walt said,  "nonetheless, he has had a significant role in the study of subtle energies. In that particular niche, he is one of the preeminent figures."

Dr. Green was the first person ever to receive a National Institutes of Health research grant-given for his autonomic research program (involuntary internal stimuli) at Menninger in the mid-1960s. The techniques he and his wife Alyce Green developed were used to train individuals how to achieve more control over their bodies in order to increase their physical and mental well being.

Migraine studies
A significant project was launched in 1973, when Menninger conducted the most extensive migraine study ever undertaken, research that attempted to determine the effectiveness of biofeedback techniques. Could a person mentally direct the energies in his own body? Were such techniques viable alternatives to conventional medicine?

Dr. Joseph Sargent was then in charge of overseeing the research, which used, among other things, an eight-channel polygraph to measure physical responses under laboratory conditions. In the initial study, which was later expanded, biofeedback significantly eased migraines in 74 percent of the test subjects.

Menninger also conducted clinical trials on a new generation of migraine medication that is widely used today.

Additional studies
In recent years, there have been more than 40 research projects under way at any given time. Studies have ranged from how best to improve infant feeding to a study designed to get to the roots of violent adolescent behavior. Such studies can take a year or more, and oftentimes, many years.

In 2001, researchers continued to study people who attended the Menninger Preschool treatment program as early as the 1970s for insights into depression by comparing their early psychological histories with their present mental health. The project involved DNA analysis to locate factors common in adults who suffer posttraumatic stress disorder.