An Appreciation of Emory Cowen

Abstract

I have lost a beloved foster brother, last week [November 2000], when Emory Cowen died. For fifty years our paths have intertwined and overlapped in many ways and we maintained a regular snail-mail correspondence in handwriting that was a challenge to each. I wrote to him first some time in the late 50s. I was a member of the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Psychology and I asked him if he would review current research on psychotherapy. He responded at once (as he always did) saying that he was no longer concerned with individual treatment. He went on to explain that one-to-one intervention was not going to solve the problem of mental disorders in the nation. He had decided that work with young children in the schools to prevent later serious problems was a more promising approach—one that he pursued with dedication and success ever after. I was already convinced by my analysis of mental health “manpower” for the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health (The Eisenhower Commission) that primary prevention offered the only viable solution. So Emory and I followed the same road and encouraged each other. We were often invited to speak on the same symposia—along with Bernard Bloom and Steve Goldston. Ten years or so after our first exchange of correspondence Emory did a review of social and community interventions for the Annual Review of Psychology and I did (with Marc Kessler) a review of the field of primary prevention two years later. We both had become community psychologists. It had become clear to both of us that work in the community, and especially in primary prevention, was the only effective way to reduce the rate of mental/emotional disorders in the population. Cowen focused his attention on the prevention of human ineffectiveness and suffering by programs aimed at reducing or preventing the early problems of children in the schools. His writings include seven books, 50 chapters and monographs, and more than 200 articles in the scientific and professional literature. Probably the most important of his contributions is the Primary Mental Health Project involving the early detection and prevention of children’s maladjustment in the schools. This clearly defined and well-researched intervention is now being used in 500 school systems throughout the world.