Frankwood E. Williams (1883–1936)

Abstract

FRANKWOOD E. WILLIAMS was convinced that the new science of human nature would not only provide treatment methods for severe and persistent forms of mental illness but also intervention strategies for their prevention. During his association with the National Committee for Mental Hygiene from 1916 to 1931 (the last 9 years of which he served as medical director), Williams stimulated, guided, and oversaw the implementation of a wide range of preventive methods. The National Committee was founded in 1909 by Clifford W. Beers, who had spent 3 years in mental hospitals, and Adolf Meyer, by then the foremost American psychiatrist. It aimed to increase the status of psychiatry, placing the discipline on a sound scientific footing by arranging funding for medical research and improving the care provided to individuals institutionalized in mental hospitals. At that time, there were no effective treatments for severe and persistent forms of mental illness. The Committee therefore embraced the ideal of prevention as the most effective measure to decrease the incidence of mental illness. Williams had studied medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and specialized in psychiatry at one of the first hospitals established for the scientific study of mental illness in the United States. His teacher, Albert M. Barrett, adhered to a strictly somatic approach within psychiatry, as did E. E. Southard, director of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, where Williams spent 2 years after the completion of his studies in 1913. Southard was also known for his interest in social issues such as alcoholism and criminality, issues that also became of interest to Williams. During the first decade of operation, the psychiatrists associated with the National Committee conducted a number of surveys that demonstrated the social significance of mental illness. Williams participated in a survey of prisons in the county of New York that showed that a significant percentage of individuals confined in them suffered from mental illness.1 Among recidivists, the number was even higher. To Williams, these findings indicated that judges and jail keepers were dealing with mental illness without any insight into its nature. These findings inspired the psychiatrists of the National Committee to develop clinics for the treatment of juvenile delinquents. With early intervention, it was thought, a life of crime could be prevented. In the 1920s, mental hygienists became interested in childhood as the period during which preventive measures could most effectively be implemented. In 1925, Williams traveled to Vienna to undergo psychoanalysis with Otto Rank, who at that time was one of Sigmund Freud’s closest disciples. According to Williams, Freud’s psychoanalysis indicated that virtually all problems later in life were caused by difficulties in early childhood. To prevent these problems, intervention strategies that targeted early childhood were needed. The National Committee oversaw the establishment of a dozen Child Guidance Clinics where parents confronted with troublesome children could ask for help. Williams actively promoted progressive education because he believed that only a complete transformation of the educational system could make it congruent with the demands of emotional development. He was also actively involved in the establishment of several college mental hygiene programs in the belief that college students, the future leaders of society, needed to be free of emotional problems.2 At the time Williams wrote “Finding a Way in Mental Hygiene,” he had already announced his resignation from the National Committee and had come to doubt the effectiveness of its programs. He recognized that to realize the sometimes utopian ideals of the mental hygiene movement, only the complete reorganization of American society along the lines of the science of human nature would do. He began to spend most of his time conducting psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which he had come to see as the only effective way to change human nature. In 1929, the stock market crashed, which was followed by a worldwide economic depression. For most mental hygienists, the consequences of the Depression were disconcerting and at times even alarming. Because of widespread economic insecurity, the incidences of depression, anxiety, and suicide were at an all-time high. To counter this, they argued that structural instead of individualized measures were urgently needed. In 1931, Williams visited the Soviet Union and was astounded by what he witnessed in the carefully maintained villages designed for visitors from the West, where a life of plenitude, happiness, and mental health was enjoyed by all. Williams returned as a convert to the Soviet cause and championed its accomplishments during the remaining 5 years of his life.3 He had never been aware of the atrocities of Stalin’s regime and died in the conviction that the ideals of the mental hygiene movement could be achieved through structural and political means only.