Leo Kanner’s Call for a Pediatric-Psychiatric Alliance

Abstract

* Abbreviation: JHU — : Johns Hopkins University The “Menace of Psychiatry.”1 The title of pediatrician Joseph Brennemann’s 1931 article was inflammatory, and it was meant to be. Brennemann voiced concerns about psychiatry that many contemporary pediatricians shared at the time.2,3 Under “psychiatry” he included the work of an array of professionals in psychology, child development, and child guidance who, in his opinion, were negatively influencing parents’ attitudes toward their children’s health. These professionals, who were trained in psychoanalysis, mental testing, or the behaviorist psychology of John B. Watson, popularized standards, techniques, and theories that parents could not fully understand. In addition, they led parents to see any variation from a scientifically defined ideal of health as a problem. Brennemann argued that only pediatricians had sufficient knowledge of the specific and normal conditions of children’s lives to understand each child as an individual and to diagnose pathologic deviations. Yet, lacking the elaborate jargon of the psychoanalysts or the prestige of the behaviorists’ laboratory methods, pediatricians appeared to be losing the ongoing debate over a fundamental question: who is the expert on the mental health of children?4 Recognizing the validity of Brennemann’s concerns, psychiatrist Leo Kanner,5,6 head of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine, called for an alliance between child psychiatry and pediatrics. Here, we examine how Kanner came to that conviction through the influence of psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and pediatrician Edwards A. Park and argue that pediatrics deeply shaped Kanner’s work in … Address correspondence to Marga Vicedo, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Victoria College, Room 316, 91 Charles St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada. E-mail: marga.vicedo{at}utoronto.ca