Eric Carlson MD Papers, 1921-1994

Summary

Creator:
Carlson, Eric T., 1922-
Abstract:
This collection contains the papers of Eric T. Carlson, who was an American psychiatrist, historian, and director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry. The collection has 6 series: Writings, Publications, Correspondence, Adolf Meyer Seminars, Subject Files, and Audio-Visual Materials.
Extent:
43 boxes 19.4 linear feet
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains the papers of Eric T. Carlson, who was an American psychiatrist, historian, and director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry. There are six series in this collection.

Writings: this series contains manuscripts, primarily written by Dr. Carlson, including The Pathogenesis of Mental Illness by Carlson and Meribeth M. Simpson, with chapters entitled Benjamin Rush and Eighteenth Century Medicine; Medical Causality; God, Religion, and Magic; Remnants of the Classical Tradition; The Mechanization of the Animal Spirits (Nervous Fluid); Solid Nerves and Vibrating Strings; Solid Nerves and Nervous Ether; The Caloric, Electro-magnetism, and Oxygen in Nervous Theory; Stimulus-Response Theories; Sympathy and Various Organs; Predisposing and Remote Causes; Exciting Causes, Physical and Moral.

Publications: these materials are print publications primarily by Dr. Carlson.

Correspondence: the original arrangement and labels have been kept for these folders, and some folders contain other types of materials, such as manuscripts and presentations.

Adolf Meyer Seminars: correspondence, announcements, paper presentations, and information on the Meyer seminars can be found in this series.

Subject Files: these files document Dr. Carlson’s research and professional undertakings, including mesmerism, drugs and drug addiction, Benjamin Rush, Amariah Brigham, and Alexander Leighton and the Stirling County Study.

Audio-Visual Materials: there are various audio-visual items in this series, including photographs and audio of his professional activities and research.

Biographical / historical:

Eric Theodore Carlson (1922-1992) was born in Westbrook, Connecticut and received his BA in Chemistry from Wesleyan University in February 1944. He served as a research chemist and laboratory engineer with the Enlisted Reserve Corps from February 1944 to September 1946, which included 20 months in the US Army and work with the Atomic Bomb Project on the harnessing of atomic energy at the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated in June 1950 from Cornell University Medical College and married Jean Elvidge the same year. He was an intern in medicine at New York Hospital from July 1950 to June 1951 and an Assistant Resident in Psychiatry at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic of the New York Hospital from July 1951 to January 1955. In late 1952, tuberculosis caused him to be bedridden during the middle of his second year of residency, which led to Oskar Diethelm suggesting that he do historical research based on the books Dr. Diethelm had been collecting at the medical center since his arrival as chairman in 1936. Dr. Diethelm brought him the original edition of Benjamin Rush’s 1812 volume Diseases of the Mind, but Carlson initially found these viewpoints too confusing, so he turned his attention to the founding of the APA in 1844 and the role of Amariah Brigham, one of 13 original APA members and the founder and editor of the American Journal of Insanity, which led to Dr. Carlson’s first publication, in the AJP. Dr. Carlson then returned to Rush, and came across interesting cases before 1820 of spontaneous disturbances of consciousness, memory, and sense of self, and he started to publish on this topic in 1960. One case he presented on in 1982 was Mary Reynolds from Western Pennsylvania, who lost her adult personality in 1811 and became a non-speaking infant who soon learned rapidly and was written about by Samuel Mitchell of New York Hospital in 1816 in Medical Repository, the first New York City medical journal, which Dr. Mitchell had founded in 1797; during most of the 20th century, Reynolds was generally presented as the first known case of multiple personality, so Dr. Carlson started to work on the history of this disorder beginning in the year 1790, with the working title of The Enigma of Multiple Personality, 1790-1890.

After becoming an Assistant in Psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College in 1952, Dr. Carlson was promoted to Instructor in Psychiatry the next year and became an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in 1958 while continuing his private practice part time. In 1958, Carlson received a three year grant from the National Institute for Mental Health to investigate the early history of American psychiatry, and, as a result, Dr. Diethelm released Dr. Carlson from his previous half-time responsibilities to establish the research unit that is now called the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry, which held seminars beginning in 1962. Norman Dain, then a graduate student, was the first pre-doctoral fellow in the program. In 1955, Dr. Carlson’s daughter Karen Carlson Confino was born, and he completed graduate work in American history at New York University in 1961 and 1962. In 1962, he became a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry before receiving the title of Clinical Professor Psychiatry in 1970, which he held until his death in 1992. He had memberships in many organizations and was also a fellow for the American Psychiatric Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York Academy of Medicine, Royal Society of Medicine, and Pan American Medical Association. He was also the Editor of Classics in Psychiatry for Arno Press and his two unfinished book manuscript projects were The Pathogenesis of Mental Illness, 1690-1820 with Meribeth M. Simpson, and Benjamin Rush’s Lectures on the Mind with Patricia S. Noel and Jeffrey Wollock.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

There are no access restrictions on this material.

Terms of access:

Written permission must be obtained from the Oskar Diethelm Library and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Location of this collection:
DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy and the Arts
Weill Cornell Medical College
525 East 68th Street, Box 140
New York, NY 10065, United States
Link to repository site
Contact:
212-746-3728