Retrospect and tribute: remarks in acceptance of the C. Anderson Aldrich Award.

At one of the small interdisciplinary meetings which were burgeoning a quarter of a century ago, I met Dr. C. Anderson Aldrich over a cocktail. In bemoaning the multiplicity of meetings he remarked, "Everyone should stay at home more in his own potato patch." As recipient of the 1968 C. Anderson Aldrich Award, I feel moved to reminisce about my "potato patch" at Yale, cultivated under the sagacious oversight of Grover Powers. My predecessor in this pediatric field was my medical school classmate and friend, Molly Putnam. She was, as far as we can ascertain, the very first psychiatrist to be appointed as continuing consultant to a Department of Pediatrics. This was in 1927. Nine years later, in 1936, I was offered a part-time appointment in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale to take over most of Molly's consultation responsibility. She wanted time for research with Erik Erikson, child psychoanalyst, and Ruth Washburn, clinical psychologist. I gladly accepted. Grover assigned me a pediatric office and connected it by telephone extension with my psychiatric office and secretary across Cedar Street in the Institute of Human Relations! This regal treatment was somewhat offset by the resident staff's initialed reference to me as "the p.p. consultant." In 1938 disruptive changes occurred in the Department of Psychiatry. Molly Putnam, Erik Erikson and Ruth Washburn all left. I stayed, since I already had a foot and three quarters in pediatrics. Grover took me over in toto, including even the psychoanalytic couch. But my dual academic title, "in Pediatrics and Psychiatry," remained. Grover also took over Helen Richter Gilmore and our secretary, Althea Schiffer. Helen was an Instructor in Psychiatry who had worked closely with Molly, Erik and me. He gave them the two offices contiguous to mine. This was the three-room "suite" in which the architectural plans for the Southbury Training School for Retarded Children had been worked out. Helen took consultations from the pediatric clinic and I continued to take the ward consultations. Naturally, we wanted a psychologist to work directly with us. Grover arranged for the part-time appointment of Dorothy Marquis who had al-