The Strange Disappearance of Adolf Meyer

In 1943 Adolf Meyer had been in the United States for 51 years. He had spent that time revolutionizing attitudes in American Psychiatry. Indeed, he had so single-handedly reshaped thinking in this field that, in that year, Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles, President of the American Psychiatric Association, had the following assessment of Meyer: As research worker, scholar and organizer, as professor of psychiatry at one of our great medical schools, and as head of one of our outstanding mental clinics, Dr. Meyer has served our Association for half a century for one-half of the whole duration of our Association's existence. He has been a guiding light and inspiration in many committees, in all our councils and scientific deliberations. His erudition and contributions are unexcelled by any one man among us (Ruggles, 1943). Meyer's influence had already been noted, under similar circumstances 23 years before by E. E. Southard: / myself believe that no greater power to change our minds about the problems of psychiatry has been at work in the interior of the psychiatric profession in America than the personality of Adolf Meyer. If he will pardon me the phrase, I shall designate him as a ferment, an enzyme, a catalyzer (Southard, 1919-20).