Karl A. Menninger

• Born: July 22, 1893
• Birthplace: Topeka, Kansas
• Died: July 18, 1990
• Place of death: Topeka, Kansas

Biography

Karl Augustus Menninger, the son of Charles Frederick and Flora Vesta Knisely Menninger, was born in 1893 in Topeka, Kansas. Karl’s father was a physician and his mother was a teacher. Young Menninger was encouraged by his mother to become a banker or an evangelist. But he loved the sciences and decided to pursue a medical career like his father. From 1910 to 1912, he attended Washburn College. In 1914, he earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a bachelor of science degree from the same institution in 1915. On September 9, 1916, Menninger married Grace Gaines. They reared two daughters and a son.

In 1917, Menninger was awarded a medical degree in psychiatry from the Harvard Medical School. From 1918 to 1920, he served as an instructor in the Harvard Medical School. Following a medical internship at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Menninger and his father opened the Menninger Diagnostic Clinic in 1919 in Topeka, Kansas. It was the first psychoanalytic hospital in the United States. After substantial resistance, the clinic began attracting patients and other physicians. Instead of mere confinement for patients, a humane atmosphere was established where psychoanalysis could help improve their lives. In addition to families assisting with the treatment, patients were involved in doing routine tasks, such as cleaning and gardening. With the help of local investors, Menninger, his father, and his brother William established the Menninger Sanitarium on a twenty-acre site in Topeka in 1925.

In an effort to educate the public about psychiatry, Menninger wrote his first book, The Human Mind, in 1930. It included numerous well-documented case studies involving mental illnesses and made valuable suggestions for treatment and rehabilitation. The book helped explain Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and some of Freud’s insights into the human mind. In 1938, Menninger published Man Against Himself, in which he used several case studies to document attempts by humans to inflict self-harm. He believed that mental illness and tendencies to inflict self-harm could be corrected with early detection and proper treatment.

By 1941, the Menninger Clinic had evolved into the Menninger Foundation. After Menninger divorced his first wife in 1941, he married Rosemary Jeannetta Karla that same year. In 1946, Menninger founded the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka. He served as the dean of the school until 1970. He also devoted a good deal of time working on problems for the betterment of society, including prison reform, deterring child abuse, helping the plight of Native Americans, and solving environmental problems. From 1946 to 1962, he served as a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Kansas City Medical School.

For his pioneering work in treating the mentally ill, the American Psychiatric Association awarded Menninger the Isaac Ray Award in 1962, the First Distinguished Service Award in 1965, and the First Founders Award in 1977. He was presented the Sheen Award by the American Medical Association in 1978. For his work dealing with the improvement of society, President Jimmy Carter awarded Menninger the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. Menninger died of abdominal cancer in 1990. His letters were published in two volumes as The Selected Correspondence of Karl A. Menninger, 1919-1945 and The Selected Correspondence of Karl A. Menninger, 1946-1965.