Dr. Morris Parloff Oral History 2002 A

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Morris Parloff
(NIMH 1953-1983)

This is an interview with Dr. Morris Parloff, former member of the Laboratory of Psychology of the NIMH Intramural Research Program, held on January 3, 2002, in Bethesda, MD.

The interviewer is Dr. Ingrid Farreras of the NIH History Office. Note: Revised April 18, 2002, by Morris Parloff.

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Farreras:          Why don’t we begin with your telling us a little bit about your family background before we discuss your education?

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Parloff:            Yes, I had long had a special interest in psychology.

Farreras:          How did that come about?

Parloff:            When I was 14, I came across Brill’s translation of Freud’s Introduction to Psychoanalysis.  I thought it was very sexy.  That fact alone, I believe, was sufficient to initiate an enduring interest. So naturally I began reading Freud.  Later I discovered and avidly read Stekel, Fenichel, and other titillating stuff like that.  But obviously, during those early years I wasn’t at all sure that psychology and psychiatry, for that matter, were fields to be taken seriously as options for life careers.  Could one really hope to make a living doing that?  That question was always a central consideration as I was growing up during the depression.  But when I later was admitted to Western Reserve I took Calvin Hall’s freshman course in psychology.  It included a particularly fascinating lecture on Morton Prince’s clinical work on split personalities.  Fantastic!  I expect that that experience might have been one of the more important influences that ultimately contributed to my final career choice. But there were, of course, other significant teachers in the undergraduate psychology department, like Professor Hartley, who were instrumental in developing my interest.   In any event, by the time I completed my freshman year it had become clear to me that a career in psychology might be fun but was not practical.

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Farreras:          That’s great.  Why don’t we stop here; this seems like a positive note with which to end. 

End of transcript

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[1]  I know sabbaticals were adopted by other Laboratories within the NIMH but I am not sure about other institutes.  However, it does seem unlikely that once Shakow initiated them at the NIMH that the staffs of other institutes would not also have demanded them (e-mail communication, 5/17/2002).

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