Erich Lindemann papers

Erich Lindemann (1900-1974), A.B., Ph.D., 1922, M.D., 1926, Universities of Marburg and Giessen, Germany, was Chief of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, Medical Director of the Wellesley Human Relations Service, Massachusetts, Associate Professor of Mental Health at Harvard School of Public Health, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Clinical and Social Psychiatry at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Lindemann specialized in social and preventive psychiatry, and is credited with pioneering the field of community mental health.

Erich Lindemann was born in Witten, Germany in 1900 . He pursued a medical degree at the urging of his grandfather, a businessman who encouraged Lindemann’s principles of social responsibility. He attended the Universities of Marburg and Giessen, where he studied gestalt psychology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1922, and his M.D. in 1926. He came to the United States in 1927 as a Research Associate in Experimental Psychology and Speech Pathology at the University of Iowa. His subsequent appointments at the University of Iowa and the Iowa Psychopathic Hospital include: Instructor in Psychology (1929-1931); Assistant Physician (1929-1935); Assistant Professor in Psychology and in Psychiatry (1931-1935); and Physician in Charge of Psychiatric Out-Patient Clinic (1932-1934). In 1935, Lindemann moved to Boston, Massachusetts to accept a psychiatry fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) (1935-1937), and a physiology and psychiatry fellowship at Harvard Medical School (1935-1937). His subsequent appointments at MGH include Associate Psychiatrist & Physician-in-Charge of the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department (1937-1948), and Visiting Psychiatrist (1944-1948). During this period, Lindemann held numerous teaching appointments across Harvard University, including: at Harvard Medical School as Instructor in Psychiatry (1937-1941) and Associate in Psychiatry (1941-1948); at Harvard School of Public Health as Instructor in Psychiatry (1940-1941), Lecturer on Mental Health (1948-1951), and Associate Professor of Mental Health (1951-1954); and at the Harvard University Department of Social Relations as Lecturer in Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry (1947-1953).

In 1948, Lindemann and his wife, sociologist Elizabeth Brainerd Lindemann (1913-2007), founded the nation’s first community mental health agency, the Wellesley Human Relations Service (WHRS), initiated as a field station of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Division of Mental Health. He served as Director of the organization for five years (1948-1953). He left the WHRS in 1954 to accept the positions of Chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He held these appointments until his retirement in 1965. During this period, he established a community mental health training program for social workers, nurses, and other community social service providers. Post-retirement, Lindemann accepted a position as Visiting Professor of Psychiatry (1965-1974) at Stanford University, Palo Alto, where he continued to teach courses in community mental health for the remaining nine years of his life.

Lindemann is most known for his work in preventive intervention, particularly with subjects of grief, loss, and other forms of crisis. After working with victims of Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire in 1942, he became increasingly interested in the psychiatric and physiological effects related to crisis, grief and loss, and he continued to study these subjects throughout his career. He also directed a study of the effects of loss and disruption on the displaced families of Boston’s West End redevelopment, which was used to inform later urban redevelopment projects across the nation. Lindemann is also credited with developing the field of community mental health, advocating throughout his career for collaboration between psychiatrists, social workers, clergymen, teachers, and other community social service providers in the preventive therapy of crisis patients. His many professional affiliations include: President of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society; Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Preventive Psychiatry; Chairman of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s Committee on Preventive Psychiatry; Member of the National Research Council Committee on Stress; Member of the National Institute of Mental Health Committee on Social and Physical Environment Variables as Determinants of Mental health; and Special Consultant to the World Health Organization. In 1971, he was honored for his work in community mental health through the dedication of the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Erich Lindemann married pianist Baldura Schmidt (1902-1995) in 1928, but was later divorced in 1934. He remarried in 1939, to sociologist Elizabeth Brainerd (1913-2007). They had two children, Jeffrey and Brenda. Lindemann died of spinal cancer in 1974, in Palo Alto, California.