Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 18, 1990 TAG: 9007180528
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TOPEKA, KAN. LENGTH: Medium
Menninger died about 8:15 a.m. at Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center, said hospital spokeswoman Judy Craig. He was admitted to the hospital June 12 and diagnosed with abdominal cancer.
Menninger was once hailed by the American Psychiatric Association as the nation's "greatest living psychiatrist." A forceful, outspoken maverick, he jolted popular thought with his theories on crime, prisons and child abuse.
He was credited with convincing the American public that mental disorders could be treated and cured. And he wrote "The Crime of Punishment" in 1968 to argue that "you don't rehabilitate a man by beating him."
The Menninger Clinic, which he founded with his father in Topeka, is one of the world's most famous hospitals for the mentally ill. He co-founded the Menninger Foundation, a major non-profit organization for training, research and public education in psychiatry and psychology. Its name was shortened to just Menninger in 1989.
Menninger received the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1981. The inscription read, in part: "With the wisdom of his years, he truly does represent the ideas of another generation - the future, rather than the past."
In recent years, he went to his office at Menninger daily and spent his time meeting with students, having lunch with friends, receiving guests and sometimes fretting about his place in history.
He took no credit for attaining age milestones: "I thank God I lived as long as I did. It's more his doing than mine. And I had good parents, you know."
"My chief purpose in the beginning was to show you could treat `insane' people. Everybody thought they were untreatable. But I said they were being treated every day. We demonstrated you could treat people in a better way. Our treatment's success was what made this place."
Menninger was hot-tempered and excitable, and the force of his personality frequently startled those meeting him for the first time.
"I guess I always have been a bit of a curmudgeon, but I liked things done right," he said.
His greatest ambition was to do what he could to help mankind.
"I've always believed in amelioration, improving the lot of man," he said.
By his own admission, he sometimes "tilted at windmills," especially in his criticisms of the nation's prison system. Yet, he lived to see prison reform becoming reality, much like the changes that swept through the nation's mental institutions in the 1940s and 1950s.
Menninger frequently testified at legislative hearings, usually in opposition to prison conditions and the death penalty. Menninger moved to Chicago in 1966, serving as a consultant on prison affairs and helping set up a mental health center in downtown Chicago. He moved back to Topeka in 1974.
Keywords:
NEWS OBIT
by CNB