Karl Menninger, Nation’s ‘Greatest Psychiatrist,’ Dies

Dr. Karl A. Menninger, who towered over American psychiatry from his Topeka clinic and changed how the nation views the mentally ill and criminals, died today of cancer, four days before his 97th birthday.

Menninger died about 8:15 a.m. at Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center, Menninger spokeswoman Judy Craig said. He was admitted to the hospital June 12 and diagnosed with abdominal cancer.

Pat Norris, a clinical director of the Biofeedback and Psychophysiology Center at Menninger, said he was “sending messages and signals to people” during the night and asked her to sing to him.

Menninger was once hailed by the American Psychiatric Assn. 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 persuading 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, is one of the world’s most famous hospitals for the mentally ill. He co-founded the Menninger Foundation, a major, nonprofit organization for training, research and public education in psychiatry and psychology.

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.”

Karl Augustus Menninger was born July 22, 1893, in Topeka, the eldest of three sons of Dr. Charles F. Menninger. He considered newspaper work or banking, then decided to join his father in medicine and in 1917 graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School.

In 1919, Menninger joined his father’s practice in Topeka.

He soon became what was then called a “nerve specialist.” Menninger and his father established their clinic in 1925 because “I saw you couldn’t do psychiatry alone; you needed others around you.”

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.

Crime and reform dominated his thinking in later years. He argued that most of those behind bars had made mistakes they would not repeat if given their freedom.

As he grew older, the father of four turned to painting and studying Indian history for relaxation. His other works included “Sparks,” “The Human Mind,” “Love Against Hate” and “The Vital Balance.”