WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 NIH: U.S. National Library of Medicine 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:10.000 An Interview with Kerry Kelly Novick 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Interdisciplinary and Intergenerational Connections: Personal and Professional Reflections on Gene Kelly's 1945 Film "Combat Fatigue Irritability" 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:13.000 February 12, 2013, U.S. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:19.459 Interviewers: Jeffrey S. Reznick, Michael J. Sappol 00:00:19.459 --> 00:00:23.999 JR: I'm Jeff Reznick. I'm chief of the History of Medicine Division here at the National 00:00:23.999 --> 00:00:24.999 Library of Medicine. 00:00:24.999 --> 00:00:28.999 MS: And I'm Mike Sappol. I am a historian in the History of Medicine Division at the 00:00:28.999 --> 00:00:30.999 National Library of Medicine. 00:00:30.999 --> 00:00:38.999 KKN: And I'm Kerry Kelly Novick. I'm a psychoanalyst, and I'm here both in that capacity and as 00:00:38.999 --> 00:00:45.999 the daughter of Gene Kelly because we are talking about his wartime Navy training film, 00:00:45.999 --> 00:00:47.999 "Combat Fatigue Irritability." 00:00:47.999 --> 00:00:56.999 JR: Fantastic. Welcome to the Library. We're pleased to have you. It's a real honor and 00:00:56.999 --> 00:00:57.999 privilege. Tell us more about yourself, where you're from and your upbringing and how you 00:00:57.999 --> 00:01:03.999 became interested in the field in which you practice today. 00:01:03.999 --> 00:01:11.999 KKN: Well, I was born in Los Angeles at the time my father was making his first film in 00:01:11.999 --> 00:01:21.999 Hollywood. He had been in "Pal Joey" on Broadway in 1941 and was signed to a contract at MGM 00:01:21.999 --> 00:01:27.999 and went to California to be in "For Me and My Gal" with Judy Garland and that's when 00:01:27.999 --> 00:01:32.999 I was born. When I was growing up in California I was one of the few people I knew who had 00:01:32.999 --> 00:01:41.999 been born in Los Angeles. That's what a small town it was then. And I was born in Los Angeles. 00:01:41.999 --> 00:01:47.501 We were in the east living at my grandmother's in New Jersey during World War II, when my 00:01:47.501 --> 00:01:52.999 father was stationed in Maryland where he was posted after boot camp in San Diego. And 00:01:52.999 --> 00:01:59.999 then we went back to California after the war. And my parents bought their house on 00:01:59.999 --> 00:02:07.999 Rodeo Drive, which became a kind of center for a whole group of transplanted New York 00:02:07.999 --> 00:02:14.999 intellectual, artistic, creative folks who were part of...what became the Arthur Freed unit making 00:02:14.999 --> 00:02:22.999 all the famous musicals through the next 10 years. And we lived in California on and off 00:02:22.999 --> 00:02:29.999 from then on. When I was growing up as an only child in a house full of very active 00:02:29.999 --> 00:02:34.999 lively grownups, because there were always lots of other grownups living in our house, 00:02:34.999 --> 00:02:43.999 either transiently or permanently, other artists, dancers, musicians, writers; I was around 00:02:43.999 --> 00:02:50.999 a lot listening to the grownups being part of what was going on. And one of the interesting 00:02:50.999 --> 00:02:56.999 features of that time in the United States was that most intellectuals and most creative 00:02:56.999 --> 00:03:03.999 people were in psychoanalysis. So the only person I knew growing up who was not in psychoanalysis 00:03:03.999 --> 00:03:09.999 was my father, but everyone else was. And, of course, they talked about their therapy, 00:03:09.999 --> 00:03:15.167 their analysis, their analysts. So I can't remember not knowing about psychoanalysis. 00:03:15.167 --> 00:03:22.999 MS: Was your father opposed to psychoanalysis? Why was he the sole exception? 00:03:22.999 --> 00:03:29.999 KKN: I think for several reasons. He was certainly not opposed, but he was a very self-sufficient 00:03:29.999 --> 00:03:36.999 active person. And he was a little bit older than a lot of the other people in his circle. 00:03:36.999 --> 00:03:44.626 And so I think he felt like he had it together and I think that he was busy with his creative 00:03:44.626 --> 00:03:53.999 work and his various hobbies of sports and reading and history. So, he basically had 00:03:53.999 --> 00:03:55.417 no need or no time. 00:03:55.417 --> 00:04:01.999 MS: Could you say just a few words about your mother as well and how they came together 00:04:01.999 --> 00:04:05.999 and produced you and sort of what it was like with the three of you as the corps? 00:04:05.999 --> 00:04:12.999 KKN: It's a charming story. When my mother was 15 she graduated from high school and 00:04:12.999 --> 00:04:18.999 Sarah Lawrence would not accept her until she was 16. And she was a dancer and decided 00:04:18.999 --> 00:04:25.999 that she should get a job while she waited to go off to college at 16. So she answered 00:04:25.999 --> 00:04:32.999 a casting call at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in New York for a chorus call. My father was 00:04:32.999 --> 00:04:40.999 the choreographer and the rest is history. She never went to college because they got 00:04:40.999 --> 00:04:47.083 married when she was 17. And then she was in "The Beautiful People" on Broadway, was 00:04:47.083 --> 00:04:55.999 kind of discovered by William Saroyan. And then this darling beautiful young talented 00:04:55.999 --> 00:05:02.999 couple went off to Hollywood in a blaze of glory in the fan magazines. 00:05:02.999 --> 00:05:08.999 MS: So you lived in a sort of charmed circle really around this charismatic mother and father 00:05:08.999 --> 00:05:18.375 and these interesting intellectuals coming in and out and dancers and actors and writers. 00:05:18.375 --> 00:05:32.999 And then the war happens. How did your father get to be in the U.S. military and how-- what 00:05:32.999 --> 00:05:35.999 was his itinerary into the armed forces? 00:05:35.999 --> 00:05:40.999 KKN: I'm not sure I knew a lot of detail about it because, of course, I was a baby at the 00:05:40.999 --> 00:05:48.999 time. But the way it was always described in the family was that he had wanted to enlist 00:05:48.999 --> 00:05:56.876 early on. He lost his very best life-long friend quite early in the war. A man called 00:05:56.876 --> 00:06:04.125 Dick Dwenger and it had a big impact on him. It was a real blow and there were other friends 00:06:04.125 --> 00:06:09.999 and relations in the services, but I think when Dick Dwenger died, my father wanted to 00:06:09.999 --> 00:06:17.999 go to war right then. But he was under contract to the studio and he was doing a great deal 00:06:17.999 --> 00:06:23.999 of USO and war bond tour work and also a lot of entertaining in hospitals. He was doing 00:06:23.999 --> 00:06:32.999 a lot of hospital visiting and basically I think they held him back from joining up for 00:06:32.999 --> 00:06:39.999 close to two and half years. So, finally at some point when he had finished making "Christmas 00:06:39.999 --> 00:06:47.999 Holiday," I believe, he said okay, I'm going now and enlisted in the Navy and went to boot 00:06:47.999 --> 00:06:52.999 camp in San Diego. And I don't know that people know this about him. He was an extraordinary 00:06:52.999 --> 00:07:00.999 all around athlete and very strong and vigorous and you know pretty much a guy's guy. And 00:07:00.999 --> 00:07:05.999 so one of the things he did at boot camp was he boxed. And, of course, the studio was horrified 00:07:05.999 --> 00:07:11.999 that he was boxing. And I'm not sure the Navy loved it, because they quite liked having 00:07:11.999 --> 00:07:18.999 publicity photographs of movie people in the services. But evidently he comported himself 00:07:18.999 --> 00:07:27.250 quite respectably in the ring at boot camp. I believe he was a welterweight and so then 00:07:27.250 --> 00:07:32.999 after boot camp he was, it was a big discussion about where he was going to be posted. And 00:07:32.999 --> 00:07:38.209 they decided to put him in the Navy photographic unit to make training films. And he was I 00:07:38.209 --> 00:07:44.918 think had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand it was a proper use of his talents 00:07:44.918 --> 00:07:52.999 and capacities and he wasn't that young at that point. He was 32, so he wasn't at the 00:07:52.999 --> 00:08:01.999 age of most young soldiers. So he was Lieutenant JG and put in that photographic unit. But 00:08:01.999 --> 00:08:09.999 evidently after VE day he was being sent to a combat unit and then the bombs were dropped 00:08:09.999 --> 00:08:18.999 in Japan and so he didn't go. But he was going to ship out sometime between VE day and VJ 00:08:18.999 --> 00:08:24.626 day. So, in a sense he was going to get into combat eventually. 00:08:24.626 --> 00:08:28.999 MS: It's interesting when you say that because there's a passage in the film, and we'll get 00:08:28.999 --> 00:08:37.999 to the film in a second, of where he talks about his anger and not being able to shoot 00:08:37.999 --> 00:08:45.999 at the enemy and fight the enemy and the frustration that he's in a place where he's below deck 00:08:45.999 --> 00:08:51.375 and he can't see the enemy. And maybe he was channeling a little bit of his own frustration 00:08:51.375 --> 00:08:59.999 and desire to contribute more actively and on the frontlines of the war effort. Do you think? 00:08:59.999 --> 00:09:06.292 KKN: Well, I think that actors draw upon their own feelings and their own experience. So, 00:09:06.292 --> 00:09:11.459 I don't know that I would say channeling his frustration. But certainly knowing what it 00:09:11.459 --> 00:09:17.999 feels like to not be sure that you're completely pulling your weight or doing what is expected. 00:09:17.999 --> 00:09:24.999 So, I'm sure that that informed that aspect of the performance. 00:09:24.999 --> 00:09:35.918 JR: Yeah. So, we should-- let's focus on the film and then we can get to some questions 00:09:35.918 --> 00:09:41.292 about your training. I understand that you trained with Anna Freud and perhaps a little 00:09:41.292 --> 00:09:46.999 later you can talk about that experience and how your experience was overseas in London. 00:09:46.999 --> 00:09:52.999 But why don't we turn our attention to the film. I think that would be a good idea. 00:09:52.999 --> 00:09:56.999 MS: As you know the National Library of Medicine has the film "Combat Fatigue Irritability" 00:09:56.999 --> 00:10:06.751 in its collection of 17,000 historical audiovisuals. And it's been sort of a lost film and Gene 00:10:06.751 --> 00:10:13.999 Kelly's filmography not listed in most of the lists. Until very recently IMDB, which 00:10:13.999 --> 00:10:23.999 is probably the most accessible filmography in the world, an internet filmography database, 00:10:23.999 --> 00:10:29.999 didn't list the film until only a few months ago, probably in response to the National 00:10:29.999 --> 00:10:38.999 Library of Medicine's posting of the film online. And so, apart from a few comments 00:10:38.999 --> 00:10:48.999 in Alvin Yudkoff's biography on Gene Kelly and website not very many people knew about 00:10:48.999 --> 00:10:53.999 the "Combat Fatigue Irritability" and Gene Kelly's role in making that naval training 00:10:53.999 --> 00:11:00.417 film. When did you first know about it and was it discussed in your childhood or did 00:11:00.417 --> 00:11:05.999 you-- when did you first see it? Let's start with your experience. 00:11:05.999 --> 00:11:14.999 KKN: I did not see it until you all posted it online. I had heard of it and it was the 00:11:14.999 --> 00:11:22.083 sort of thing that was just sort of known in the family. There wasn't discussion about 00:11:22.083 --> 00:11:27.999 it. I don't recall first hearing about it. It was just that's what he did during the 00:11:27.999 --> 00:11:33.999 war, was he made training films. And he used to talk about the research that he had done 00:11:33.999 --> 00:11:41.999 for the film. He talked more about the experience of going to hospitals and psychiatric wards 00:11:41.999 --> 00:11:48.999 in military hospitals then he did about actually making the film or the film itself. So I think 00:11:48.999 --> 00:11:57.709 the context and content of the film was what was significant to him more than the making 00:11:57.709 --> 00:12:01.999 of the film. Although I find it intriguing that this was his first directorial effort 00:12:01.999 --> 00:12:08.999 and he certainly did a lot of later directing, both films that he was in and films that he 00:12:08.999 --> 00:12:16.459 just directed. But I think he really enjoyed the experience of directing the film. He was 00:12:16.459 --> 00:12:23.999 a very take-charge sort of person. So, being in that role would have been a pleasure to him. 00:12:23.999 --> 00:12:27.999 MS: It's also from what I understand and I haven't seen it, he had done one film where 00:12:27.999 --> 00:12:33.999 he played a kind of intense psychologically troubled character, a film called "Christmas 00:12:33.999 --> 00:12:35.667 Vacation", which I had never seen. 00:12:35.667 --> 00:12:35.999 KKN: "Christmas Holiday." 00:12:35.999 --> 00:12:38.999 MS: "Christmas Holiday." Yeah. Have you seen that film? 00:12:38.999 --> 00:12:47.334 MS: Years and years ago; I barely remember it. But, in fact, "For Me and My Gal", which 00:12:47.334 --> 00:12:54.999 was a musical he also plays a rather bad character. And, of course, he had made his big name as 00:12:54.999 --> 00:13:03.501 "Pal Joey", who was not a nice fellow at all. So, in fact, his first few important roles 00:13:03.501 --> 00:13:10.999 were all guys with at the very least a chip on their shoulder or a nasty side or a shady 00:13:10.999 --> 00:13:19.501 side. So, it's an interesting aspect to that sunny character who gets foremost in everyone's 00:13:19.501 --> 00:13:20.999 minds from the later musicals. 00:13:20.999 --> 00:13:27.999 MS: So this actually follows a kind of line of playing psychologically complex characters. 00:13:27.999 --> 00:13:32.999 I had the story wrong. I really was thinking that your father was you know a sunny romantic 00:13:32.999 --> 00:13:41.999 lead who's such a joyful dancer and you know the sort of a force of nature sunny optimist. 00:13:41.999 --> 00:13:46.999 But he did have-- was already playing these complex characters. 00:13:46.999 --> 00:13:52.999 KKN: Yes and there's a thread through his whole career of those. I mean the various 00:13:52.999 --> 00:14:01.999 straight movies of varying quality, of course. There's "The Black Hand." There's "Cross of 00:14:01.999 --> 00:14:10.250 Lorraine", which is an absolutely dreadful military sort of war potboiler. There was 00:14:10.250 --> 00:14:15.999 an awful thriller called "The Devil Makes Three", which is a straight movie. There may 00:14:15.999 --> 00:14:22.999 have been others and then there was "Inherit the Wind", which is I think a brilliant performance, 00:14:22.999 --> 00:14:32.918 but not the nicest character either. So most of the straight roles were either crooks or nasty guys. 00:14:32.918 --> 00:14:39.999 MS: Well, in this film "Combat Fatigue Irritability" he plays a character named Seaman Bob Lucas, 00:14:39.999 --> 00:14:42.999 who's not really a nasty guy, but he's a-- 00:14:42.999 --> 00:14:42.999 KKN: Not at all. 00:14:42.999 --> 00:14:51.999 MS: Pretty troubled man and I'm wondering if you want to say a little bit about in the 00:14:51.999 --> 00:15:00.999 film "Combat Fatigue Irritability" Seaman Bob Lucas is suffering a great deal of psychological 00:15:00.999 --> 00:15:07.999 torment over his experience in war. I wonder if you want to say something about the role 00:15:07.999 --> 00:15:08.999 your father played and what he brought to it. 00:15:08.999 --> 00:15:17.042 KKN: Well one of the things that really impresses me about the movie is how economically it 00:15:17.042 --> 00:15:27.834 conveys a lot of information. In a sense we could write Seaman Bob Lucas' life story from 00:15:27.834 --> 00:15:33.751 the very small bits that were given in the film that were extremely evocative. So we 00:15:33.751 --> 00:15:45.459 get a character who was clearly a beloved sunny small-town big man on campus. Clearly 00:15:45.459 --> 00:15:53.167 going with the cutest girl in town, part of a popular group of people in high school, 00:15:53.167 --> 00:16:01.999 going on weenie roasts, going out to the old swimming hole, hay rides, the whole bit. And 00:16:01.999 --> 00:16:09.999 then they all go off to war and have terrible experiences. And we see one of the old gang 00:16:09.999 --> 00:16:15.999 back having lost an arm, others of the old gang... There's one seen where the guys are 00:16:15.999 --> 00:16:22.999 getting together and we see their camaraderie, but we also see them all as emblematic of 00:16:22.999 --> 00:16:31.999 guys who have been scarred by their experiences in combat. So, there's a whole biography very 00:16:31.999 --> 00:16:42.999 economically conveyed in this very short film. And then we get to how this nice guy has been 00:16:42.999 --> 00:16:49.999 troubled and transformed by his experiences in combat. And the bulk of the explicit performance 00:16:49.999 --> 00:16:56.999 is him struggling with those symptoms and the feelings involved and the anguish that 00:16:56.999 --> 00:17:03.459 he's going through, trying to process what happened to him and the guys around him. 00:17:03.459 --> 00:17:11.999 MS: Yeah, so "Combat Fatigue Irritability" is one of a fairly large number of films. 00:17:11.999 --> 00:17:18.999 In our collection we probably have 10 or 12 films made during this period that deal with 00:17:18.999 --> 00:17:29.999 various aspects of the emotional difficulties and traumas of men going to war, either men 00:17:29.999 --> 00:17:38.999 who have the difficulty of dealing with the initial experience with military discipline 00:17:38.999 --> 00:17:49.999 and then the experience of undergoing terrible experience in battle some way and then we 00:17:49.999 --> 00:17:53.999 have a number of films that'll also deal with physical trauma and men who have lost limbs 00:17:53.999 --> 00:18:03.999 or have to adapt to life wearing prosthetic devices and undergoing various kinds of therapy 00:18:03.999 --> 00:18:15.999 to prepare them for reentry into very changed civilian life and post-war world. And a lot 00:18:15.999 --> 00:18:20.999 of the themes that you mention are there in all of these films. None of these films is 00:18:20.999 --> 00:18:29.999 as good as "Combat Fatigue Irritability" and I attribute that to your father's active involvement 00:18:29.999 --> 00:18:36.999 in the making of this film. It seems like he was really drawing, as you mentioned earlier, 00:18:36.999 --> 00:18:47.959 on his own inner experiences, and also from what he was seeing going on around him. So, 00:18:47.959 --> 00:18:55.584 one of the things that strikes me very particularly about this film in a way that is much more 00:18:55.584 --> 00:19:01.999 interesting than a film called "Combat Exhaustion." We have a film called "Combat Insomnia." 00:19:01.999 --> 00:19:03.999 KKN: Um huh. 00:19:03.999 --> 00:19:10.999 MS: We have a film, and some of them actually also have Hollywood actors involved in them, 00:19:10.999 --> 00:19:18.999 as again none of them taking as much of an active role in the making of the film as your 00:19:18.999 --> 00:19:24.417 father did in "Combat Fatigue Irritability." But "Combat Fatigue Irritability" also has 00:19:24.417 --> 00:19:34.999 a question about the challenge of being a man and I think that that's something that 00:19:34.999 --> 00:19:40.999 seems like it's a powerful thematic during this period of time. How can you be a man 00:19:40.999 --> 00:19:49.626 if you're afraid? How can you be a man if you're suffering torment? How can you be a 00:19:49.626 --> 00:19:56.125 man if you have to accept military discipline? What do you see in the film as you know in 00:19:56.125 --> 00:20:04.999 relation to your father? He was such a manly... figure in all of his films. 00:20:04.999 --> 00:20:10.999 KKN: I think you're making a really interesting connection when you put together the question 00:20:10.999 --> 00:20:19.999 of the impact of combat on people's functioning and the debilitating and humiliating nature 00:20:19.999 --> 00:20:26.999 of some of the symptoms that are described in the film and in all the descriptions of 00:20:26.999 --> 00:20:32.999 that situation, whether we call it shellshock or combat fatigue or combat exhaustion or 00:20:32.999 --> 00:20:42.999 whatever. With the notion of how do you be a proper man and that that also has a sociocultural, 00:20:42.999 --> 00:20:49.999 what was contemporary then to the question of what made somebody manly. And the convergence 00:20:49.999 --> 00:20:58.999 of those sociocultural issues with the historical situation of the war and my father's own artistic 00:20:58.999 --> 00:21:06.999 identity is quite an interesting notion in terms of why this film comes across in such 00:21:06.999 --> 00:21:13.792 a vivid way. And let's go back then to the old comparison between Fred Astaire and Gene 00:21:13.792 --> 00:21:21.999 Kelly because Fred Astaire was one kind of man and Gene Kelly was another kind of man. 00:21:21.999 --> 00:21:29.584 And people are constantly comparing them and both guys were constantly asked about the 00:21:29.584 --> 00:21:35.584 comparison. And we should establish that they were dear friends, adored each other, completely 00:21:35.584 --> 00:21:40.999 respected each other, learned from each other, enjoyed each other's different styles, but 00:21:40.999 --> 00:21:48.999 they had vastly different styles; both on the athleticism front and on what we might 00:21:48.999 --> 00:21:59.999 call the class front. And so my father in numerous instances of interviews or conversations 00:21:59.999 --> 00:22:07.999 used to talk about how Fred represented the classy guy, the upper-class guy, the white 00:22:07.999 --> 00:22:19.999 tie and tails and that Fred's dancing was deft and dapper and very complex, lighter 00:22:19.999 --> 00:22:26.999 touched. Whereas my father was the workingman's dancer. My father was a working-class guy. 00:22:26.999 --> 00:22:34.083 My father danced in jeans and t-shirts and loafers; totally different wardrobe, totally 00:22:34.083 --> 00:22:42.999 different bodies. So, my father's dancing was visceral, athletic. His center of gravity 00:22:42.999 --> 00:22:49.999 was different from Fred Astaire's, the kinds of leaps or jumps were different. The repertoire 00:22:49.999 --> 00:22:57.999 of steps and combinations was completely differently put together. So, all of those contrasts I 00:22:57.999 --> 00:23:05.999 think in a funny way come into this film, "Combat Fatigue Irritability", because the 00:23:05.999 --> 00:23:13.999 challenge to all the soldiers in the scenes of the group meetings with the psychiatrist 00:23:13.999 --> 00:23:22.999 really have to do with these guys trying to establish some sort of you know revived dignity. 00:23:22.999 --> 00:23:27.999 And a lot of the time they're doing it by comparing themselves with others, comparing 00:23:27.999 --> 00:23:32.999 themselves with goldbricking guys sitting behind the desks or comparing themselves with 00:23:32.999 --> 00:23:37.999 the civilians who don't get it, or comparing themselves with the other guys on the ship 00:23:37.999 --> 00:23:45.999 or in the unit. There's a lot of comparison which we all know is stereotypically one of 00:23:45.999 --> 00:23:51.999 the ways men strut their stuff is you know being better than the other guy, bigger than 00:23:51.999 --> 00:23:55.999 the other guy, stronger than the other guy, faster than the other guy. We're doing this 00:23:55.999 --> 00:24:03.417 interview in the middle of the Olympics, so there's a kind of comparison context. So, 00:24:03.417 --> 00:24:11.999 I think in the film the way Seaman Lucas' character is written and acted where we see 00:24:11.999 --> 00:24:18.999 him angry, we see him blustering, we see him being snide to other people, putting other 00:24:18.999 --> 00:24:27.999 people down a lot. Then we see him break down and cry and that I think was part of the message 00:24:27.999 --> 00:24:36.999 of the movie, which is that everybody feels a whole range of feelings and if Gene Kelly 00:24:36.999 --> 00:24:44.999 can do it, anybody can; it's okay. So there was a huge emotional normalizing message in 00:24:44.999 --> 00:24:46.417 the film, I think. 00:24:46.417 --> 00:24:50.501 MS: Yeah, I mean some historians have called these kind of films that there's a kind of 00:24:50.501 --> 00:24:57.999 crisis of masculinity in these films and in American culture generally in this period 00:24:57.999 --> 00:25:00.999 of time, although probably there's never a period of time where there isn't some kind 00:25:00.999 --> 00:25:06.999 of crisis of masculinity. But, there's another masculinity here in the film which is the 00:25:06.999 --> 00:25:13.999 figure of the military psychiatrist. And he's someone who never breaks down and never loses 00:25:13.999 --> 00:25:20.999 composure and is always in command, so there's a kind of tension between that character and 00:25:20.999 --> 00:25:26.083 your father, and the role that your father plays in the film, Seaman Bob Lucas, who as 00:25:26.083 --> 00:25:31.999 you point out is constantly challenging everyone around him saying they're not really manly. 00:25:31.999 --> 00:25:38.999 They're not-- they're goldbrickers, they're flunkies, they're, they're-- they don't understand. 00:25:38.999 --> 00:25:43.959 They can't understand. No one can understand he constantly says. 00:25:43.959 --> 00:25:44.999 KKN: Um huh. 00:25:44.999 --> 00:25:50.999 MS: So, I'm wondering if you want to talk a little bit about the figure of the military 00:25:50.999 --> 00:25:53.999 psychiatrist. Do-- yeah, I'm sorry. 00:25:53.999 --> 00:26:00.999 KKN: Well, I find him a very interesting figure because he comes across as much more of a 00:26:00.999 --> 00:26:11.999 stereotype or a paste board figure, a mouthpiece for perhaps the official line. Official may 00:26:11.999 --> 00:26:23.999 be both medical and military line. And there is a real tension within the film embodied 00:26:23.999 --> 00:26:32.999 in Seaman Lucas and Dr. Bush, the psychiatrist. But I think that also reflects a tension that 00:26:32.999 --> 00:26:39.999 has been going on since World War I, if not before, maybe even from the Civil War, around 00:26:39.999 --> 00:26:46.999 how do we deal with whatever we want to call this phenomenon that has to do with the impact 00:26:46.999 --> 00:26:55.999 of combat service on a group, a percentage, a proportion of soldiers or sailors or marines 00:26:55.999 --> 00:27:03.584 or airmen. So, the figure of that psychiatrist, it's a thankless role I would imagine for 00:27:03.584 --> 00:27:08.999 poor Lauren Gilbert, playing it. Because there's not much to get his teeth into. He's got to 00:27:08.999 --> 00:27:16.999 be a sort of patrician patronizing authority figure. He's got to have all the answers. 00:27:16.999 --> 00:27:23.999 So he's not allowed to evince any conflict or any complexity whereas everybody else in 00:27:23.999 --> 00:27:31.834 the movie gets to be like a real person who has conflict and complexity. So, I think it's 00:27:31.834 --> 00:27:38.999 a slightly unequal battle if it's a battle and poor Dr. Bush doesn't come off all that 00:27:38.999 --> 00:27:44.667 well. Although he tries really hard to be sincere, especially at the end of the movie 00:27:44.667 --> 00:27:50.999 when there's a very nice, full-face close up of him earnestly conveying the message 00:27:50.999 --> 00:27:57.999 of the movie, which is a good message. Which is about when you face your feelings and come 00:27:57.999 --> 00:28:00.999 to grips with them, everything will get better. 00:28:00.999 --> 00:28:05.999 MS: Well, in some sense though he's the hero of the movie. I mean there's this kind of-- 00:28:05.999 --> 00:28:10.999 these two heroes in this film and in the end he has the last word and he's the one who 00:28:10.999 --> 00:28:17.999 says not only do you have to face your fears, but you also should go to someone who's a 00:28:17.999 --> 00:28:24.999 training professional psychiatrist who has command of all this and can orchestrate the 00:28:24.999 --> 00:28:31.999 process. And World War II, of course, is a period when the U.S. military more than any 00:28:31.999 --> 00:28:39.999 war before starts recruiting trained psychiatrists into the officer corps and starts getting 00:28:39.999 --> 00:28:47.542 reports of how we can do kind of emotional psychological management of men at war and 00:28:47.542 --> 00:28:49.999 to some degree women at war as well. 00:28:49.999 --> 00:28:56.999 KKN: Well, they weren't doing any management of the women at war in World War II. It was 00:28:56.999 --> 00:29:04.584 even after Vietnam women in the service and in the ancillary services like nurses were 00:29:04.584 --> 00:29:11.542 completely unserved in terms of their emotional needs. And it really is only in the last 15 00:29:11.542 --> 00:29:17.999 years or so that the needs of women in the services have been considered psychologically 00:29:17.999 --> 00:29:21.626 at all. So let's, let's put that on the record. 00:29:21.626 --> 00:29:29.999 MS: I think you're right although in the film that we see it's a military hospital for men. 00:29:29.999 --> 00:29:30.999 KKN: Um huh. 00:29:30.999 --> 00:29:38.709 MS: There are no female patients. We actually do have films that are training films for 00:29:38.709 --> 00:29:44.999 women that do some kind of attempt through the medium of film and that's another aspect 00:29:44.999 --> 00:29:51.999 of our story here, to do psychological management through the medium of film and address the 00:29:51.999 --> 00:29:53.999 psychological needs of women at war. 00:29:53.999 --> 00:29:53.999 KKN: Uh huh. 00:29:53.999 --> 00:30:02.501 MS: Of course, they don't address the problem of trauma. What they do, they sort of here's 00:30:02.501 --> 00:30:09.542 the problems of how to be feminine as a person who's doing military service. 00:30:09.542 --> 00:30:09.999 KKN: Yeah. 00:30:09.999 --> 00:30:12.999 MS: That is, that is the problem that those films address. 00:30:12.999 --> 00:30:17.792 KKN: Yeah, which is a completely different level of concern. 00:30:17.792 --> 00:30:18.999 MS: Absolutely. 00:30:18.999 --> 00:30:22.999 KKN: We could consider it a more superficial level of concern, although the issue of identity 00:30:22.999 --> 00:30:31.999 in the military gets us back to how do you be a man and have XY and Z happen to you. 00:30:31.999 --> 00:30:38.999 So, that's maybe a tangential direction, but if we go back to the character of the psychiatrist, 00:30:38.999 --> 00:30:45.542 maybe I'm biased, but I see Bob Lucas as the hero of the movie, since it's my father playing 00:30:45.542 --> 00:30:54.999 the part. But I don't see the psychiatrist as the other hero or the only other hero. 00:30:54.999 --> 00:31:02.999 I think actually the psychiatrist and the corpsman orderly guy represent a persisting 00:31:02.999 --> 00:31:10.999 tension in the psychiatric treatment of everybody, not just military personnel and I find that 00:31:10.999 --> 00:31:19.999 really quite interesting that that duality shows up even in this movie. If we go back 00:31:19.999 --> 00:31:26.999 a little bit to what you were saying about the recruitment of trained psychiatrists, 00:31:26.999 --> 00:31:34.999 people who understood mental troubles into care of military personnel, yeah, it was certainly 00:31:34.999 --> 00:31:41.834 vastly increased. I think it started with the British army and then the Americans began 00:31:41.834 --> 00:31:49.999 adopting it seeing that it made sense to the Brits. But around World War I, specialists 00:31:49.999 --> 00:31:56.999 were also called in, usually in the aftermath of the war so people like Freud and his circle, 00:31:56.999 --> 00:32:01.999 the neurologists and psychiatrists of that day, were very much involved in the treatment 00:32:01.999 --> 00:32:11.999 of soldiers after World War I. But in the film we see the psychiatrist talking about 00:32:11.999 --> 00:32:20.999 facing your feelings, uncovering, discovering, abreacting if you will, and we see the orderly 00:32:20.999 --> 00:32:30.999 with a much more pragmatic realistically-based approach about engaging, doing, being active. 00:32:30.999 --> 00:32:33.999 And then the psychiatrist does prescribe the occupational therapy, the woodshop, the basket 00:32:33.999 --> 00:32:41.083 weaving and the swimming and all of that. But I think there's a very interesting thread 00:32:41.083 --> 00:32:51.999 to discuss of the tension between the uncovering of the less conscious and the pragmatic more 00:32:51.999 --> 00:33:04.626 cognitive active response to troubles. Which in a sense, because this film was made in 00:33:04.626 --> 00:33:10.459 '44-'45, we're looking at where army or military psychiatry had arrived toward the 00:33:10.459 --> 00:33:17.999 end of the war. But if we look back at where it was at the beginning of the war they didn't 00:33:17.999 --> 00:33:22.999 know what they were doing. They had no idea how to deal with the psychological casualties. 00:33:22.999 --> 00:33:31.501 There's a manual that I haven't actually seen, but I've seen excerpts from that was a psychiatric 00:33:31.501 --> 00:33:39.999 manual about internal-- manual for psychiatrists I think in the North Africa theater and maybe 00:33:39.999 --> 00:33:45.999 people at the VA actually have access to this. Maybe you guys have it here at the Library 00:33:45.999 --> 00:33:55.999 of Medicine. And from what I've read in excerpts from that manual the doctors were bemoaning 00:33:55.999 --> 00:34:00.999 how they felt like they didn't have a clue. They didn't know what to do and they were 00:34:00.999 --> 00:34:06.083 rushing around trying to figure out how can we treat these guys who are in dire need of 00:34:06.083 --> 00:34:12.999 treatment. And they went back then to old materials from the first world war seeking 00:34:12.999 --> 00:34:22.709 methodology, seeking treatment methods and they came up with the medication aspect. The 00:34:22.709 --> 00:34:30.667 sort of opioid medication and sedation medication that we see in "Combat Fatigue Irritability" 00:34:30.667 --> 00:34:35.999 and they came up with the cathartic abreactive uncovering the unconscious feelings methodology. 00:34:35.999 --> 00:34:43.999 But both those strands were from World War I and that's what they were doing throughout 00:34:43.999 --> 00:34:50.292 the war. So when we get to toward the end of the war where that had become standard 00:34:50.292 --> 00:34:55.999 practice, best practice, by the end of the war as we see in this film, because I think 00:34:55.999 --> 00:35:00.999 this film depicts what was considered state of the art, because it's an official mouthpiece 00:35:00.999 --> 00:35:09.999 of, statement of it. By that time it began to sound more psychoanalytic. But, in fact, 00:35:09.999 --> 00:35:14.999 it wouldn't have been considered psychoanalytic by the practitioners. It was only after the 00:35:14.999 --> 00:35:21.999 war when all those army psychiatrists went back into civilian hospitals and university 00:35:21.999 --> 00:35:28.999 departments. They then saw psychoanalytic training in university academic medical school 00:35:28.999 --> 00:35:34.999 departments became very psychoanalytic. That was post war. So that was a slight difference 00:35:34.999 --> 00:35:39.375 between my view of the history of that and how you describe it in your article about 00:35:39.375 --> 00:35:40.709 the film Mike. 00:35:40.709 --> 00:35:47.999 MS: Yeah, just to clarify, I, I think that this is a subject that certainly deserves 00:35:47.999 --> 00:35:54.999 very close detailed historical research on and I've read a little bit about what exists 00:35:54.999 --> 00:36:02.999 on that now. What I tried to describe that, and maybe you can speak to it, that this is 00:36:02.999 --> 00:36:10.999 a film that does show the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and ideas of young, of unconscious 00:36:10.999 --> 00:36:13.999 conflict and how in order to resolve-- 00:36:13.999 --> 00:36:15.999 KKN: Um huh. 00:36:15.999 --> 00:36:24.999 MS: Contradictions and acting out of various things that you have to bring these to the 00:36:24.999 --> 00:36:27.999 surface and there has to be some kind of catharsis breakthrough. 00:36:27.999 --> 00:36:29.999 KKN: Um huh. 00:36:29.999 --> 00:36:37.999 MS: But you're an expert; I'm not. I'm not a psychoanalyst so I'm just wondering do you 00:36:37.999 --> 00:36:42.999 see that there in the film? Is that-- that was something that I think you're right. 00:36:42.999 --> 00:36:42.999 KKN: Yeah. 00:36:42.999 --> 00:36:50.999 MS: An act of discovery in part, but it was also a period when Freudian psychoanalysis 00:36:50.999 --> 00:36:54.999 was growing in cultural prestige and presence in the arts and lots of-- 00:36:54.999 --> 00:36:55.999 KKN: Yes indeed. 00:36:55.999 --> 00:36:57.999 MS: And places in American life. 00:36:57.999 --> 00:37:05.999 KKN: It was and it's one of the interesting things about what is still relevant from the 00:37:05.999 --> 00:37:14.999 film and what is sort of dated because at that point both in Freudian psychoanalysis, 00:37:14.999 --> 00:37:21.999 but also in popular culture the notion of catharsis, the get it out, the ah-hah moment 00:37:21.999 --> 00:37:27.999 and what nowadays I would call movie psychiatry. You know suddenly there's a shattering insight 00:37:27.999 --> 00:37:38.999 and everything is now fine. That was the prevailing wisdom at that point, but psychoanalysis and 00:37:38.999 --> 00:37:46.999 psychology and psychiatry have come a great distance from that idea now because even Freud 00:37:46.999 --> 00:37:52.501 before the Second World War was writing, for instance, in his piece called "Remembering, 00:37:52.501 --> 00:37:57.999 Repeating and Working Through" about the fact that first you have to remember. First you 00:37:57.999 --> 00:38:03.999 have to uncover or let whatever it is surface. But then you have do something with it. Then 00:38:03.999 --> 00:38:09.999 you have to work it through. And this is where I find it so intriguing that in "Combat Fatigue 00:38:09.999 --> 00:38:18.042 Irritability" again very economically, very sparsely we get both those ideas. We get the 00:38:18.042 --> 00:38:24.999 psychiatrist talking about the uncovering and the cathartic experience which then produces 00:38:24.999 --> 00:38:30.999 an insight into the meaning. But then we get the corpsmen saying yeah, and you also have 00:38:30.999 --> 00:38:39.999 to do something about it. Which funnily for me relates very much to my father's psychology 00:38:39.999 --> 00:38:47.125 as a person. And part of what has been interesting for me about the process of actually seeing 00:38:47.125 --> 00:38:52.999 this movie and rediscovering this whole thing is thinking about, as we all do, about the 00:38:52.999 --> 00:39:01.999 influences on our own personalities and functioning and our own vocational choices of our parents. 00:39:01.999 --> 00:39:09.999 And I am more and more aware that my father's pragmatic bent, my father's active stance 00:39:09.999 --> 00:39:16.999 in the world, has been very influential for me not only as a person of some energy and 00:39:16.999 --> 00:39:25.999 activity in my life, but also in terms of my ideas as a professional that my brand of 00:39:25.999 --> 00:39:32.709 psychoanalysis, because in fact every psychoanalyst has their own brand. We draw from a lot of 00:39:32.709 --> 00:39:37.167 ideas, but since we are the instrument of the work we end up creating our own brand. 00:39:37.167 --> 00:39:43.999 My own brand is like a combination of the psychiatrist in the movie and the corpsman 00:39:43.999 --> 00:39:50.999 in the movie because the work that I do with people of all ages really has to do with let's 00:39:50.999 --> 00:39:55.999 understand it, but once we've understood it what are we going to use that insight for? 00:39:55.999 --> 00:40:03.999 How are we going to put that insight into action so that you can change your life. 00:40:03.999 --> 00:40:11.792 MS: That's very nicely put. I have a few other questions. One is..., maybe it's more of a 00:40:11.792 --> 00:40:21.999 personal question. Many of us have... we see our parents in photographs when they're young. 00:40:21.999 --> 00:40:28.999 People of my generation maybe we have a few minutes of silent home movies or something 00:40:28.999 --> 00:40:34.999 to show when, what our parents looked like when were little. And then something you can 00:40:34.999 --> 00:40:41.999 revisit when you're later in life, I guess later generations now have probably hours 00:40:41.999 --> 00:40:42.999 and hours of home video. 00:40:42.999 --> 00:40:43.999 KKN: Far too much. 00:40:43.999 --> 00:40:49.667 MS: I can't speak to that, but what is it like for you to see your father at an age 00:40:49.667 --> 00:40:57.999 when you were a small child, vibrant, young active and where does that take you? Of course, 00:40:57.999 --> 00:41:02.999 this is just one of many films which you have to see it, but it's actually a very particular role. 00:41:02.999 --> 00:41:10.999 KKN: I just think I'm very lucky because I have both my parents throughout their whole 00:41:10.999 --> 00:41:18.751 lives, always accessible. And it is strange in a way. I mean often I'll get in the car 00:41:18.751 --> 00:41:24.999 to go out to the store and turn on the motor and the radio will come on and there's my 00:41:24.999 --> 00:41:33.999 father's voice singing. Or once I was in the car and I think it must have been on fresh 00:41:33.999 --> 00:41:40.999 air or something. It was an interview with Ernest Borgnine who played Marty in one of 00:41:40.999 --> 00:41:50.999 my mother's most famous films and my mother's voice came on the radio and sounded exactly 00:41:50.999 --> 00:41:56.999 like my voice. And I realized oh, I was, at the time I was hearing this interview, the 00:41:56.999 --> 00:42:05.999 same age that she was when she was in "Marty." So there is this wonderful layering that I 00:42:05.999 --> 00:42:14.999 get to have of having my parents at all ages with me at all ages. And it's a funny public 00:42:14.999 --> 00:42:21.999 private kind of existence. My siblings and I had always worried what it would be like 00:42:21.999 --> 00:42:30.250 when my father died. Would we feel somehow intruded upon or invaded by it being a public 00:42:30.250 --> 00:42:36.999 event. And, in fact, we felt extraordinarily comforted by the outpouring of feeling, by 00:42:36.999 --> 00:42:46.999 how much he meant to other people. So, it's, it's not at all bad. There isn't a down side 00:42:46.999 --> 00:42:54.542 to having you know the access to it. I do think it's an interesting thing psychologically 00:42:54.542 --> 00:42:59.584 since I am a child psychoanalyst as well as an adult psychoanalyst and very involved in 00:42:59.584 --> 00:43:07.792 understanding matters of child development that people on the screen are like 27 times 00:43:07.792 --> 00:43:14.999 natural size. So, I do sometimes wonder what it was like for me as a four or five, six 00:43:14.999 --> 00:43:23.999 year old, seeing my father on the screen enormous. But peoples' fathers loom pretty large in 00:43:23.999 --> 00:43:25.999 their lives anyway. So, maybe I could make the distinction. 00:43:25.999 --> 00:43:35.999 MS: Yes they do. I'm wondering about, you mentioned Lauren Gilbert. Jocelyn Brando plays 00:43:35.999 --> 00:43:45.999 Seaman Bob Lucas' romantic, his small town girlfriend, fiancée. Are those familiar people 00:43:45.999 --> 00:43:49.999 to you? Are they family friends? Did you know those people and see them? 00:43:49.999 --> 00:43:56.999 KKN: No. No I never heard of Lauren Gilbert until I saw the listing from your posting 00:43:56.999 --> 00:44:03.834 online. Jocelyn Brando I don't recall being around when I was a child. Marlon was a family 00:44:03.834 --> 00:44:12.042 friend and was around a lot throughout you know our whole lives. But I don't recall our 00:44:12.042 --> 00:44:18.999 knowing Jocelyn in California at all. Perhaps my parents did but it was clear to me from 00:44:18.999 --> 00:44:23.999 looking at the surround of it and thinking of when she was in New York and when my parents 00:44:23.999 --> 00:44:29.999 were in New York at the beginning of the war, before they went to California. They must 00:44:29.999 --> 00:44:35.999 have been New York friends. They were theater friends because Jocelyn Brando was in theater 00:44:35.999 --> 00:44:41.999 productions in New York at the same time as both my parents... in the early 40s. 00:44:41.999 --> 00:44:51.792 JR: Let's turn, Kerry, to your background as a psychotherapist. And talk to us if you 00:44:51.792 --> 00:44:57.751 would about your training with Anna Freud. What was that like and how did you come to 00:44:57.751 --> 00:45:00.999 work with her in the way that you did? 00:45:00.999 --> 00:45:08.999 KKN: Well I was going to go visit my mother who lived in London right after college. So, 00:45:08.999 --> 00:45:16.667 I went off to London when I was 21 to see my mom. And at that point I was still uncertain 00:45:16.667 --> 00:45:23.834 about what I wanted to do with my life. I'd always had being a psychoanalyst on my list, 00:45:23.834 --> 00:45:29.999 but in those days which was the early 60s, the only way to become a psychoanalyst in 00:45:29.999 --> 00:45:34.999 this country was if you were a medical doctor. And I had an undergraduate degree in comparative 00:45:34.999 --> 00:45:39.999 literature. So, there was no way that I was going to get a psychoanalytic training in 00:45:39.999 --> 00:45:45.999 this country. But, of course, the tradition was completely different in Europe. In Europe, 00:45:45.999 --> 00:45:51.792 from the very beginning of psychoanalysis, women were trained just as much as men, and 00:45:51.792 --> 00:45:58.501 non-medical people were trained just as much as medical people. And so I was kind of casting 00:45:58.501 --> 00:46:04.999 about in my mind about how I was going to go about getting training if that indeed was 00:46:04.999 --> 00:46:11.999 what I wanted to do. And so at some point in the course of the first few months there, 00:46:11.999 --> 00:46:15.999 I decided yes, indeed, I did want to be a psychoanalyst. I considered going to medical 00:46:15.999 --> 00:46:22.999 school, but as they said to me in England I was a woman. I was a foreigner and I had 00:46:22.999 --> 00:46:28.999 an arts background. So medical school was not going to happen so I started exploring 00:46:28.999 --> 00:46:35.999 other avenues and I'd always wanted to work with children. So I investigated the three 00:46:35.999 --> 00:46:39.999 places in London at the time that one could train as a child analyst. It was kind of a 00:46:39.999 --> 00:46:45.999 naieve subject in a sense because I hadn't studied it as an undergraduate except in the 00:46:45.999 --> 00:46:51.042 psychology course. So, I read Anna Freud's book and Melanie Klein's book and Margaret 00:46:51.042 --> 00:46:57.876 Lowenfeld's book and I visited the three training places and decided that the best fit for me 00:46:57.876 --> 00:47:06.250 was Anna Freud's approach, her training place, her book and presented myself. And they looked 00:47:06.250 --> 00:47:12.999 at me like I was crazy because here was this 21 year old American comp-lit person and they 00:47:12.999 --> 00:47:14.999 said well, you're too young and you don't have a psychology degree and you've never 00:47:14.999 --> 00:47:23.999 worked in the field. So, I went off and got a psychology degree the next year and came 00:47:23.999 --> 00:47:28.667 back and said, "I have the degree." And they said, but you've never worked and you're still 00:47:28.667 --> 00:47:34.999 pretty young, because now you're 22. And so I went off and got a job with the Medical 00:47:34.999 --> 00:47:40.999 Research Council and volunteered in a psychiatric hospital and then came back to them and represented 00:47:40.999 --> 00:47:47.999 myself and said, "Okay guys, take it or leave it" you know. I've done what you wanted. So 00:47:47.999 --> 00:47:51.999 the said yes, okay you will be our experiment in youth. We'll admit you to psychoanalytic 00:47:51.999 --> 00:47:58.999 training. So, I'm kind of an odd bird in the field because I don't have a prior professional 00:47:58.999 --> 00:48:07.999 identity. I am only a psychoanalyst and most people in my field have an alternative professional 00:48:07.999 --> 00:48:14.167 identity that they had first as a psychiatrist or a social worker or a psychologist. And 00:48:14.167 --> 00:48:22.999 so I trained as a child analyst and at that point Anna Freud was in her 70s and at the 00:48:22.999 --> 00:48:26.999 peak of her productivity and her eminence and her pre-eminence in the field. She was 00:48:26.999 --> 00:48:32.999 the most important psychoanalyst in the world and pretty much you know there was some survey 00:48:32.999 --> 00:48:41.999 done at that time of psychiatrists and psychologists. And she was the top ranked person in the field. 00:48:41.999 --> 00:48:47.000 So it was an extraordinary experience to train there. I was there for four years as a trainee 00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:54.999 and then on staff at the Hampstead Clinic until we left England in '77. She was the 00:48:54.999 --> 00:49:05.999 most brilliant person I've ever met; funny, shy, slyly witty once she felt comfortable. 00:49:05.999 --> 00:49:15.999 Completely fluent at formulating, could take detail and put it together in a way that I've 00:49:15.999 --> 00:49:22.209 seen no one do ever since. When she would give a talk, a scientific presentation or 00:49:22.209 --> 00:49:27.999 a talk at a university you know or get an honorary degree or whatever she'd have a yellow 00:49:27.999 --> 00:49:37.999 pad with four sentences written on it and deliver a publication ready talk. She was 00:49:37.999 --> 00:49:52.999 formidable and amazing. Also very clear in her ideas, a combination of decisive in her 00:49:52.999 --> 00:49:59.999 thinking but extremely open-minded. If you were intelligent and you could back up what 00:49:59.999 --> 00:50:06.999 you said, she'd listen to anything. So, being a rather feisty American young person. I've 00:50:06.999 --> 00:50:13.999 never been one to not speak my mind. I was brought up in a liberal household where the 00:50:13.999 --> 00:50:22.999 idea of saying what you think, and your right to speak up, was very fostered. It was a very 00:50:22.999 --> 00:50:28.999 interesting experience to be in the presence of somebody like Anna Freud. The other thing 00:50:28.999 --> 00:50:36.999 that was very interesting about the Hampstead Clinic was that it was a non-profit institution 00:50:36.999 --> 00:50:43.999 and therefore had independent funding so it could offer clinical services and various 00:50:43.999 --> 00:50:45.999 kinds of community services at little or no cost. So, the 80 or 90 children or adolescents 00:50:45.999 --> 00:50:58.999 who were in treatment there at any given time at that point donated what they could to subsidize 00:50:58.999 --> 00:51:05.459 their treatments and those of us who were studying there did not pay any tuition. We 00:51:05.459 --> 00:51:11.999 were also not paid any stipend but there were various foundation grants that many of the 00:51:11.999 --> 00:51:17.083 students were able to have. But the clinic ran a well-baby clinic, a blind baby's nursery, 00:51:17.083 --> 00:51:28.250 a nursery school for the community, all kinds of research departments. So, there was a tradition 00:51:28.250 --> 00:51:34.999 that came from Vienna of free clinics run by psychoanalysts in the community and work 00:51:34.999 --> 00:51:41.999 with disadvantaged groups like the group of concentration camp children that Anna Freud 00:51:41.999 --> 00:51:50.999 and her colleagues took care of through and after the war. So, all of us who trained there 00:51:50.999 --> 00:51:57.999 also identified with that tradition of what we called altruistic analysis. And so anybody 00:51:57.999 --> 00:52:03.999 who trained with Anna Freud, all the people who came to this country as child analysts 00:52:03.999 --> 00:52:10.542 either as emigres at the end of the war or subsequently because they trained with Anna 00:52:10.542 --> 00:52:16.167 Freud in London. We've all been active in community efforts so it's a very, it was a 00:52:16.167 --> 00:52:26.334 very strong and powerful identificatory influence on all of us and a very identity forming experience 00:52:26.334 --> 00:52:27.999 to train with her. 00:52:27.999 --> 00:52:32.999 JR: And certainly many, many aspects of that experience have informed your establishment 00:52:32.999 --> 00:52:36.999 of the Allen Creek Preschool where you are. 00:52:36.999 --> 00:52:37.999 KKN: That's correct. 00:52:37.999 --> 00:52:40.999 JR: Could you say more about that school and how you came to establish that and what it's 00:52:40.999 --> 00:52:41.999 all about. 00:52:41.999 --> 00:52:48.999 KKN: I will try to do it slowly and shortly because if we're talking about those efforts 00:52:48.999 --> 00:52:54.999 I can go on and on. There were several of us who had been doing consultation to preschools 00:52:54.999 --> 00:53:00.999 and daycares throughout southeast Michigan for many years. And we had a little study 00:53:00.999 --> 00:53:06.999 group of those of us who were doing those consultations and those were free services 00:53:06.999 --> 00:53:12.999 again. And at some point we realized that there was a certain amount of frustration 00:53:12.999 --> 00:53:18.999 in just being a consultant in a school, because we were subject always to the vagaries of-- 00:53:18.999 --> 00:53:23.999 who the director of the school was or what the board of the school decided they wanted 00:53:23.999 --> 00:53:30.999 to do. And so somebody said the fateful words, well if we had our own school we would be 00:53:30.999 --> 00:53:38.999 in charge of the school culture and the way it was organized. So, a bunch of us psychoanalysts, 00:53:38.999 --> 00:53:45.999 other physicians, community people, business people, twelve us in fact, started to get 00:53:45.999 --> 00:53:50.999 together regularly to talk about well what would it mean to start a school and kind of 00:53:50.999 --> 00:53:58.999 thrash out what our ideas were. And we met for a year, year and a half every month. Sunday 00:53:58.999 --> 00:54:02.999 morning somebody would have brunch and we'd have these discussions. And finally we said, 00:54:02.999 --> 00:54:10.999 okay, let's do it. So we each put in 50 bucks and incorporated. So, we're talking true grassroots 00:54:10.999 --> 00:54:17.999 non-profit. I knew nothing about running a non-profit. I knew nothing about running a 00:54:17.999 --> 00:54:26.999 small business, which is what a school is. I knew nothing about fundraising, but I wanted 00:54:26.999 --> 00:54:34.999 to start a school and the idea was a school that would support the development of children 00:54:34.999 --> 00:54:40.999 by supporting the parent-child relationship. Because as psychoanalysts we are all very 00:54:40.999 --> 00:54:47.125 aware of the interconnectedness of development within the family and we thought that one 00:54:47.125 --> 00:54:54.459 of the things we saw in our travels in the preschool world was the lack of understanding 00:54:54.459 --> 00:55:01.999 of the importance of the parent's role. And a lack of understanding of parenthood as a 00:55:01.999 --> 00:55:07.999 phase of development in itself, needing support just as little children's development needs support. 00:55:07.999 --> 00:55:15.999 MS: Could you just briefly set a chronology just because we've kind of covered a few different-- 00:55:15.999 --> 00:55:16.125 KKN: Right, yes well. 00:55:16.125 --> 00:55:21.334 MS: And just so that people have an idea of when you studied with Anna Freud. And when-- 00:55:21.334 --> 00:55:21.999 KKN: Certainly. 00:55:21.999 --> 00:55:24.209 MS: Allen Creek School started. 00:55:24.209 --> 00:55:33.999 KKN: Okay, I trained at the Hampstead Clinic from 1966 to 1971 or 70 and then I was on 00:55:33.999 --> 00:55:41.999 the staff there until 1977. And in 1977 my husband and I moved back to the states. He 00:55:41.999 --> 00:55:47.999 came back to be chief psychologist of the youth services at the University of Michigan 00:55:47.999 --> 00:55:53.999 Department of Psychiatry in Ann Arbor and I had small children. So I only worked part-time 00:55:53.999 --> 00:56:00.999 at that point. I became a lecturer in psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan Department of 00:56:00.999 --> 00:56:06.999 Psychiatry. And then we both had private practices and then we had our third child in Michigan. 00:56:06.999 --> 00:56:11.999 In the interim there was a 10-year period when a group of us ran a low-fee treatment 00:56:11.999 --> 00:56:20.999 clinic in Ann Arbor and then when that wound up because there were enough other low-fee 00:56:20.999 --> 00:56:29.999 treatment facilities opening up in the community, that was in the 80s, then I guess or altruistic 00:56:29.999 --> 00:56:35.999 analysis was at a loose end. And we were doing this preschool consulting in the community 00:56:35.999 --> 00:56:44.999 so we incorporated Allen Creek as a non-profit in 94. And then we started the first parent 00:56:44.999 --> 00:56:52.999 toddler groups in 95 in a church hall and then realized that we needed our own building. 00:56:52.999 --> 00:57:00.999 So the evolution of it was that we, long before social entrepreneurship, became a buzz word 00:57:00.999 --> 00:57:09.999 concept we created a non-profit/for-profit partnership by creating a for-profit real 00:57:09.999 --> 00:57:14.999 estate limited liability company in order to raise money to build a building, which 00:57:14.999 --> 00:57:20.999 would offer the premises at no rent for a period of time to the non-profit so the school 00:57:20.999 --> 00:57:26.999 could get on its feet. So we you know raised the money, built the building in the summer 00:57:26.999 --> 00:57:34.999 of '96 and in fall of '96 opened the doors to our new building. And we, the group of 00:57:34.999 --> 00:57:41.250 us who had organized the real-estate partnership gave Allen Creek two years to be able to pay 00:57:41.250 --> 00:57:46.999 rent and within 18 months Allen Creek was paying rent. So, I was very proud of both 00:57:46.999 --> 00:57:52.999 arms of this. It was a whole group effort. Everybody worked very hard on it. I was probably 00:57:52.999 --> 00:58:00.999 the engine of the effort and I was the one who you know was at the construction site 00:58:00.999 --> 00:58:07.375 at seven o'clock every morning with the punch list and over there every night at sundown 00:58:07.375 --> 00:58:13.999 to make sure that things stayed on time and came in under budget. And when the school 00:58:13.999 --> 00:58:20.999 started I was the person who was there every day and I was the first parent-toddler teacher 00:58:20.999 --> 00:58:26.999 and the first parent-infant teacher. So, it was a labor of love. It was a second full-time 00:58:26.999 --> 00:58:35.999 unpaid job. But it has become a community institution. It's now 2014. It's been in the 00:58:35.999 --> 00:58:42.999 black for two years and not many non-profits have that longevity or that bottom line. And 00:58:42.999 --> 00:58:48.501 we've accomplished the most important hurdle for a non-profit, which is that we've turned 00:58:48.501 --> 00:58:54.999 it over to the leadership of others. So the-- you know so many non-profits don't outlive 00:58:54.999 --> 00:58:59.999 the charismatic founders and so ensuring the succession was something that was very important 00:58:59.999 --> 00:59:07.999 to us and that has now happened. So my husband and I are like grandparents now. We get to 00:59:07.999 --> 00:59:24.999 come to staff meetings when we're in town and we have no day-to-day responsibility, which is exactly how it should be. I'm very proud of it. 00:59:24.999 --> 00:59:41.999 MS: We've gone quite a long time. What time is it now? A little after 11:00. I don't want to wear you out. I have a couple more questions. 00:59:41.999 --> 00:59:41.999 KKN: I work 14 hour days. Nothing wears me out. 00:59:41.999 --> 00:59:52.501 I do. When I see patients I work from 7:50 in the morning until 9 at night. So I'm OK. 00:59:52.501 --> 00:59:59.999 I spend my whole day having dialogs with people. MS: I guess so you're very good at this. Much better than I am. I spend my whole day at a desk not talking to anyone. 00:59:59.999 --> 01:00:03.999 KKN: But you get to watch all these cool movies. MS: I do. 01:00:03.999 --> 01:00:11.999 MS: I was thinking about you know these two other films that your father worked at during 01:00:11.999 --> 01:00:16.999 the war with-- one was, "Mission Completed," which he just is the narrator for. And-- 01:00:16.999 --> 01:00:19.999 KKN: Is that the one with George Raft? 01:00:19.999 --> 01:00:26.999 MS: Yeah, it's with George Raft and then there's one called, "Battle Stations," which I haven't 01:00:26.999 --> 01:00:35.083 seen. And-- but clearly, "Combat Fatigue Irritability" is the film-- Your father... It's his film. 01:00:35.083 --> 01:00:35.542 KKN: Um huh. 01:00:35.542 --> 01:00:37.999 MS: It really is. It's almost as if he is the auteur. And-- 01:00:37.999 --> 01:00:45.999 KKN: Even though we don't know who wrote the script, which I think is so frustrating. I 01:00:45.999 --> 01:00:47.167 wish we knew. 01:00:47.167 --> 01:00:56.999 MS: That is a research project that I hope someone will undertake, because we don't know 01:00:56.999 --> 01:01:00.999 right now. But, there may be records in the National Archives-- 01:01:00.999 --> 01:01:00.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:01:00.999 --> 01:01:09.999 MS: That can reveal some of the production process. They may even have a script there. 01:01:09.999 --> 01:01:10.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:01:10.999 --> 01:01:17.999 MS: Who knows? And I guess your father-- did he have his own film collection? Did he-- 01:01:17.999 --> 01:01:22.876 KKN: He did have his own film collection. He also had his own script collection. But, 01:01:22.876 --> 01:01:31.999 his house burned to the ground in the early 80s and so much of that was lost. I don't 01:01:31.999 --> 01:01:32.999 think he had any of these Navy films-- 01:01:32.999 --> 01:01:34.999 MS: No. I think these would have been-- 01:01:34.999 --> 01:01:37.999 KKN: They wouldn't have been his property. They were restricted and well none of his 01:01:37.999 --> 01:01:43.999 films were his property, because in the days of contract players they had no rights to 01:01:43.999 --> 01:01:54.959 the films at all and no royalties and residuals, no percentages back in the day. And when Ronald 01:01:54.959 --> 01:01:58.999 Reagan was President of the Screen Actors Guild he sold those rights down the river 01:01:58.999 --> 01:02:06.999 for actors. So, as a union president his membership was not well served by his union presidency. 01:02:06.999 --> 01:02:13.083 MS: Well, and then another question which is, it's really peripheral, but I'm interested 01:02:13.083 --> 01:02:24.709 in it, is the politics of the time. And I can say this-- my own background is that both 01:02:24.709 --> 01:02:28.999 of my parents were communists. They lived in New York, because my father was no celebrity. 01:02:28.999 --> 01:02:34.999 He worked in-- he was-- of course, he was a soldier and he was in the Army for six years 01:02:34.999 --> 01:02:46.999 during World War II, but after that he worked in factories and stores. And so I'm interested 01:02:46.999 --> 01:02:53.999 in sort of what sort of political atmosphere in which, "Combat Fatigue Irritability" came 01:02:53.999 --> 01:02:59.999 about in that period of time and your parents views of their circle. 01:02:59.999 --> 01:03:07.417 KKN: Well, I think there is a lot of public record about that. But, my father was always 01:03:07.417 --> 01:03:15.999 what one would call a Jeffersonian Democrat, very liberal, very open minded, very invested 01:03:15.999 --> 01:03:23.999 and steeped in American history. And very clear in his own ideas about what was right, 01:03:23.999 --> 01:03:31.375 you know ready to die for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights particularly, very 01:03:31.375 --> 01:03:37.999 upstanding and loyal to his friends most of whom were much further left than he including 01:03:37.999 --> 01:03:46.999 my mother. Certainly during the war everybody was on the Soviet American Friendship Committee, 01:03:46.999 --> 01:03:53.999 because they were our allies. And my mother was never a member of the Communist Party, 01:03:53.999 --> 01:03:59.999 certainly went to a few meetings and we certainly had many friends in my parent's circle who 01:03:59.999 --> 01:04:05.999 were members of the party and certainly many what were later called fellow travelers. But, 01:04:05.999 --> 01:04:15.999 I did grow up in an intensely involved political household. And so I can't remember ever not 01:04:15.999 --> 01:04:22.209 hearing about what was going on politically at every level, from local politics to state 01:04:22.209 --> 01:04:29.000 politics to national politics to international politics. So, it was in a sense a very sophisticated 01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:40.250 political upbringing and it continued to be in the atmosphere all my life. But, certainly 01:04:40.250 --> 01:04:48.999 during the war and right after the war, things were very lively, and again I can't remember 01:04:48.999 --> 01:04:55.999 dinner table conversations that weren't all about all that stuff all the time. And because 01:04:55.999 --> 01:05:02.999 I was an only child in a household of adults who was included in everything, I was listening 01:05:02.999 --> 01:05:12.999 all the time to everybody debating and talking and thinking about strategies. And, I can 01:05:12.999 --> 01:05:19.792 remember the 1948 presidential campaign. That's the first one I have any real memories of, 01:05:19.792 --> 01:05:29.999 and then I remember working in the next few elections, working very hard for Stevenson 01:05:29.999 --> 01:05:40.042 and so all of that was pretty par for the course around our house. My mother was blacklisted 01:05:40.042 --> 01:05:46.999 and that coincided pretty much with the time that my family moved to Europe for 18 months 01:05:46.999 --> 01:05:55.999 in 1952, '53. And that was-- there was a tax thing where if artists went abroad for 01:05:55.999 --> 01:06:02.999 18 months they could save on their income taxes. So, that was the structure of our sojourn 01:06:02.999 --> 01:06:12.999 abroad, but it did also coincide with my mother's being blacklisted. And then she was kind of 01:06:12.999 --> 01:06:19.999 reinstated when Hecht Lancaster made "Marty" and they employed blacklisted writers, directors 01:06:19.999 --> 01:06:27.876 and actors under their own names. But, certainly the whole circle of friends growing up right 01:06:27.876 --> 01:06:35.626 after the war and into the '50s,...many of our friends went to jail, many of our friends 01:06:35.626 --> 01:06:41.999 were in the Hollywood Ten. My father went with a group of people from Hollywood to Washington 01:06:41.999 --> 01:06:48.751 to support the Hollywood Ten at the hearings. The first television we had in our house was 01:06:48.751 --> 01:06:53.000 bought for the Army-McCarthy hearings and I was kept home from school to watch that 01:06:53.000 --> 01:06:58.999 on television. So, the political climate was pretty distinct. 01:06:58.999 --> 01:07:13.083 MS: Sounds very rich and intense. That's great. Do you have any other further questions? Oh, 01:07:13.083 --> 01:07:13.125 I have one more. 01:07:13.125 --> 01:07:13.167 KKN: Go. 01:07:13.167 --> 01:07:26.250 MS: You spoke last night about PTSD and current thinking, ideas, practices, related to the 01:07:26.250 --> 01:07:36.250 traumatic experiences that people in the armed services-- of course, we could generalize 01:07:36.250 --> 01:07:39.999 that also to traumatic people, traumatic experiences that people have in all sorts of encounters 01:07:39.999 --> 01:07:40.999 in life. 01:07:40.999 --> 01:07:42.667 KKN: Um huh. 01:07:42.667 --> 01:07:48.999 MS: Rape victims, victims of crime and other things. Could-- do you want to speak a little 01:07:48.999 --> 01:07:57.999 bit about the film and the treatment of trauma then and what's happening now? 01:07:57.999 --> 01:08:05.999 KKN: Yes. I found it fascinating that in the film we see those two treatment methods as 01:08:05.999 --> 01:08:11.999 well as the corpsman's practical methods. But, the two treatment methods that the psychiatrist 01:08:11.999 --> 01:08:19.709 is talking about are the abreactive talking therapy, if you will, and medication. And 01:08:19.709 --> 01:08:24.999 I thought it was very interesting that there is still this same duality in our treatment 01:08:24.999 --> 01:08:32.542 approaches and a continuing ambiguity and tension and confusion, if you will, about 01:08:32.542 --> 01:08:38.626 how to gauge the relative effectiveness of those different approaches and how to combine 01:08:38.626 --> 01:08:47.999 them for the maximum effectiveness. And we're in a period of time of ferment in psychology 01:08:47.999 --> 01:08:55.999 and psychiatry at the moment where we had a biological psychopharmacologic revolution 01:08:55.999 --> 01:09:03.999 starting in the early '80s and that really swept the board. And now we're kind of getting 01:09:03.999 --> 01:09:09.542 the pendulum swinging back a little bit for two reasons, one because the psychopharmacologies 01:09:09.542 --> 01:09:15.999 did not fulfill their early promise. They turn out not to help as much as people wished 01:09:15.999 --> 01:09:23.584 they would. And two, because the data that they were supposedly based on is increasingly 01:09:23.584 --> 01:09:30.999 found to be suspect at best and fraudulent at worst. So, I think we're really struggling 01:09:30.999 --> 01:09:38.999 with "oh wait a minute," we have to go back to more humanistic, more whole person, 01:09:38.999 --> 01:09:45.999 more psychological methods, if you will, and reexamine all the talk therapies and really 01:09:45.999 --> 01:09:52.999 look at what can we glean from the various traditions and the new methodologies in that 01:09:52.999 --> 01:10:03.999 realm. So, I think the direction of research and clinical research now is a promising one 01:10:03.999 --> 01:10:10.999 from my point of view. Because I think we're beginning to look again at stuff that I'm 01:10:10.999 --> 01:10:18.999 pretty convinced is relevant, which has to do with relating to people as people and not 01:10:18.999 --> 01:10:26.792 as conglomerates of chemicals. Because I think we just don't know enough to think that we 01:10:26.792 --> 01:10:34.999 can fine-tune things neurologically, chemically yet. Maybe we will someday, but in the meantime, 01:10:34.999 --> 01:10:39.999 I want to communicate with people's minds. 01:10:39.999 --> 01:10:49.792 JR: One of the great things about your presentation yesterday evening, among the many great things 01:10:49.792 --> 01:10:59.999 about it, was the way in which you imported your professional experience with the personal, 01:10:59.999 --> 01:11:05.999 with the historical. And we have in this film, as we've discussed here and as you discussed 01:11:05.999 --> 01:11:12.999 yesterday, but I'm asking if you could say more about this, we have a unique, truly unique 01:11:12.999 --> 01:11:21.999 opportunity to use and talk about a historical production as a touchstone for again your 01:11:21.999 --> 01:11:28.999 professional experience, background, personal experience and the legacy of your father. 01:11:28.999 --> 01:11:37.999 And could you say a little bit more about the use of history in being a resource for 01:11:37.999 --> 01:11:45.999 us to understand and appreciate where we've come from and how we grapple with issues today 01:11:45.999 --> 01:11:52.999 in this context of care, of service members with post-traumatic stress? I think we've 01:11:52.999 --> 01:11:55.999 got other films as Mike Sappol has said. 01:11:55.999 --> 01:11:56.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:11:56.999 --> 01:12:02.999 JR: Where do you think we might go with this in terms of a next step? Might you hope more 01:12:02.999 --> 01:12:04.501 people see this film? I hope-- 01:12:04.501 --> 01:12:05.125 KKN: Um huh. 01:12:05.125 --> 01:12:11.999 JR: To learn about it, about the work of your father as another dimension to his work that 01:12:11.999 --> 01:12:19.876 may be unfamiliar. What would you like to see in terms of the future of this unique 01:12:19.876 --> 01:12:20.999 opportunity perhaps? 01:12:20.999 --> 01:12:29.999 KKN: Well, I think Harold Bloom said only barbarians are not interested in history and 01:12:29.999 --> 01:12:36.999 talked about the importance of knowing our history. And there are many ways in which 01:12:36.999 --> 01:12:43.999 as a psychoanalyst I am deeply invested in history, and as a developmentalist I'm deeply 01:12:43.999 --> 01:12:50.999 invested in history, personal history, because I deal with individuals and individuals within 01:12:50.999 --> 01:12:57.999 families. But, individuals and their families are part of a community. So, we are by definition 01:12:57.999 --> 01:13:04.999 embedded in our cultural and social history as well. What's fascinating about this film 01:13:04.999 --> 01:13:13.999 is the way it crystallizes so many of those dimensions in a kind of, it's interesting 01:13:13.999 --> 01:13:23.042 that I think of it as a Russian doll, that it encapsulates all those layers in extraordinarily 01:13:23.042 --> 01:13:30.999 condensed economical form. So, I think that this particular film could be very useful 01:13:30.999 --> 01:13:41.999 in a number of ways. It's a lovely slice of what people looked like and seemed to like 01:13:41.999 --> 01:13:49.167 then. The home front scenes when Seaman Lucas goes home on leave are charming. The wardrobe, 01:13:49.167 --> 01:13:57.459 the costumes, the setting of the household, the way the staircase and the doorways are 01:13:57.459 --> 01:14:03.999 made, the whole thing is wonderful as a bit of cultural history. In terms of the medical 01:14:03.999 --> 01:14:10.459 history: the treatment methodology. I don't if people noticed there's a detail that fascinated 01:14:10.459 --> 01:14:21.209 me. On the blackboard behind the doctor, psychiatrist, there's written up in chalk a list of symptoms 01:14:21.209 --> 01:14:27.709 and those are the same symptoms that are the constellation that we talk about now. On the 01:14:27.709 --> 01:14:36.042 blackboard it said "insomnia, vomiting, tremor" and that's what we deal with now. 01:14:36.042 --> 01:14:42.999 That's what state-of-the-art current PTSD literature talks about. At a professional 01:14:42.999 --> 01:14:52.125 conference in New York just this past January 2014, at a discussion of PTSD in veterans, 01:14:52.125 --> 01:14:58.999 the predominance of insomnia as the first symptom to address, because without addressing 01:14:58.999 --> 01:15:04.999 sleep disturbances almost nothing else can be dealt with. These things are right there 01:15:04.999 --> 01:15:13.626 in this movie. So, I see this film as a very useful, also because it's short, a very useful 01:15:13.626 --> 01:15:21.999 discussion starter. A discussion starter about how does society think about soldiers. How 01:15:21.999 --> 01:15:28.999 do we think about mental illness? How do we think about masculinity? How do we think about 01:15:28.999 --> 01:15:34.999 adult development and the changes that experiences brings in our identities? How do we think 01:15:34.999 --> 01:15:42.876 about relationships and their evolution, because there is an emblematic picture of a relationship 01:15:42.876 --> 01:15:46.999 that was frozen in time. They were engaged right out of high school and then he went 01:15:46.999 --> 01:15:52.999 away to the war and he comes back two years later. Are they the same people? Can they 01:15:52.999 --> 01:15:58.999 pick up where they left off? No. Their relationship has to evolve, etc. So, I think there are 01:15:58.999 --> 01:16:07.999 all kinds of groups that could use this film to start very interesting discussions and 01:16:07.999 --> 01:16:17.292 those could be medical groups, sociocultural historians, film historians, all kinds of 01:16:17.292 --> 01:16:24.334 people could find this film fascinating. And I am now terribly intrigued at the rest of 01:16:24.334 --> 01:16:31.999 your collection of films. So, the other thing that seems very important is to publicize 01:16:31.999 --> 01:16:40.999 what you guys have here, because as I said to you yesterday, I'm kind of an informed 01:16:40.999 --> 01:16:46.999 consumer and certainly an informed citizen and I didn't know about the National Library 01:16:46.999 --> 01:16:52.999 of Medicine. I didn't know it existed. Everybody needs to know about this. This is our National 01:16:52.999 --> 01:16:59.999 Library of Medicine. We own this. So, I want us all to have access to what you have. I 01:16:59.999 --> 01:17:05.250 think different professional groups need to know, not just doctors even though it's the 01:17:05.250 --> 01:17:09.167 National Library of Medicine, but all kinds of professional groups need to know what you 01:17:09.167 --> 01:17:15.999 have here. So, you know roll on history into the present and the future, because history 01:17:15.999 --> 01:17:23.000 is about how we got here. It created the present and we are now creating the future. So, let's 01:17:23.000 --> 01:17:25.999 make some history more accessible. 01:17:25.999 --> 01:17:29.999 MS: You're preaching to the choir here. Well said. 01:17:29.999 --> 01:17:31.999 KKN: But, I'm preaching to your blog too. 01:17:31.999 --> 01:17:39.417 MS: Thank you. Thank you for that... great endorsement. I-- you reminded me that-- of 01:17:39.417 --> 01:17:45.999 course, I wanted to show you this. We have this very short cartoon, a few quick facts 01:17:45.999 --> 01:17:49.999 about fear. But, as some of-- we have a number of films in which the talking point's on the 01:17:49.999 --> 01:17:56.125 blackboard and actually sometimes a blackboard or some other diagram is shown in this period 01:17:56.125 --> 01:18:03.834 you know going... through various points that are made in this film. I mean there are the-- 01:18:03.834 --> 01:18:10.459 obviously your father in making this film was deeply involved with military psychiatrists 01:18:10.459 --> 01:18:12.999 and people sort of working on this script to have-- 01:18:12.999 --> 01:18:14.042 KKN: Um huh. 01:18:14.042 --> 01:18:15.999 MS: This is the most eloquent film. 01:18:15.999 --> 01:18:17.999 KKN: The George Raft one was shot at Swarthmore. 01:18:17.999 --> 01:18:18.999 MS: Um huh. 01:18:18.999 --> 01:18:24.999 KKN: That's-- I've seen stills from that one, but never seen it. But, that was actually 01:18:24.999 --> 01:18:26.709 shot at Swarthmore. I don't know if this one was shot at Swarthmore or not. 01:18:26.709 --> 01:18:27.999 MS: I suspect that it was. 01:18:27.999 --> 01:18:28.876 KKN: Yeah. 01:18:28.876 --> 01:18:35.999 MS: But, I don't know. Of course, we do have this film, "Combat Insomnia," which stars 01:18:35.999 --> 01:18:39.999 the Hollywood actor Dick York who played-- 01:18:39.999 --> 01:18:41.999 KKN: Dick York the-- 01:18:41.999 --> 01:18:43.999 MS: Samantha's husband. 01:18:43.999 --> 01:18:45.999 KKN: The blonde guy? 01:18:45.999 --> 01:18:52.501 MS: He played on the TV show, "Bewitched." He played the witch's husband. 01:18:52.501 --> 01:18:57.834 KKN: Um huh. This was the same Richard York, Dick York, yeah. 01:18:57.834 --> 01:18:57.999 MS: And he's very young. 01:18:57.999 --> 01:18:58.042 KKN: Um huh. 01:18:58.042 --> 01:19:06.959 MS: Very, very young in the film. Then of course, that film is really not very good 01:19:06.959 --> 01:19:06.999 compared to-- 01:19:06.999 --> 01:19:08.501 KKN: Uh huh. 01:19:08.501 --> 01:19:11.999 MS: "Combat Fatigue Irritability." "Combat Fatigue Irritability" is not-- you know obviously 01:19:11.999 --> 01:19:17.999 it's got a few kind of rough-- it's not a Hollywood production, but it's about as close 01:19:17.999 --> 01:19:20.999 as military filmmaking gets to that-- 01:19:20.999 --> 01:19:21.584 KKN: Um huh. 01:19:21.584 --> 01:19:22.459 MS: In this period. 01:19:22.459 --> 01:19:28.999 KKN: That probably has a lot to do with my father's perfectionist attitude to work. You 01:19:28.999 --> 01:19:34.999 know you get it right. You do it completely. You do it fully. You keep doing it until you 01:19:34.999 --> 01:19:41.999 get it right, etc. So, he probably pushed as far as he possibly could. 01:19:41.999 --> 01:19:49.999 MS: I'm sure he did and I'm sure he -- the actual words spoken, the actual script you 01:19:49.999 --> 01:19:56.999 know has-- it's much more-- it's a much higher standard. It's much more dramatic and theatrical 01:19:56.999 --> 01:20:02.999 than-- the scripts for these other films are very wooden and stilted and-- 01:20:02.999 --> 01:20:03.042 KKN: Um huh. 01:20:03.042 --> 01:20:09.999 MS: There's no point at which you really quite can believe that these might be people on 01:20:09.999 --> 01:20:11.626 the planet Earth-- 01:20:11.626 --> 01:20:12.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:20:12.999 --> 01:20:15.999 MS: Or you know it doesn't come close. 01:20:15.999 --> 01:20:19.999 KKN: That's so interesting, because not having seen the other ones, I don't really have a 01:20:19.999 --> 01:20:20.999 basis for comparison. 01:20:20.999 --> 01:20:22.667 MS: Well, I'll have to show you-- 01:20:22.667 --> 01:20:23.999 KKN: I would love to see them. 01:20:23.999 --> 01:20:27.209 MS: Or send you the links to some. Of course, we have-- there's one film we have. It's called, 01:20:27.209 --> 01:20:33.375 "The Inner Story." And it has some aspects of the same thematics that, "Combat Fatigue 01:20:33.375 --> 01:20:37.999 Irritability" has. It's a film about what happens in your mind when-- 01:20:37.999 --> 01:20:39.792 KKN: How fascinating. 01:20:39.792 --> 01:20:45.083 MS: When-- what happens in your mind. In that film your mind-- the film switches from live 01:20:45.083 --> 01:20:46.999 action to animation. 01:20:46.999 --> 01:20:48.999 KKN: How strange. 01:20:48.999 --> 01:20:52.999 MS: And so it's a film that tries to explain psychosomatic symptoms. 01:20:52.999 --> 01:20:55.292 KKN: Um huh, interesting. 01:20:55.292 --> 01:20:56.584 MS: And-- 01:20:56.584 --> 01:20:58.999 KKN: That's pretty relevant now. 01:20:58.999 --> 01:21:08.167 MS: The soldier who's experiencing the psychosomatic symptoms is someone who before he enters the 01:21:08.167 --> 01:21:14.999 military he is kind of the big man on campus and then is someone who is drafted and then 01:21:14.999 --> 01:21:18.999 he's not treated very well. And he's having trouble fitting in and his fellow soldiers 01:21:18.999 --> 01:21:21.999 don't really think he's such a big shot. 01:21:21.999 --> 01:21:22.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:21:22.999 --> 01:21:28.876 MS: And-- he's-- it's an infantilizing process and of course, "Combat Fatigue Irritability" 01:21:28.876 --> 01:21:32.999 has some aspects of that as well where-- especially in the opening scenes where your father is 01:21:32.999 --> 01:21:33.999 shown in the hospital. 01:21:33.999 --> 01:21:34.999 KKN: Um huh. 01:21:34.999 --> 01:21:40.918 MS: And the people are kind of sitting around in their beds playing cards or looking at 01:21:40.918 --> 01:21:48.999 girlie magazines and seem involved. Lucas is shown not really enjoying that or fitting 01:21:48.999 --> 01:21:50.999 in or liking that too much. 01:21:50.999 --> 01:21:57.999 KKN: No. In a sense the way it's-- that scene is set up he's irritated with the other soldier 01:21:57.999 --> 01:22:07.999 whom I perceived as dumb or sedated or both, probably both. And so it's part of what makes 01:22:07.999 --> 01:22:14.999 Seaman Lucas' character interesting is-- sure he's irritable and much too impatient. He's 01:22:14.999 --> 01:22:21.999 not nice to the guy, but he's also smart. And so he's tired of waiting for the other 01:22:21.999 --> 01:22:24.626 guy to play his card. 01:22:24.626 --> 01:22:30.999 MS: He does play a character who has given more psychological complexity than anybody 01:22:30.999 --> 01:22:37.999 else and he's not really-- you're right. I mean I think he's-- he judges them. 01:22:37.999 --> 01:22:39.209 KKN: Um huh. 01:22:39.209 --> 01:22:40.083 MS: Anyway. 01:22:40.083 --> 01:22:45.999 JR: Well, this has been a real pleasure and we're very, very grateful for your time and 01:22:45.999 --> 01:22:49.999 your expertise and your experience. And thank you for spending this morning with us. 01:22:49.999 --> 01:23:36.876 KKN: Thank you for inviting me and thank you for all the work you do.