GRINKER, ROY RICHARD SR.

GRINKER, ROY RICHARD SR. (1900–1993), U.S. neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Born in Chicago, Grinker taught at the University of Chicago from 1927. During World War II he rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. From 1946 Grinker was director of the institute for psychosomatic and psychiatric research and training at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, and supervisory analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. From 1951 he was clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois and in 1969 became professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago's medical school. Grinker was chief editor of the Archives of General Psychiatry from 1956. He also wrote many books and articles in his professional field. After publishing the textbook Neurology (1934, 19666), Grinker collaborated with J.P. Spiegel in writing Men under Stress (1945), an account of the treatment of war neuroses based on military personnel's experiences in North Africa. The two men developed the treatment of the emotionally traumatized soldier with a drug to promote a "catharsis" of his battle experiences. Grinker outlined the results of his research and therapeutic treatment of psychosomatic disturbances in two books: Psychosomatic Research (1953) and (with F.P. Robbins) Psychosomatic Case Book (1954). He also devoted much attention to the theory of an integrated approach to normal and disturbed human behavior. He tried to elicit the relations between the intrapersonal physical and psychological systems and those with which the person interacts in his environment. Grinker's views were elaborated in two published symposia: Toward a Unified Theory of Human Behavior (1956), which he edited, and Integrating the Approaches to Mental Disease (ed. by H.D. Kruse, 1957). He was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the American Psychiatric Association in 1972 and by the University of Chicago's Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association in 1974. Other books by Grinker include The Borderline Syndrome: A Behavioral Study of Ego Functions (with B. Werble and R. Drye, 1968), Psychosomatic Concepts (1973), Psychiatry in Broad Perspective (1975), and Fifty Years in Psychiatry: A Living History (1979). (Louis Miller / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)