Daniel Blain, M.D.

H E awe-inspiring title of Medical Director of the American

Psychiatric Association fits very well the tremendous responT sibilities that are carried out daily by our Man of the Month, Daniel Blain, M.D. But the imposing nature of the title soon fades when one has met with a man who has the rare ability to combine genuine humility, and modesty with efficiency and high competence. Dr. Blain must have had a joint interest in religion and psychiatry from the beginning. For he was born the son of Presbyterian missionaries in Kashing, China. After his graduation from Washington and Lee University in 1921, he taught school for a period; and then began the study of medicine. He did pro-medical work at the University of Chicago, and took his medical course at Vanderbilt, being graduated in 1929. After an internship in medicine at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, he began his study of neuropsychiatry at the Boston City Hospital. He received further training as a Fellow at the Austen Riggs Foundation in Stockbridge. For about ten years thereafter, until the beginning of World War II, he practiced psychiatry, at Silver Hill Sanitarium in Connecticut, at Greenwich Hospital and Blythwoed Sanitarium in the same state, and at Tratelja Farms Sanitarium at Lake George, N. Y. He was also in private practice. During the war he worked in the If. S. Public Health Service; and for most of this period was Deputy Medical Director of the War Shipping Administration in charge of War Neurosis Merchant Seamen. Following the war he became Chief of the Division o~ Psychiatry

The MAN o[ the MONTH

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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENT LITERARY AND SERMON HELPS Busy pastors promptly assisted With sermons, addresses, thesis work, to scholarly specifications. Ample research facilities and extensive experience over twenW-five years. Author's Research Bureau, 137 Cottage Street, Jersey City 6, N. J.

MAN OF THE MONTH

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and Neurology of the Veterans Administration, a position he relinquished only to enter upon his present work. In 1946 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of Georgetown University Medical School; and since 1947 he has been Professor of Clinical Psychiatry there. He is a member of nearly all the professional societies that a psychiatrist can be, and is a Fellow of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Physicians. He has been very active in the World Health Organization and the World Federation for Mental Health. Dr. Blain's first article, published in 1928, was on "Direct Method for Making Total White Blood Counts on Avian Blood." In several areas of psychiatric study and research he has continued to make contributions at the more technical level. More of his recent articles have been devoted to the interpretation of psychiatry, its place in medicine and in t h e total mental health planning of the nation and community. He is widely recognized, not only in his own profession but by community 'leaders generally, as extraordinarily statesmanlike in his approach to these larger issues. An excellent article of his own "Fostering the Mental Health of Ministers" appeared in the book, The Church and

Mental Health, edited by Paul B. Maves. The pace of Dr. Blain's present job is rapid. He has admitted publicly to travelling the equivalent of several times around the world jn each recent year. But he is never, as the case histories put it, "disoriented as to time and place." His job as adminstrator of the professional association of psychiatrists is a crucial one and difficult. That he can still find time to give PASTORAL PSYCI-IOLOGY helpful counsel as called for, bespeaks both his skill in organization and his positive interest in religion and the church. ON TRANQUILIZING MAGIC

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by everyone who is distressed or has the jitters. While the road to Miltown is now a well-trodden highway it should be remembered that it does not lead to the promised land, even though it may renew the illusion that there is, after all, a magic carpet on which to rely for the journey. The human being is too complex a creature to expect that any one approach to the solution of his problems or even his disorders of body and mind can provide all the answers. This is a time when tranquility for all is so deeply desired because the prospect of its attainment in the near future seems slender. While tranquilizing drugs are now a valuable part of the therapeutic kit of the psychiatrist, they do not cure illness nor remove its cause. They give symptomatic relief and help the physician in his difficult task. If the public could be awakened to the need for providing more funds for research, for the training and recruiting of personnel, and for the education of the public, there would be less need for magazine articles on any new "Wonder Drugs."

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