Psychiatry in Harlem

The big, stoop-shouldered doctor hurried down the steps to a dingy basement, borne of his Negro patients were already waiting for him. An ex-G.I. fidgeted in his chair, muttering: "Daid. . . . He's daid." A woman waited stonily, clutching her daughter with one hand and a note from school in the other. The doctor briskly pulled on a white coat and shot a rapid greeting at his youngest patient, a moon-faced ten-year-old: "Hello, Midgie, I hear you got a new football for your birthday." The boy grinned.

Dreams of Battles. The doctor put his arm around a patient's shoulder and ushered him into a small office. The patient, a husky young engineer, sat down nervously.

"Now, what's the trouble?" asked the doctor.

I have had headaches, doctor."

"When do you get them?"

'They're specially bad when I ride in the subway, doctor."

The patient did not want to talk, but the doctor's machine-gun questions shook out his story: he had taken to heavy drinking, had violent dreams of military battles (with sexual symbolism), at length confided that he was impotent. From the dreams and other symptoms, the doctor made a rapid diagnosis (which later proved correct): the patient's real trouble was a deep-seated fear that he was a homosexual.

In rapid succession, the doctor and his aides dealt out pinpointed, no-nonsense psychotherapy to the engineer, to Midgie (his trouble: stealing), to the backward schoolgirl (her basic trouble: a nagging ailing mother) and to 20 other patients. At 8:30 p.m., long after the official closing hour, the doctor called it a day.

That was a typical evening last week at Harlem's Lafargue Clinic. The doctor-famed Psychiatrist Frederic Wertham (TIME Feb. 18, 1946). Dr. Wertham's clime, launched without a cent of backing 21 months ago, is little richer than when it started, but it has become an impressive, going concern. Its staff, all unpaid includes 14 psychiatrists, 12 topflight social workers, a dozen other specialists and clerical workers.

Ever since he was a young psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Wertham had brooded over the fact that Negroes even if they could afford a psychiatrist' could seldom get one. (Of some 4,500 U.S. psychiatrists, fewer than 25 are Negroes.) With the enthusiastic help of Negro friends, Dr. Wertham and his colleagues found a home for a clinic in the basement of Harlem's St. Philip's Episcopal Church, and opened it to all comers. Fee per treatment (if the patient can pay): 25-c-.

The Will to Survive. Because Harlem with only one-fifth of Manhattan's population, accounts for more than half its delinquency, Dr. Wertham concentrates on neurotic youngsters. One-fifth of his patients are children.

The doctor insisted, and his clinic has proved, that Negroes are no more happy-go-lucky--or neurotic--than other people. Dr. Wertham has also found that Negroes' mental troubles, though aggravated by their underprivileged status, are essentially no different from those of his wealthy private patients. "The only difference," he says, "is that here in Harlem the trouble is much more naked and obvious. . . . What the Negro needs, and what psychiatry must help him find, is the will to survive in a hostile world."

Says the Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop, St. Philip's rector: "The clinic is the greatest thing that has happened in Harlem in years."

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