Notes on the History of Clinical Sociology at Yale

摘要

This article recounts one version of the attempt to create a department of clinical sociology in the Medical School of Yale University in the late 1920s. The theoretical perspective of Alfred Schutz is used to turn attention to the linkages of generations of sociologists reflected in the construction of our history as told to young sociologists by their elders. Historical documents and the recollections of John Dollard are used to recount the history of attempts to develop support for the Institute of Human Relations, including a department of clinical sociology at Yale Medical School. The idea was supported by Dean Winternitz of the School of Medicine, but drew powerful opposition from other Departments at Yale and from Abraham Flexner, whose report on American medical schools set the course of medical education in America.