Marvin Opler
Encyclopedia
Social psychiatry
Social psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the "interpersonal" and cultural context of mental disorder and mental wellbeing. It involves a sometimes disparate set of theories and approaches, with work stretching from epidemiological survey research on the one hand, to an indistinct...
. His brother Morris Edward Opler
Morris Edward Opler
Morris Edward Opler , American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese-American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York. He was the brother of Marvin Opler, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist....
was also an anthropologist who studied the Southern Athabaskan peoples of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. Morris and Marvin Opler were the sons of Austrian-born Arthur A. Opler, a merchant, and Fanny Coleman-Hass. Marvin Opler is best-known for his work as a principal investigator in the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study (New York). This landmark study hinted at widespread stresses induced by urban life, as well as contributing to the development of the burgeoning field of social psychiatry in the 1950s.
Education
Marvin Opler attended the University at BuffaloUniversity at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...
from 1931 to 1934. While there, he was a leader in the University's National Student League. He then transferred to the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, attracted by the reputation of the American anthropologist Leslie White
Leslie White
Leslie Alvin White was an American anthropologist known for his advocacy of theories of cultural evolution, sociocultural evolution, and especially neoevolutionism, and for his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor...
. Marvin Opler's admiration of White's work was in contrast to that of his brother Morris Opler. Marvin Opler was interested in the relationships between psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and anthropology, fields which White had considered connected. Unfortunately, White was beginning to distance himself from the field of psychology at that time.
Marvin Opler was granted an A.B. in social studies from the University of Michigan in 1935. After college, he continued his academic career at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. There he had the chance to study anthropology under Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist, cultural relativist, and folklorist....
and Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton was a respected American anthropologist of the mid-twentieth century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man and The Tree of Culture...
. At this time, Opler was conducting some of the earliest anthropological fieldwork among the Southern Utes. After completing his dissertation on the acculturation of the Ute
Ute Tribe
The Ute are an American Indian people now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico . The name of the state of...
and Paiute
Paiute
Paiute refers to three closely related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; the Owens Valley Paiute of California and Nevada; and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah.-Origin of name:The origin of...
peoples in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
and Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, he was granted a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1938.
Early Ethnographic Work
In his work with the Ute and Paiute peoples, Marvin Opler noted that Ute and Paiute shamans used techniques of dream analysis that shared features in common with psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, although they were developed independently of Western psychiatric practices. He also did anthropological fieldwork among the Eastern Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
tribes, the Eskimo
Eskimo
Eskimos or Inuit–Yupik peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska , Canada, and Greenland....
, and the Northwest Coast
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
Indians in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
. Opler taught sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and anthropology as the chair of anthropology at Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
from 1938 until 1943. In 1943, Marvin Opler was appointed to the War Labor Board.
The Japanese-American Internment
Tule Lake War Relocation Center
Tule Lake Segregation Center National Monument was an internment camp in the northern California town of Newell near Tule Lake. It was used in the Japanese American internment during World War II. It was the largest and most controversial of the camps, and did not close until after the war, in...
Japanese Internment Camp, where his critical views of the internment of Japanese Americans
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
later led him to co-author Impounded Peoples in 1946. While at Tule Lake, he kept careful records of daily camp life. Opler documented instances of abuse at the camp and worked with lawyer Wayne M. Collins
Wayne M. Collins
Wayne M. Collins was a civil rights attorney who worked on cases related to the Japanese American evacuation and internment.-Biography:Collins was born in Sacramento, California and was raised and educated in San Francisco....
on behalf of the internees. His records included an account of "The November Incident," a protest by the residents of the camp which resulted in the takeover of Tule Lake by the US Army. Author Barney Shallit remembered Marvin Opler at Tule Lake both fondly and vividly: "with his heavy red beard and his slow, deliberate movements, he looked ... like a benign, giant panda." Marvin's wife, Charlotte Opler, enrolled their son Ricky in the Japanese nursery camp at the center, making him the only Caucasian enrolled there. Marvin Opler noted the parallels between the revival of tradition
Tradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
al Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
among the largely acculturated internees at Tule Lake and the spread of the Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance
The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
religion among Plains Indian tribes in the 1800s. Opler pointed out that both were attempts by the colonized
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
to reassert their dignity.
Historian Peter Suzuki writes that most of the anthropologists who worked for the War Relocation Authority
War Relocation Authority
The War Relocation Authority was a United States government agency established to handle internment of Japanese-, German-, and Italian-Americans during World War II...
(WRA) accepted the government's action of interning the Japanese Americans as morally justified. Suzuki believes, however, that Marvin Opler's work was a model of the positive role that these anthropologists could have played. Suzuki suggests that Opler's acknowledgment of a wider social and political field as part of his analysis, Opler's criticism of the segregation of so-called "loyal" versus "disloyal" internees, and the respect that Opler paid to Japanese culture made his work such a model.
At Tule Lake, Marvin Opler befriended several well-known Japanese American internees. One of these was Yamato Ichihashi
Yamato Ichihashi
Yamato Ichihashi was one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center where he was imprisoned in World War II along with other relocated Japanese Americans.Ichihashi...
, one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee. Opler was impressed by the work of George Tamura
George T. Tamura
George T. Tamura was a Japanese American artist.Tamura was born in Sacramento, California. In 1942, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor , Tamura and his family were interned in the Japanese American internment camp, Tule Lake War Relocation Center in Northern California. Tamura was fifteen...
, a Japanese American artist who spent his teenage years imprisoned at Tule Lake. Marvin Opler also co-authored an article on Senryū
Senryu
is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer total morae . Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious...
folk poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
with another internee, F. Obayashi, which was published in the Journal of American Folklore
Journal of American Folklore
The Journal of American Folklore is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Folklore Society. Since 2003 this has been done on its behalf by the University of Illinois Press. The journal has been published since the society's founding in 1888. It publishes on a quarterly schedule...
in 1945.
In his book Threatening Anthropology anthropologist David H. Price discusses FBI documents from 1945 in which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
ordered an FBI investigation of Marvin Opler after the discovery of a letter bearing the initial "M" in a Portland trash can. Marvin Opler was questioned by the FBI. One of many anthropologists investigated, the bureau was seeking to discover whether Opler had any Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
affiliation. He responded that the only party he had ever been a member of was the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, which he had been involved in up until he moved to Tule Lake. The FBI also discovered that Opler was held in high regard both by his coworkers at Tule Lake, as well as by the interned Japanese Americans. One WRA employee informed the FBI that Marvin Opler was considered a "wobbly," a "conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
," and a "long hair" by people in the WRA. This informant was unable to give any reasons for this point of view, however. The FBI described Opler as being "cooperative and courteous" and ended the investigation.
After the internment camps were closed, Opler taught anthropology and sociology at various colleges, including Occidental
Occidental College
Occidental College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887, Occidental College, or "Oxy" as it is called by students and alumni, is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast...
, Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Harvard, and Tulane from 1946 until 1952. In 1947, Marvin Opler submitted an affidavit in support of the restoration of citizenship to three American citizens of Japanese ancestry who had renounced their citizenship at Tule Lake. In this affidavit, he stated that, rather than being acts of free will, it was coercion, duress, and mass compulsion that motivated many of the wartime renouncements of citizenship by Japanese Americans. At Tule Lake, he had observed many of the renouncement hearings.
Social Psychiatry
It was in 1952 that Opler joined the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study (New York), which hinted at widespread stresses and psychopathology among city-dwellers. Opler directed the Ethnic Family Operation within the Midtown Study. This portion of the project investigated sociocultural factors relating to mental health. Although Opler's work was intended to be the third volume of the study, he died before it could be published. The most complete draft of this intended third volume is housed with his papers in the Columbia Health Science Library Archives. His work in social psychiatry also yielded observations of differences in the manifestations of schizophreniaSchizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
in people of different cultural backgrounds. With Srole, he found evidence for an inverse relationship between mental health and social mobility. In 1957, Opler helped found the International Journal of Social Psychiatry
International Journal of Social Psychiatry
The International Journal of Social Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of psychiatry. The journal's editor is Dinesh Bhugra . It has been in publication since 1955 and is currently published by SAGE Publications.- Scope :The journal offers a forum for...
. In 1958, Opler went to work for the State University of Buffalo, where he worked for the remainder of his career. In 1963, he was again briefly investigated by the FBI, but once again nothing came of it.
In 1964, The First International Congress of Social Psychiatry was held in London. This conference was co-organized by Opler and the British social psychiatrist Joshua Bierer. That same year, Marvin Opler toured the psychiatric hospitals of Moscow with his wife Charlotte and fellow anthropologist Robert F. Spencer. Spencer later admitted that he was not impressed by Opler's abilities as an anthropological theorist. Spencer also conceded that Spencer's own abilities did not impress himself, either. On the other hand, some scholars, such as Richard Drinnon and Peter Suzuki, seemed to have more respect for Opler's ideas. Richard Drinnon believed that Opler's insights into cultural revivalism deserved more systematic study than they had received.
Family
In December 1935, the same year that he earned his degree from the University of Michigan, Marvin Opler married vocational specialist and student counselor Charlotte Fox, who subsequently became involved in biological research, Japanese-American rights, and environmental activism. They divorced in 1970. Their children include Ruth Opler Perry and Lewis Alan Opler. Ruth Opler Perry is a professor of literature at MIT, where she studies and teaches English literatureLiterature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, women's writing, and feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
. Lewis Opler is a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist
Psychopharmacology
Psychopharmacology is the scientific study of the actions of drugs and their effects on mood, sensation, thinking, and behavior...
who co-authored the PANSS
PANSS
The PANSS or the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale is a medical scale used for measuring symptom severity of patients with schizophrenia. It was published in 1987 by Stanley Kay, Lewis Opler, and Abraham Fiszbein...
, a symptom severity rating scale widely used in the study of psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
. Several of Marvin Opler's grandchildren are also active in various fields of academia, including Dr. Curtis Perry, Dr. Mark Opler, and Dr. Daniel Opler.
Death
Marvin Kaufmann Opler died on January 3, 1981. His memorial was held in New York, where he was remembered both for his scholarly contributions as well as for his work with the community. His papers are housed in the Columbia University Health Sciences Library Archives http://library.cpmc.columbia.edu/hsl/archives/findingaids/opler.html.On Anthropology
- With R. Linton, AcculturationAcculturationAcculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...
in Seven American Indian Tribes, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1940. - Opler, Marvin K. The Integration of the Sun DanceSun DanceThe Sun Dance is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American and First Nations peoples, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe has its own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols...
in Ute Religion. American AnthropologistAmerican AnthropologistAmerican Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association . It is known for publishing a wide range of work in anthropology, including articles on cultural, biological and linguistic anthropology and archeology...
October–December, 1941 Vol.43(4):551-572. - Women's Social Status and the Forms of Marriage. American Journal of Sociology. Spring, 1943.
- The Creative Role of Shamanism in Mescalero Apache Mythology. Journal of American Folklore. 59:268-281, 1946.
- The Creek Town and the Problem of Creek Indian Political Reorganization. in Edward Spicer, Human Problems and Technological Change, 1953.
- Contributor, North American Indians in Historical Perspective, Random House, 1971.
On Social Psychiatry
- Culture, Psychiatry and Human Values, C. C. Thomas, 1956.
- Entities and organization in individual and group behavior - a conceptual framework. Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. 9 (4): 290-300, 1956.
- Co-author, Symposium on Preventive and Social Psychiatry, Walter Reed Institute of Research, 1958.
- Co-author, Clinical Studies in Culture Conflict, G. Seward (ed.), Ronald Press, 1958.
- Cross-Cultural Uses of Psychoactive Drugs (EthnopsychopharmacologyEthnopsychopharmacologySociocultural, genetic, and environmental factors have long been known to play a role in everything from how people express their emotions to the kind of foods they eat...
). In W.G. Clark, Ph.D. & J. del Giudice, M.D. (editors) Principles of Psychopharmacology, pp. 31–47. New York: Academic Press, 1970. - Editor and co-author, Culture and Mental Health, Macmillan, 1959.
- With L. Srole, T. Sanger, S. Michael, and T.A.C. Rennie, Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study, McGraw, 1962.
- Culture and Social Psychiatry, Atherton, 1967. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=itUnb74bUNsC&dq=marvin+opler&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=HcFVRfhx6S&sig=v4wMxpE-uXcNH6aDr2cL_znvhR4
- Contributor, Modern Perspectives in International Child Psychiatry, Oliver & Boyd, 1969.
- International and cultural conflicts affecting mental health. Violence, suicide and withdrawal. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 23(4): 608-620, 1969.
- Social Conceptions of DevianceDeviant BehaviorDeviant Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal which focuses on social deviance, including criminal, sexual, and narcotic behaviors.The journal is published by Taylor and Francis, Inc., and was ranked 41st out of 46 psychology journals and 46th out of 90 sociology journals in 2004 by the...
. in H. Resnik and M. Wolfgang, eds., Sexual Behaviors: Social, Clinical, and Legal Aspects. Little Brown and Co., 1972.
On Japanese-American Internment and Culture
- With E. Spicer and K. Luomala, Impounded People, University of Arizona Press, republished in 1969.
- A "Sumo" Tournament at Tule Lake Center. American Anthropologist. Jan-Mar, 1945 Vol.47 (1):134-139.
- With F. Obayashi. Senryu poetry as folk expression. Journal of American Folklore. 58 (1-3/45).
Other contributions
He also contributed to many professional journals and held the following positions:- Associate editor, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1957–58, editor, 1958–81; associate editor of American Anthropologist, 1962–65, and Psychosomatics.
Papers and Correspondence
Marvin K. Opler's papers and correspondence are primarily housed in the Columbia University Health Sciences Library Archives http://library.cpmc.columbia.edu/hsl/archives/findingaids/opler.html.Other papers and correspondence of Opler's can be found in the following library collections:
- The Japanese American Research Project at the Manuscripts Division of the Charles E. Young Research Library at the University of California, Los Angeles
- The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records at the Bancroft Library of The University of California, Berkeley (finding aid available via the Online Archive of California)
- The Leslie A. White Papers at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical LibraryBentley Historical LibraryThe Bentley Historical Library is a historical library located on the University of Michigan's North Campus in Ann Arbor. It was established in 1935 by the regents of the University of Michigan...
- The Ruth Benedict Papers at the Vassar CollegeVassar CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
Library - The Franz Boas Collection at the American Philosophical SocietyAmerican Philosophical SocietyThe American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
- The Ralph Leon Beals Papers at the National Anthropological ArchivesNational Anthropological ArchivesThe National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives are a collection of historical and contemporary documents maintained by the Smithsonian Institution, which document the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures...
, Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines... - The Elsie Clews Parsons Papers at the American Philosophical Society
- The Elizabeth Tooker Papers at the American Philosophical Society
- The William Duncan Strong Papers at the National Anthropological Archives
- The Alfred I. Hallowell Papers at the American Philosophical Society
- The E. Adamson Hoebel Papers at the American Philosophical Society
- The W. Horsley Gantt Papers at the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
- The A. L. Kroeber Papers at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
- The Charles Easton Rothwell Papers at the Hoover Institution Archives of Stanford University (finding aid available via the Online Archive of California)
- The Yamato Ichihashi Papers at the Stanford University Archives (finding aid available via the Online Archive of California)
- The Records of the Department of Anthropology at The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley (finding aid available via the Online Archive of California)
- The Dorothy Eggan Papers at the University of Chicago
- The Marvin Farber Papers at the University archives of the State University of New York University at Buffalo
- The Charles E. Borden fonds at the University of British Columbia Archives
- The Albert Mayer Papers at the University of Chicago
- The Melville Jacobs Papers at the University of Washington Libraries