Because the folders designated "restricted" include Confidential Health Information (CHI) as defined by Columbia University policies governing data security and privacy, access is allowed only under the terms of Archives and Special Collections’ Access Policy to Records Containing Confidential Health Information.
Correspondence, research notes, published and unpublished papers, and other printed and manuscript material relating to Opler's work as an anthropologist and social psychiatrist.
The papers are particularly rich in materials relating to his work among the Ute and Paiute tribes, the Tule Lake Internment Camp, the Midtown Manhattan Mental Health Study, and the First Congress of Social Psychiatry in 1964.
History and Biography
Marvin Kaufmann Opler was born in Buffalo, New York on June 13, 1914, the son of Arthur and Fanny Opler. He attended the University of Buffalo from 1931 to 1934, then transferred to the University of Michigan, graduating with an A.B. degree in social studies in 1935. He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1938, studying under Ralph Linton. His dissertation concerned the acculturation of the Ute and Paiute Indians in Colorado and Utah. He also conducted anthropological fieldwork among Eastern Apache tribes such as the Mescalero Indians in New Mexico, as well as Eskimo and Northwest Coast Indians in Oregon. After earning his doctorate, Opler taught sociology and anthropology at Reed College from 1938 to 1943.
Between 1943 and 1946, Opler served as a Community Analyst at the Tule Lake Japanese internment camp in Newell, California. Tule Lake eventually became the camp for "disloyal" and otherwise difficult Japanese-Americans. Opler was sensitive to the complex issues related to the Japanese internment. He wrote reports analyzing the relocation and segregation programs, as well as the issue of renunciation of loyalty to Japan. In 1946, he co-authored Impounded People, an often-critical assessment of the internment program, published by the War Relocation Agency itself. The book was reprinted by the University of Arizona Press in 1969.
In the years following the closing of the internment camps, Opler taught anthropology and sociology at Occidental College, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Tulane University. This period of short-term teaching assignments ended in 1952, when Opler joined the Cornell University Medical College as one of several principal investigators in the Midtown Manhattan Mental Health Study.
The Midtown Study had been founded by Dr. Thomas A. C. Rennie, who assembled an interdisciplinary research team of psychiatrists, social workers, sociologists, and anthropologists to conduct a study of the prevalence of treated and untreated mental illness in Manhattan's Upper East Side. When the Midtown Study's first volume was published in 1962, the statistic that nearly 80% of the sample population showed some degree of mental illness made front-page news. Within the Midtown Study, Opler directed the Ethnic Family Operation, which investigated sociocultural factors relating to mental health. Opler's work was intended to be the third volume of results, but was never published.
In 1958, Opler left the Cornell University Medical College to join the University of Buffalo (later known as the State University of New York at Buffalo), where he remained for the rest of his professional career. He held the posts of Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Sociology, and Professor of Social Psychiatry (in the department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine). Opler served as Chairman of the Department of Anthropology from 1969 to 1972. Among other projects, he conducted studies in suicide research, and he maintained his longstanding interest in Native American studies.
Opler was a prolific writer. He authored, co-authored, and edited ten books, including Culture, Psychiatry and Human Values (1956), Culture and Mental Health (1959), Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study (1962), and Culture and Social Psychiatry (1967). He also wrote over 200 articles, many book chapters, and numerous book reviews.
Opler was active in several professional organizations, including the American Anthropological Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Association of Social Psychiatry. He was co-organizer of the First International Congress on Social Psychiatry held in London in 1964. He was an editor of the International Journal of Social Psychiatry from 1957 until his death in 1981. He held several visiting professorships, and delivered lectures to diverse audiences.
Opler married Charlotte Fox on December 30, 1935. Their children were Ruth Opler Perry and Lewis Alan Opler. Opler died on January 3, 1981.
Organization
Organized in six series:
I. Native Americans
II. Tule Lake Internment Camp
III. Midtown Manhattan Mental Health Study
IV. First International Congress of Social Psychiatry
V. Other Papers
VI. Oversize.
The Opler Papers document Marvin Opler's long career as an anthropologist, sociologist, and educator concerned with the relationship between societies, cultures, and mental health issues. He was also an important figure in the development of the discipline of social psychiatry, a synthesis of psychiatry, the social sciences, and epidemiology. This collection is arranged into six series, and materials related to cultural studies of mental health are found within most series.
The first series consists of materials related to Opler's anthropological interest in Native Americans, including correspondence, research notes, and reprints and writings. His early work mainly concerned the Ute Indians of Colorado. There are also reprints and research materials related to Opler's brother, Morris Edward Opler, who was also a noted anthropologist. Opler would return to Native American issues throughout his career, and the sixth series, Other Papers, contains materials related to a course on Native Americans taught by Opler in the 1970s.
The second series consists of materials related to the Tule Lake Internment Camp for Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. The records begin with a month-by-month chronological set of administrative records mostly created by Opler. On the original folders containing these documents, Opler listed their contents. These lists have been photocopied from their original acidic folders and placed at the beginnings of each month. However, the actual contents of the folders did not always agree with these listings. Some items described might be present in the later subseries of subject files, where documents about similar subjects were grouped together by the archivist. Both the administrative files and subject files document the struggles of daily camp life (such as education, food, housing, and work), the cultural life of the camp's residents (including religion and theater), and the key issues of the entire internment program (such as segregation and renunciation of loyalty to Japan). These records also document "the November Incident," a protest by Tule Lake residents that led to the camp's takeover by the United States Army in November 1943.
The third series contains diverse materials related to the Midtown Manhattan Mental Health Study, including administrative materials, correspondence, maps, questionnaires, research materials, and writings. Of particular interest in the writings is the most complete draft of Opler's unpublished work on the ethnic dynamics of the Upper East Side, which was intended to be the third volume of the Midtown Study. The research materials he gathered also document the local history of Yorkville during the early 1950s.
The fourth series consists of documents related to the First International Congress of Social Psychiatry, which was held in London in August 1964. This series reflects Opler's devotion to social psychiatry as a discipline, and include records documenting the conference's financing and panel assembly. Opler also carried on a spirited correspondence with conference co-organizer Joshua Bierer, an important figure in British psychiatry.
The fifth series, Other Papers, consists of various materials mostly dating from Opler's later career as a Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and includes administrative records, as well as his research on suicide. A particularly useful document in this series is Opler's curriculum vitae from 1979, which provides the fullest available bibliography of his writings. Many of his articles and book reviews are also present in this series, although their contents are not comprehensive.
The sixth and final series, Oversize, consists of items from other series too large to be stored within document boxes. These items include newspaper reports about the Midtown Study, as well as charts of some of Opler's Midtown Study data.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
The Opler Papers were donated to Archives and Special Collections by Dr. Lewis Opler, Marvin Opler's son, in 2001. (Accession #2001.11.27)
Preservation notes: Clippings and fragile materials will be photocopied onto acid-free paper.
Papers processed and finding aid written by Bob Vietrogoski, June 2003.