Dean of American Psychiatrists
I see today in an Associated Press article from Topeka, Kansas, that my old friend, Dr. Karl Menninger, is still alive at 96. He is the fellow that used to come over to Gage Park and lean on the fence swimming pool and talk to me (or to himself, I never could figure out which) about all kinds of things that I could not understand.
Karl Menninger is the dean of American psychiatrists. We teach his material in our course on Advanced Theology. “He spent his days consulting, teaching, advocating social causes, and receiving visitors to Menninger Mental Health Center, which was founded by him and his brother in 1925. He still speaks out against society taking revenge on prison inmates by mistreating them, denounces capital punishment as unworthy of civilized society, pushes for nursing home reform, and often lectures those who come calling because more isn’t being done to improve the lot of mankind.”
His testimony is as follows: “I don’t feel good, and that worries me because I’m used to feeling good, but I don’t feel 96, I feel better than that. I’m as forgetful as hell. I’m sometimes irritable, I feel rusty, my damn knees won’t hold me up, and that frightens me, but I am doing O.K., I guess.”
You might compare that with the testimony of Paul in 2 Timothy 4 and learn the difference between brains and salvation, education and true knowledge, intellect and spirituality, and being lost in the world without hope and without God versus being happy and victorious in Jesus Christ. Menninger spent his life trying to straighten out people. He never got straight himself.