Scope and Content Note
The papers of Nolan Don Carpentier Lewis (1889-1979) span the years 1897-1978, with the bulk of the material dating from 1922 to 1958. Consisting of correspondence, patient files, drafts of writings, research files, reports, conference material, an oral history interview, and printed matter, the material documents Lewis's contributions as a practicing psychoanalyst, administrator, educator, and writer to the development of psychoanalysis in the United States and is organized into five series: Correspondence, Patient File, Subject File, Writings File, and Printed Matter.
After graduating from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1914, Lewis worked primarily in general pathology and neuropathology, serving successively as director of laboratories at Maryland General Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, and St. Elizabeths Hospital. While working in Baltimore between 1914 and 1918, Lewis studied psychology at Johns Hopkins under Adolf Meyer and Charles MacFie Campbell and completed his psychoanalytic training in Vienna where he attended lectures by Paul Schilder and others from 1927 to 1928. Lewis had two meetings with Sigmund Freud while in Vienna. Between 1936 and 1953, he served as director of the New York Psychoanalytic Association. In 1953 he was named director of research in neurology and psychiatry for New Jersey hospitals and agencies. He taught at various universities, including George Washington and Columbia, and served as editor of several journals.
The Correspondence series consists of letters from colleagues, professional organizations, editors of journals, and institutions with which Lewis affiliated. Subjects discussed concern research projects, writing, lecturing, and other professional matters. Among the prominent correspondents are A. A. Brill, Karl A. Menninger, Adolf Meyer, Clarence P. Oberndorf, and Sandor Rado.
The Patient File dates primarily from the 1920s when Lewis served as pathologist and later as director of clinical psychiatry at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. This period was a formative decade in the development of psychoanalysis in Washington, and in 1930, Lewis, along with Anna C. Dannemann Colomb, Lucile Dooley, Ernest Hadley, Edward Hiram Reede, William Silverberg, and Harry Stack Sullivan, founded the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Society.
Although the Subject File series documents a variety of Lewis's professional activities, the bulk of the material concerns dementia precox research and the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. In 1935, Lewis assumed the duties of coordinator for the Committee on Research in Dementia Precox which oversaw research projects funded by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Masons of the Northern Jurisdiction. In 1936, Lewis published Research in Dementia Precox which explored advances in research to that date. The files on dementia precox research include general correspondence, information on individual projects, and annual reports sent to the Scottish Rite Masons. In 1946, Lewis attended the Nuremberg War Crime Trials as a consultant to an ad hoc international psychiatric commission. The commission was established by the tribunal to determine whether individual defendants were mentally competent to stand trial. Lewis was asked to examine Rudolf Hess, but like many of the psychiatrists at Nuremberg, he took the opportunity to examine other defendants as well in an effort to understand the psychological makeup of Nazi leaders. The most complete file of Nuremberg material concerns Hess and contains several physicians' reports and notes from Lewis's examination. The series also includes Lewis's notes on Franz von Papen. A notebook kept by Lewis during this period contains examination notes and general reflections on postwar Europe and the trials.
The Subject File also includes a transcript of a lengthy oral history interview with Lewis conducted by Arcangelo d'Amore, Jean Jones, and Daniel Prager. The interview focuses on the early years of psychoanalysis in the United States, with special attention to its development in Washington, D.C. The series concludes with material from Lewis's military service during World War I as a neuropathologist with the Surgeon General's laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Lewis published on a variety of topics, but his most significant research and writing focused on schizophrenia. The Writings File includes drafts and reviews of Lewis's Research in Dementia Precox and Wartime Psychiatry, published in 1954. In addition to lectures, the series also includes an article, reviews, and other research. Printed copies of some of his publications can be found in the Printed Matter series.