Karl Bowman

Psychiatric work

In the course of his career, Bowman conducted pioneering work on the psychiatric effects of alcohol, drugs, and sexuality. He also conducted research on schizophrenia and the use of insulin shock therapy. He testified at the trials of Nathan F. Leopold and Richard Loeb for the murder of Robert Franks in 1924 as well as in many other celebrated cases.

During his career, Bowman was the chief medical officer at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital; an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (1921–1936); the chief of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital (1936–1941); a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical College (1936–1941); the first chairman and director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute (1941–1956); and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also the head of the Laguna Honda Psychiatric Hospital in San Francisco (1941–1967)

As the retiring president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1946, he made headlines when he predicted that 10 million people in the United States would at some time in their lives require hospitalization for mental disorders. Bowman was also a board member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Alcoholism

Bowman was Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in New York City when Dr. Allen Gregg (Director of the Rockefeller Foundation) asked him to participate in an alcoholism study he had been preparing. Bowman was interested in this project but wished to have a part in leading the study. In 1938, Bowman joined the Moore Group. This group founded the "Research Council on Problems of Alcohol" or the RCPA, which was an organization similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. Soon after it was created, Bowman became a leader of this organization. With E. Morton Jellinek, he co-wrote an influential 1941 article, "Alcohol Addiction and Its Treatment," synthesizing prior typologies of alcoholism and classifying alcoholics into four types, which was the basis of Jellinek's later five-stage typology. He also researched and wrote on marijuana.

Schizophrenia

Karl Bowman read his article "The Modern Treatment of Schizophrenia" at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York on February 17, 1939. During his reading, Bowman stated, "over one half of the population of State Hospitals" consisted of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. He claimed that this psychological disorder did not shorten the lifespan of the patient, but resulted in the deterioration of the patient's brain. In his article, Bowman addresses many different methods that were used throughout history to help treat schizophrenia. For example, fever therapy consisted of inducing a fever in the patient using various methods, such as the malaria virus, but did not produce effective results in the treatment of schizophrenia. Sleep therapy was carried out using sleep-inducing substances such as marijuana, opium, and somnifen. Bowman also addresses stimulus therapy; this method had only temporary effects. Bowman recommended the insulin method as effective, with longer-lasting effects and more indications of long-term improvement. Bowman was optimistic about schizophrenia patients whose conditions had improved or had been cured and also about future treatment methods for schizophrenia patients.

Homosexuality

During the 1950s and 1960s, Bowman collaborated in a number of studies on homosexuality and wrote a report on it for the State of California. In 1953, in "The Problem of Homosexuality," co-authored with Bernice Engle, he argued for multiple causes, including genetics, but proposed that castration be studied as a cure. However, in 1961 he appeared in the television documentary The Rejected presenting the viewpoint that homosexuality is not a mental illness and should be legalized.

Legacy in the Philippines

In the 1920's, Bowman supervised Dr. Jose Fernandez, a Filipino physician and future clinical director of the National Psychopathic Hospital, in the Philippines. After the war, Dr. Bowman responded to appeals from his former trainee and sent "a small check and some books" while at the same time encouraging his colleagues to do the same.