Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 1 I, pp. 305.307, 1987 Printed in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.

0145-2134/87 $3.00 + .OO Copyright 0 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd.

FESTSCHRIFT COMMENTARY

“WHY DON’T YOU SEE WHAT YOU CAN DO?”

RICHARD D. KRUGMAN, M.D. AND RUTH S. KEMPE, M.D.

University of Colorado School of Medicine and Kempe National Center, Denver, CO

BACKGROUND

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, Brandt Steele’s career in psychiatry may have come naturally, for he always seemed to have had an ability to talk with people about their troubles. We have heard that when he was a fairly young boy, his father occasionally said, on leaving for work in the morning, “Brandt, your mother seems a bit worried about something. Why don’t you see what you can do.” Or occasionally his mother might say, “Brandt, your father seems to have something on his mind. Why don’t you see what you can do.” The role of calm listener and wise confidant seems to have been part of his early endow- ment which has remained an integral part of his life. His ability to remain warmly inter- ested, uncritical, but realistically helpful, has caused him to be sought out and trusted by as many worried professionals as by tough prison inmates.

Brandt’s background was closely related to natural and cultural life of Indiana. The studio of his grandfather, painter Theodore C. Steele, near Bloomington is now a state memorial park; his grandfather spent winters as artist-in-residence at Indiana University. Brandt’s father was an architect and his mother of a Quaker family; both parents had their origins in the four countries of the British Isles. One of three sons, Brandt spent summers while in college working as a ranger in Indiana state parks. His interests as a naturalist later took him to the deserts of the Southwest, on safari to Africa and on trips to Baja, California and South America.

An unofficial review of the curriculum vitae of a variety of extraordinary physicians we know reveals one consistent finding: Their first publication failed to predict the area for which they would subsequently become internationally known. Brandt Steele is no ex- ception. In 1927 at the age of 20, he published “Notes on the Feeding Habits of Carrion Beetles” in The Journal of the New York Entomological Society. One could imagine Brandt walking through the woods with Alfred Kinsey, his biology professor at Indiana, saying, “Why don’t we see what we can do to find out more about these carrion beetles.”

Following his undergraduate education at Indiana, Brandt completed his MD there in 1932. He spent the next 15 years in internal medicine. He did a research fellowship at the Thorndike Laboratory at Harvard, residencies at the Harvard service at Boston City Hos-

The term, festschrift, comes from the German and denotes a special issue devoted to honoring an individual for his/her unique contributions to our understanding and knowledge by those whose lives have been touched, either personally or by such an individual’s work.

305

306 Richard D. Krugman and Ruth S. Kempe

pital, and the Cornell service at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and then in 1936 he entered private practice in Indianapolis.

Brandt’s formal psychiatric training came after World War II when he took a psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania. His informal psychiatry training preceded that-he was head of the Neuropsychiatric Section, 32nd General Hospital, in the U.S. Army in Europe from 1943-1946. It may be apocryphal, but Brandt and two other inter- nists, turned psychiatrists on the battlefield, began group therapy in June 1944 during the Normandy Invasion. Hundreds of men “froze” on the first night. To hear Brandt tell it, “The colonel told the three of us to see what we could do-so we had groups of ten men sit around in a circle. Some were catatonic, some couldn’t stop talking. We walked around from group to group to see what we needed to do. After 12 hours, some were better and moved on to the front, some were no better and needed to go back to England. Others just needed to talk more.”

INFLUENCE ON THE FIELD OF CHILD ABUSE

In 1958 Brandt moved from Philadelphia to Colorado to be Associate Professor and Psychiatric Liaison to the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. It was during this time that Henry Kempe, frustrated by his inability to get child psychiatrists at Colorado to see parents of children he suspected were abused, grabbed Brandt in the hall one day, thrust him into a room and said: “Brandt, I have a mother on the ward right now who fractured her little boy’s femur. Why don’t you see what you can do?” Brandt went in to speak to her briefly. Two hours later, he realized that her story presented a major challenge to a psychiatrist’s understanding of human behavior, and he began systematic study of other abusive parents as well. That day was a most fortunate one for abused children!

Most psychiatrists might have strived to make a diagnosis and fit these patients into some preconceived mold. But Brandt, with his characteristic breadth of vision which makes complicated ideas seem deceptively simple, was able to listen to these parents, to tolerate the inconsistencies of their stories, and recognize within the discrepancies pat- terns of troubled and misguided parenting which left parents genuinely confused by their failures and unable to comprehend what had gone wrong.

Unique Qualities for This Work

Brandt brought to this work very unique qualities. His happy childhood in a loving Quaker family taught him charity and tolerance and generosity. His scientific training, from the study of the carrion beetle to the research fellowship at the Thorndike service of Boston City Hospital, taught him respect for facts and their inescapable consequences. His psychoanalytic training and experience gave him a sound basis for making sense of apparent contradictions and for exploring new aspects of human experience. Brandt might not have tolerated so well the difficult, frustrating, discouraging work with abusive parents if he had not himself also been an unusually gifted man, gifted with a capacity for enjoyment of life and appreciative of its fascinating variety which made it possible to contain the sadistic outburst of hatred of a father for his infant son in the same under- standing that recognized that same father’s inarticulate longing for an unconditional love. His respect for facts never allowed him to offer unrealistic promises, but his willingness to work with them in spite of difficulties kept many patients motivated to continue treat- ment. Brandt is one of the few people who can say that he has seen abused children in families he has treated grow up to become successful parents.

Brandt, the Teacher

Brandt F. Steele 307

Brandt has always been valued as a teacher who expresses his ideas so well they easily become part of one’s own thinking. Once in the 60s at a dinner at his home, Brandt and his guests happened to hear a brief television news story about child abuse (then still a rarity) given by a young pediatrician. Very nearly verbatim, Brandt’s description of the abusive parents was given with great conviction by the young pediatrician. After the pro- gram, one guest voiced indignation at such plagiarism without acknowledgment of the source. Brandt, however, was not at all disturbed. He was delighted that his teaching was so borne out by the young man’s experience that the concepts had been totally incorpo- rated. Indeed, the whole study of child abuse and neglect has been largely informed by Brandt’s original work and each of his continuing papers has illuminated the analytic tasks of the process by which the pattern of inadequate parenting is repeated from one generation to the next. Although he disclaims expertise with children, Brandt has an envi- able ability to recognize the way in which the young infant must modify his developmental capabilities to meet the demands of an abusive neglectful environment. As a teacher, he is as much at home in the exacting atmosphere of a psychoanalytic colloquium as with a small group of young skeptical mothers.

Although he was delighted to receive an honorary degree from DePauw University, Brandt might well treasure equally the report from a formerly abused child that due to Brandt’s intervention in the family, that child is now a secure, effective, and loving parent.

Personal Qualities

Brandt’s gift for enjoying life has kept him interested in nature, in his beautiful garden, bird watching, and travel to many places where the animal kingdom offers its wonders. Widely read and a lover of art and music, he can enjoy solitude. Yet his close ties to his family, especially to his two sons-Thomas, a psychiatrist, and Nicholas, a professor of ancient languages-and their families, and to his many friends attest to his great capacity to share his warmth and love of life with those fortunate enough to know him.

His writings, as his life, have all been extraordinary in their broad perspectives, sim- plicity of style, and influence on the field of child abuse from the psychiatry section of “The Battered Child Syndrome” paper [I], through his chapters with Carl Pollack on therapeutic approaches to abusive parents, to his most recent papers published in this Journal, “Notes on the Lasting Effects of Early Child Abuse” [ 11 and “Kempe Memorial Lecture [2].

OUR HERITAGE

Entomology’s loss was our gain. For nearly 30 years Brandt Steele has been gathering those of us entering the field of child abuse and neglect into a circle and talking with us, sharing his great wealth of clinical experience and his analytical theory, urging us to go talk with some parents and children to see what we could do.

REFERENCES

1. STEELE, B. F. Notes on the last effects of early child abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect 10:283-291 (1986). 2. STEELE, B. F. Kempe Memorial Lecture. Child Abuse & Neglect 11: (1987).