ABSTRACT
In presenting a paper a few years ago, on some historical developments in Navy clinical psychology and psychiatry, I commented on the significance for American psychology as well as for the Navy of the work done in training commands and hospitals by Bill Hunt, Walter Wilkins, Arthur Benton, and a few others during the early days of World War II. Inasmuch as I had not personally participated in that work, although one or two in the audience had, I was reminded of a letter received some years earlier from another distinguished mentor and friend of many years. In lamenting how often lessons of the past are lost or ignored, he wrote what. I presumed at the time was an accidental, yet has become on occasion an altogether fitting, variation of the well-known adage: “Those who are ignorant of history are destined to report it.” Thus, it is my calling again to report the history experienced firsthand by most of you, some for longer periods than others to be sure, as scholarly peers, as students, or otherwise as professional and scientific colleagues of the person whose illustrious career we celebrate in this volume–Saul B. Sells.
