Robert M. Post The Inveterate NIMH Career Researcher: The Opportunities and Perils of Clinical Research in an Intramural Program [Research]

I arrived at my current position as Chief of the Biological Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health through a somewhat improbable and circuitous route. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, with the only real academic goal of leaving my home-

So, I became a "townie" and took up studies in psychology at Yale (1960-1964) with the idea I had adopted in high school that a career as a physician was a not unworthy goal. Psychology and the brain sciences appeared to be one of the most vast and wide open frontiers in medicine; they combined the chance to help individuals as a physician with unique opportunities for new discoveries. It seemed that people knew the basics of how the heart and kidneys worked, but virtually nothing about the neurobiology of the brain. Certainly, almost anyone with some degree of curiosity could make a worthwhile contribution in this area.