[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 44 (Thursday, March 29, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3149-S3150]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              DR. GEORGE W. ALBEE, DISTINGUISHED VERMONTER

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, on Friday April 5, a distinguished 
retired Vermonter, Dr. George W. Albee will receive the American 
Psychological

[[Page S3150]]

Association's Presidential Citation for the work he has done in the 
field of psychology over the last 50 years.
  Dr. Albee and his family moved to Vermont in the early 1970's, after 
a long and prolific career at Case Western Reserve University in 
Cleveland. He taught and wrote at the University of Vermont for the 
next 25 years, and was an active and influential member of Vermont's 
academic community.
  Dr. Albee's career began in a small office at APA's national 
headquarters in Washington in the early 1950's. In the fall of 1953, he 
went to Finland after landing a Fulbright Professorship at Helsinki 
University. He returned to accept a job in the Department of Psychology 
at Western Reserve University, and was named George Trumbull Ladd 
Distinguished Professor of Psychology in 1958.
  Under President Eisenhower, Albee was the Director of the Task Force 
on Manpower of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health. The 
book that he wrote, coupled with the work and recommendations of the 
commission, helped lead to the establishment and development of 
community mental health centers.
  He also served as a consultant to the U.S. Surgeon General, the Peace 
Corps, and headed President Carter's Commission on Mental Health in 
1977.
  Prior to moving to Vermont, Albee was elected President of the 
American Psychological Association where he served with distinction 
during a turbulent time of change in the psychological and psychiatric 
communities.
  He was always known in Vermont as a leader also willing to wade into 
controversy and fight for the causes he believed in. In 1977, he began 
an annual conference at UVM on the Primary Prevention of Psychopathogy, 
which over the years have brought scholars and policy makers from 
around the country and around the world to discuss ways to shape local 
state and national policies on a range of important public policy 
areas.
  In addition to his prolific writings, Dr. Albee taught thousands of 
undergraduate and graduate students at UVM. His contribution to Vermont 
and our nation has been profound. I am honored to consider him and his 
wife Margaret friends--and am proud that he has raised four children, 
all of whom are contributing in their own ways to making this world a 
better place.
  A previous award Dr. Albee received articulated better than I his 
contribution to the field of psychology. Its says:

       Dr. Albee has had an active role in plotting the direction 
     and independence of professional psychology. He saw and 
     articulated early the need for an independent profession of 
     psychology, freed from the domination of older professions 
     and older models. His ``Declaration of Independence for 
     Psychology'' has been reprinted endlessly. His argument and 
     clinical psychology students should be trained in a service 
     center operated by psychology was widely accepted. His study 
     of the nation's manpower needs and resources in mental health 
     was one of the major influences in developing the community 
     mental health center movement. He has been a frequent critic 
     of the mental health establishment, but he has been as 
     sharply critical of his own field when it seemed tempted to 
     yield principle for power and status. At times of greatest 
     crisis, however, George W. Albee has helped find ways of 
     compromise which have held psychology together.

  I congratulate Dr. Albee for this award.

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