Talk:David Rioch

Parents

This source confirms that Rioch's parents (David Rioch, Minnie Henley) were Christian missionaries (it looks like they were part of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society) and that his father's parents lived in Canada. It's not clear, but it looks like his mother was American. In India, his mother worked as a physician (graduated Medical College of Indiana) and his father worked with orphans (not yet confirmed, but it looks like he attended seminary school and graduated from Butler University). Apparently, his mother got sick working in the field in 1908.[1] There's quite a bit of information on his parents in the missionary literature as they appear to have been well-liked. Also, according to these sources, David had one other sibling, but I haven't yet figured out if it was a sister or brother. Viriditas (talk) 06:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed. His parents were missionaries (Smith 1985) and he had one sister (Cohen 1986). Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Important publications

• Rioch D.M. (1958). Multidisciplinary methods in psychiatry. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 1958 Jul;28(3):467-82. PMID 13559376
• Rioch Report of Psychiatric Stress on American Troops (April, 1964)
• Rioch, D.M. (Feb., 1984). Reflections on Sullivan and the language of psychiatry. Psychiatry, 47(1):59-65. PMID 6701234

Rioch Report

In addition to data collected by colleagues for four months, Rioch spent 19 days in Vietnam assessing the morale and psychiatric stress of American troops resulting in the "Rioch Report" (1964).[2][3] The conclusions are very familiar to those knowledgeable about the subject and predict the outcome reached a decade later. According to a former colleague of Rioch's by the name of Arthur Colman, Rioch secretly met with General Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War, in a failed attempt to prevent the war from taking place. It's possible that this involved the personal presentation of the Rioch Report in April 1964. It's tough to find sources other than Colman on this, but I might contact him to see if he has any. Keep in mind, the Gulf of Tonkin incident didn't occur until four months after the report was published. Viriditas (talk) 07:52, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Institute for Behavioral Research

Rioch co-founded the Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR) with Joseph V. Brady in 1960.[4] According to Smith 1985, Rioch was a senior scientist at IBR. Viriditas (talk) 11:44, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Two conflicting sources

I notice that Harraway says that Rioch was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins from 1931–1937, but "Three Eulogies" says he was on the faculty at Harvard from 1931–1938. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: Good catch. Rioch was a medical student at Johns Hopkins in the 1920s and came to Harvard in the 1930s (see for example Principles, Practices, and Positions in Neuropsychiatric Research, 1970). Other sources that cover this include the "News Items" section of the The New England Journal of Medicine for 1931. "Dr. David M. Rioch (Johns Hopkins 1924) is also coming to Harvard from Johns Hopkins as an associate professor..."[5] NAP mentions a bit in the Biographical Memoirs V.72 (1997), in the biography of Archibald Philip Bard.[6] So clearly, Harraway got it wrong. Viriditas (talk) 02:24, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that, because it was confusing me a lot! So, per the preponderance of reliable sources, we will give lesser weight to Harraway with respect to the chronology of Rioch's career.

As you can see, I'm trying to work on this, but I'm finding that I never have enough time to make a lot of progress, mostly due to that mediation I am in. But I have read all of the talk comments above and have been reading all of the "dropbox" sources, and I'm making edits here as I find the time.

On a semi-related note, you asked me at my talk page about starting other related pages. One possibility that occurs to me is that, on this page, we prominently cite W. Maxwell Cowan, who is a very prominent and notable person who should have a page, but who is still a red link. If you would like to get that started, it would be a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Will do. Viriditas (talk) 22:49, 2 January 2015 (UTC)