Listmates,
I'm taking the liberty of cross-posting Kaye Fillmore's email, containing an
obit for Genevieve Knupfer, to this list (see below). Genevieve headed the
Social Research Group (previously, the Calif. Drinking Practices Study) when
I was first hired in the 1960s. Genevieve and her early crew of alcohol
survey researchers (comprising chiefly Ray Fink, Walt Clark, and Robin Room)
were responsible for pioneering many if not most of the interrogatives and
scales that have been used in such research to this day. She was a
no-nonsense researcher and scholar, suffered fools not at all, and (for me
at least) was also quite intimidating in the first couple of years. She was
particularly keen on correcting misusages of words and concepts. Her
distaste for sloppy use of the language, particularly in a scientific
context, was expressed quite nicely in her 1991 paper (see below) showing
that researchers slanted vague and open-ended concepts in order to
over-emphasize the desirability of abstinence during pregnancy. Genevieve
didn't publish much. Yet the credit owed her by the alcohol epidemiology
field stretches far beyond publication. Her coauthored Report #6 (Knupfer,
G.; Fink, R.; Clark, W. B.; and Goffman, A.S. Factors Related to Amount of
Drinking in an Urban Community. California Drinking Practices Study. Report
No. 6. Berkeley: Division of Alcoholic Rehabilitation. California State
Department of Public Health), for example, contained much of the important
news that alcohol epi would repackage and repackage for years to come. Her
"The Portrait of the Underdog" was a classic of contemporary sociology.
Indeed, Genevieve was herself a classic - her person suggested the thorough
scholarship, rock-solid character, and unflinching standards of a bygone
era. She will not be replaced.
Ron Roizen
-----Original Message-----
From: Kettil Bruun Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Fillmore, Kaye
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 9:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Genevieve Knupfer
Dear Listmates, Genevieve Knupfer died August 27, 2005. Below is an
obituary written by her daughter, Kate. In my view, Genevieve was one of
the "greats" in our field. She went straight to the heart of a problem and
was fearless in doing so. Yours, Kaye
GENEVIEVE KNUPFER, M.D., Ph.D.
Genevieve Knupfer, M.D., Ph.D, Bay Area psychiatrist, sociologist and civil
rights and peace activist, died August 27 at Stanford Hospital.
Born on March 19, 1914 in Dusseldorf, Germany to American parents, her
family returned to the U.S. shortly after her birth. They returned to Europe
after World War I, settling in Brussels, where Dr. Knupfer was raised.
She graduated from Wellesley College in 1935, and continued her study of
sociology at Columbia University with the eminent sociologist, Paul
Lazersfeld She received her M.A. in 1938 and was awarded the Ph.D. degree in
1946. A chapter from her dissertation, "The Portrait of the Underdog," was
published in 1947 in Public Opinion Quarterly.
Dr. Knupfer felt the academic life was not for her - she wanted to help
people, so she decided to become a physician. She studied Medicine at the
University of Rochester and received her M.D. in 1951. She moved to the Bay
Area, where her daughter was born in 1952. Dr. Knupfer completed a medical
residency at Franklin Hospital in San Francisco, followed by a residency in
psychiatry at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center, Menlo
Park Campus. Her strong and continued commitment to public health led her,
in 1955, to participate in the first mass polio immunization program.
She opened a private practice in psychiatry in Redwood City, while
continuing her interest in sociology. In 1959 she was appointed the director
of the California Drinking Practices Study (later the Alcohol Research Group
of Berkeley), an epidemiological study of alcohol use among California
adults. Dr. Knupfer was also an advisor to the World Health Organization's
alcoholism program for many years.
The original survey questionnaire used by the DPS included many items
designed to measure mental health, and Dr. Knupfer added a question:
"Overall, how happy would you say you are these days?" Out of curiosity - a
quality she had no shortage of - she tabulated the results by gender and
marital status to come up with a startling finding: The happiest people were
single women and married men; the unhappiest were married women and single
men. Her findings were published in a 1966 paper (co-authored by Walt Clark
and Robin Room), "The Mental Health of the Unmarried." The paper, published
in the American Journal of Psychiatry, received wide media coverage, as her
conclusion ran counter to the prevailing stereotype of unhappy spinsters in
desperate pursuit of marriage with men who preferred the joys of being
single to the proverbial "ball and chain."Dr. Knupfer was immediately and
vigorously pilloried by S.F. Chronicle columnist "Count Marco," who reviled
her and all "lady psychiatrists," and the Chronicle noted the controversy
with a front-page banner.
During the 1950's, 60's and 70's, Dr. Knupfer was an active participant in
the movements for fair housing, civil rights, and peace, taking part in many
vigils and protests. She traveled to Mississippi to work as a physician in a
Head Start program, and picketed the Woolworth's in Stanford Shopping Center
to protest segregation at lunch counters in the South. She was a member of
the Palo Alto Friends' Meeting and deeply committed to non-violence. In
October, 1967, she was arrested, along with singer Joan Baez and dozens of
others, at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration at the Oakland Induction
Center.
Until her retirement in 1986, Dr. Knupfer continued to work as a
psychiatrist in private practice, and also at several county and community
psychiatric hospitals and clinics in Redwood City, Menlo Park, and San
Francisco. She continued her research on a variety of topics in sociology,
with a particular interest in gender bias, publishing papers on diverse
subjects including gender differences among psychiatric patients undergoing
lobotomies, and a study of the husbands of alcoholic wives. She continued to
write and publish academic papers; her most recent, in the September, 1991
issue of the British Journal of Addictions, was "Abstaining for foetal
health: the fiction that even light drinking is dangerous."
She is survived by her daughter, Katherine McClellan, of East Palo Alto; two
nieces, Lucinda Murphy of Baltimore, Md., and Victoria Williams of Media,
Pa., and a nephew, Charles Riggs, of San Lorenzo. A memorial service is
planned for 2:30pm October 15 at the Friends' Meeting House in Palo Alto,
957 Colorado Ave, Palo Alto CA 94303. Donations may be sent to the Palo
Alto Friends' Meeting, Southern Poverty Law Center, or Planned Parenthood.
PLEASE NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: [log in to unmask]
Kaye Fillmore
1310 Brewster Dr.
El Cerrito, CA 94530
510 233 8368
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