When the Payne Whitney Clinic of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center celebrated its 75th anniversary recently, it was fitting that Peter Wilson, professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) and attending psychiatrist at the clinic for his entire 50-year career, be the one to catalog its stored past.

From a collection of more than 70 hours of audio tape and more than 58 individual video interviews, WiIson shared a distilled overview of the clinic's creation and growth over the last 75 years during a recent Psychiatry Grand Rounds session Sept. 10 in Uris Auditorium at WCMC.

"The Payne Whitney Clinic was born out of passion, generosity and a marriage," Wilson said.

The passion belonged to William Russell, the medical director of the Bloomingdale Hospital -- now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division -- who longed to create a psychiatric institute that could stand on its own.

The generosity came from William Payne Whitney, who set aside $10 million in his will for psychiatry and neurology. "We're not sure why he gave this money for mental health, but, nevertheless, we are grateful he did," Wilson said.

The final component was the marriage in 1927 of New York Hospital and what was then called Cornell University Medical College.

From the outset, Wilson said, Russell and George Canby Robinson, director of the New York Hospital--Cornell Medical Center, were at odds over the leadership of the clinic. Russell wanted a strong, independent academic institute that maintained an affiliation with a major metropolitan hospital. But Robinson felt Russell lacked the academic credentials to chair the psychiatry department.

On a larger scale, Russell was fighting for the legitimacy of his field and patients' rights in a time when others were more focused on such departments as medicine and surgery.

Despite early leadership struggles, the clinic's reputation for patient care thrived. Being in New York naturally positioned it as the logical choice for celebrities seeking treatment, but the clinic's true reputation was one of comprehensive patient care for all.

The interior of the clinic resembled an upper-middle-class private residence, and patients often stayed as long as two years.

In 1936, the clinic got its first taste of progressive leadership when Oskar Diethelm, a protégé of renowned psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, became chair.

Diethelm was tireless, meeting with as many as 100 patients and 15 residents every week. But the psychiatry curriculum for medical students was not his primary focus. Nor was it a priority of the incoming chair, William Lhamon, who focused his efforts on research and left the teaching to colleagues -- one of whom was Wilson.

It wasn't until 1974, when Robert Michels took over as chair, that the clinic's educational component received renewed attention from leadership.

"He hit this place like a tsunami," Wilson said.

The number of residents increased to 45 from 26, and the curriculum expanded. "He knew what was going to be the next big thing is psychiatry, where we wanted to go," Wilson said.

In 1991, when Barchas succeeded Michels, who left the chair to become dean of the medical college, he inherited a world-class psychiatric institute and a psychiatry department, which -- in terms of education and patient treatment -- was second to none.

Under Barchas' leadership, Wilson concluded, research has flourished at the clinic, adding to its reputation as an institution of excellent patient care and education.