Earl F. Zinn case notes of a psychiatric patient (MS.93.18)

The collection documents the case history of a sibling child, the prognosis for which was deteriorated hebephrenic schizophrenic. During the period covered by these recordings, the patient was in the Worcester State Hospital and in the psychiatric ward at the Yale Medical School, Division of Psychiatry. Materials include interview transcriptions and drawings and paintings produced by the patient.

Earl F. Zinn was the first person known to have made recordings of psychotherapeutic interviews. The interviews were conducted in the 1930s at the Institute of Human Relations, Yale University. Zinn recorded 350 hours of interviews using an Ediphone dictation machine. The verbatim transcriptions were kept by Zinn, and the results of the interviews are unpublished. Notes are grouped by topic. Zinn's numbering system has been retained. The relationship between recordings, notes, and the numbering system is not delineated within the collection. Beyond the notes, a group of drawings and paintings by the patient were maintained by Zinn. Some of the art works include annotations by an unidentified hand. A number of these are dated between 1936 and 1938.