Spitzer, Robert L.

   (1932–)

   The architect of DSM-III, which completely revised psychiatric diagnosis in the United States and worldwide, Spitzer was born in White Plains, New York, and earned his M.D. in 1957 from New York University School of Medicine. He trained in psychiatry (1958–1961) at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (affiliated with the department of psychiatry of Columbia University), during which time he also completed a training program in psychoanalysis. (In later years, he came to regard psychoanalysis with great skepticism and as an obstacle to the development of an empirically based psychiatry.) In 1961, he became a research fellow in the biometrics research department, headed by Joseph Zubin (1900–1990), a research psychologist who in the mid-1950s had founded the biometrics department at "PI," and who stimulated Spitzer’s interest in measurement. In 1968, Spitzer served as a consultant to the Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics of the American Psychiatric Association as they prepared DSM-II. In 1973, he led the successful effort to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis from successive printings of the DSM-II. (See Homosexuality and Psychiatry). In 1974, Spitzer became head of the Task Force that produced DSM-III, and in this connection, in 1978 he co-authored the Research Diagnostic Criteria with Eli Robins (see St. Louis school; DSM). Shortly after the appearance of DSM-III in 1980, Spitzer became chair of the work group to revise that document, his wife Janet B. W. Williams functioning as text editor; the product of that committee, DSM-III-R, was published in 1987. Because of the enormous impact of DSM-III and its successors worldwide, Spitzer emerges as one of the most influential figures in the history of late-twentieth-century psychiatry. In an interesting demonstration of the frequent gap between real influence and official attainment, his name is not even listed in the 18th edition of American Men and Women of Science (1992).