Leonardo Tondo: Interviews with pioneers

To set a foundation for education in the history of neuropsychopharmacology, it was suggested to generate firsthand information from the pioneering generation of psychopharmacologists about their research in the form of interviews. The suggestion was adopted by INHN (Ban 2015) and this posting signals the launching of our program, in which a series of interviews conducted and audiotaped by me in the late 1980s and early 1990s will be presented (posted) and discussed. The presentations will not be restricted to the transcript of the edited interview but each posting will include also a biographic sketch, information about the interview, notable comments, endnotes and acknowledgements as well as a photo of the interviewee.

The program will be implemented in three steps. It will start with the posting of edited interviews and discussions of each interview after posting. This will be followed in the second step by rendering the posted interviews accessible first as a collated document, then as an E-Book and ultimately in print. Finally, in the third step, the information contained in the interviews will be rendered accessible for integration with the information in INHN’s other projects. For this, the words/concepts that qualify for entry in Dictionary in the form of a vignette will be identified; the people who qualify for Photo History, Profiles and/or Biographies listed; and the topics which warrant an essay in Controversies or in Historical Perspective, briefly discussed.

Leonardo Tondo

October 29, 2015