Collection ID: Ms Coll 21

Collection context

Summary

Creator:
Jackson, Joan K.
Date:
1948-1951
Abstract:
Joan K. Jackson, as a graduate student in sociology at McGill University, began a diary on the experiences and views of her husband Stanley K. Jackson and of his fellow students to their medical education at the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. The diary covers Stanley W. Jackson's third and fourth years at McGill and a year of internship at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Extent:
0.25 Linear Feet
Language:
English

Background

Acquisition information:
Donated by Joan K. Jackson, November 1, 2005.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Scope and Content:

Joan Jackson's diary, with entries from 1948 through 1951, covers Stanley W. Jackson's third and fourth years of medical school at McGill University School of Medicine, his first year of residency in psychiatry at the Royal Victorian Hospital in Montreal, and a summer at the Provincial Mental Hospital in Essondale, British Columbia. In this postwar period, many of the medical students, like Jackson, were returned servicemen rather than new college graduates. "The purpose of this diary was mainly to document how the medical training prepared students not only with the medical and scientific knowledge and skills required of doctors, but also with the social skills they would need, i.e. the roles of a doctor. Secondarily, the diary included attitudes of friends, acquaintances and co-workers toward illness, doctors, and treatment of illness." Joan Jackson's curriculum vitae (2003) and her explanation for writing the diary (2005) are included with the diary.

Biographical / Historical:

Joan K. Jackson received her M.A. in sociology from McGill University and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington in 1955. She was a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Washington until 1964, when she moved to New Haven with her husband, Stanley W. Jackson, M.D., who joined the Department of Psychiatry at Yale, and later served as head of the Yale Psychiatric Institute. Joan Jackson conducted pioneering research on alcoholism and the family. After 1964 she served as a consultant on alcoholism, alcoholism and the family, alcoholism and tuberculosis, and the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. She served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous from 1983 to 1992. While working towards her MA in sociology at McGill, Joan Jackson began the diary at the request of her professor, Dr. Oswald Hall, whose research was on sociology of the medical profession. "He had been analyzing and defining the stages of a medical career, and now saw an opportunity of extending his research backward into the training of physicians."

Access

LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
333 Cedar St (inside the Medical Library in the Yale School of Medicine)
New Haven, CT 06510 , USA
Link to repository site
CONTACT:
203-737-1192
historical.library@yale.edu