The contributions of Kenneth Leslie Artiss, M.D.

Kenneth Leslie Artiss (1913-2001) was an Army psychiatrist who did significant investigative work in schizophrenia and milieu therapy and whose broad scholarship led to decisively important and enduring contributions to operational psychiatry. After retirement from military service, he developed a bold approach for teaching psychodynamic theory and its applications, and he led seminars for psychiatry residents and other physicians for over four decades. He was among the first to apply psychodynamic ideas to improve oncology practice. His death in 2001 motivated a group of his military students to memorialize his life and contributions and to demonstrate why they merit continuing consideration.