At a clinic in Harlem, approximately 50 people sit along a rectangle composed of metal folding tables. Dr. Martin Gittelman, a tall man in his late 60s, is conducting his weekly seminar, striding back and forth as he interacts with the group. His navy blue business suit and authoritative tone are tempered with a feeling of warm solidarity with his audience, most of whom are afflicted with schizophrenia. He shakes hands with each individual in the room.

Gittelman is a psychologist and Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. He is one of a handful of world-renowned experts in the field of community mental health – a specialization that combines public health and psychiatry. Rather than analyzing the individual psyche, its proponents focus on planning and building a mental health infrastructure, which links local healthcare professionals and recruits patients and their families as partners in care.

Gittelman developed his own strong community-oriented perspective early on. Born and raised in Washington Heights – a mixed, largely working-class neighborhood just north of Harlem – Marty Gittelman was a tough, streetwise kid who fought in the Golden Gloves, a competition sponsored by the New York , until he was so badly beaten that his mother put her foot down. There was more to life than winning a fight, she insisted, and the bright young man came to see things her way. He applied himself as never before to his studies and graduated from high school with honors.

At Brooklyn College in the early 1950s, Gittelman became interested in psychology and chose it as his major. He recalls engaging in lively debates with his colleagues, many of whom aspired to careers as psychotherapists. "A friend lent me a copy of Freud's Totem and Taboo," he says. "Although I could see its philosophical and literary merit, it seemed like 19th-century stuff. This is New York City, I'd argue. What relevance does traditional psychoanalysis have for a truck driver whose kid is having problems at school?"

After completing his PhD in clinical psychology at Columbia University Teachers College, Gittelman took a succession of fellowships and training at the National Institute of Mental Health, the Alfred Adler Institute, and the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, among others. He says that his experi