Vincent Kelly

July 2018     Oral Histories    

Interview with Andrea Schara, Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Vincent Kelly
Courtesy of Vincent Kelly.

Transcript (full text, 167 kb)   

Dr. Kelly had come to some of the ideas in Bowen theory, long before meeting Dr. Bowen. In taking Dr. Bowen’s seminar for residents at Georgetown, he realized that what Dr. Bowen was teaching reverberated with his own experience with families. While Dr. Bowen was probably the most well-known psychiatrist on staff at Georgetown, Dr. Kelly’s perspective was Dr. Bowen was “marginalized” because his ideas were not in the mainstream of psychoanalysis. When Dr. Kelly began his own practice – both public and private – he began meeting with Dr. Bowen for supervision on a regular basis. In his extended interview with Andrea Schara, he discusses his observations with couples in private practice noting his approach in working with those couples. Anecdotes and personal remarks about being his own person with his nuclear and extended family complete the interview.

About Dr. Kelly

After earning an undergraduate degree and medical degree from Georgetown University, Dr. Kelly entered the United States Navy as a medical officer first as an ensign and then as a Lieutenant senior grade. He completed one year in a rotating internship and then one year in psychiatric residency at the US Naval Hospital, Bethesda Maryland. He resigned from the residency after that year and was assigned to the naval base in Norfolk Virginia as the dispensary psychiatrist and at the US Naval brig as the general medical physician for the next three years. Following his discharge from the Navy, he returned to the Georgetown University Hospital to complete the final two years in residency training. While the training in the Navy was predominantly psychoanalytic theory, Dr. Kelly found thinking in family terms made more sense when it came to be helpful to others.

After discharge from the Navy, he, his wife and family moved into the DC Metro area. The Kellys happened to buy a house near where the Bowens lived. At times, both families would be at community meetings. This permitted Dr. Kelly to observe Dr. Bowen relating with his wife and to learn from that. Dr. Kelly was very involved in the initial efforts to organize the early years of the annual symposium and to learn from many of the well-known family theorists as speakers. He also became one of the original members of AFTA.


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