Orval Hobart Mowrer - Later Years

Later Years

The popularity of Integrity Groups faded during the 1970s. Mowrer's techniques in fact were to have a substantial legacy in the alcohol and drug rehabilitation field, but community groups did not last. Mowrer recognized the irony of this. Opposition to professionalism in therapy had been a guiding principal for both Molly and Hobart Mowrer and for years they resisted the temptation to sponsor formal training in I.G. leadership. Times were changing, however, and it seemed that the only future available for Mowrer's approach was in the hands of paid professionals. He did continue to have some non-professional influence through the Grapevine articles he wrote for Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization he very much admired.

Hobart Mowrer was an advocate of the idea that mental illness has a substantial biological and genetic basis. He held this conviction in spite of his equally strong belief in the importance of the "pathogenic secret." Mower accepted the importance of biological factors at a time when many people did not, and was in this respect ahead of his time. He regarded his own affliction as in some sense a "gift," the driving force behind his innovative ideas, but also the great misery of his life.

Mowrer had hoped to remain professionally active in retirement, but circumstances forced him to slow down shortly after he retired in 1975. Molly became seriously ill and he developed medical problems of his own. Molly's death in 1979 was a great loss, and also left him with few responsibilities. He had accepted that his periodic depressions would never be entirely cured, and had long held the opinion that suicide was a reasonable choice in some circumstances. He committed suicide in 1982 at the age of 75.